As marijuana becomes legal in more and more states, it stands to reason that more and more Americans are devoting a larger portion of their monthly household budget to cannabis. A new poll bears that out: The average consumer of legal recreational marijuana spends $111.05 per month on cannabis products, according to a LendEDU survey of 1,000 consumers.
Surprisingly, more than a quarter of the respondents — 27.6 percent — spend more per month on legal marijuana than eating at restaurants.
“The point to be made is that in states where marijuana has become recreationally legal, the consumption of the drug has become both a priority and lifestyle choice,” said LendEDU research analyst Mike Brown. And even more telling, the survey finds that more than half of cannabis consumers actually include marijuana as a budget item in their monthly household budgets.
According to the survey:
Respondents were given the freedom to enter in a specific dollar amount, and LendEDU averaged together all 1,000 responses. On average, an of-age cannabis consumer from a state where the drug is recreationally legalized spends $111.05 per month on marijuana products.
Poll participants were also asked to accurately estimate how many individual purchases they make per month when it came to marijuana products. After averaging together all 1,000 responses, LendEDU found that the average marijuana consumer from a recreationally-legal state makes 6.22 marijuana-related purchases per month.
As Brown points out, legalization has lifted the taboo of marijuana use and the industry is booming. Legal retail marijuana sales in North America grew by 30 percent to $6.7 billion in 2016. Experts forecast that, by 2021, retail sales will be more than $20 billion.
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“Because of an over-saturated market where marijuana retail stores are as common as the Golden Arches of McDonald’s, people have more access to make purchases than at any other point in history,” Brown wrote. “This access has simultaneously led to more consumers buying more cannabis products, but at a cheaper price thanks to competition and less costs for the marijuana retailers.”
