2016 was a down year in many ways, but there’s one part of America that had a great year: stoners. November saw a record number of states passing recreational and medical marijuana laws. Looking ahead to 2017, those states are probably in for a serious cash windfall judging by the current marijuana market. In 2016, legal sales of marijuana were over $5.8 billion in the United States.
Given that the number of legal and recreational states basically doubled at the end of 2016, we’re betting that number is going to go up quite a bit with the addition of sales in California, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, Florida, North Dakota and Arkansas. Forbes has reported that the marijuana industry is growing faster than the dot-com boom that birthed some of the biggest companies in America today (hopefully with out the subsequent bust).
Things could still go awry in 2017 with an unpredictable president whose administration has sent mixed signals about how they’ll treat states’ legalization of marijuana. It’ll be hard to say no when marijuana sales are driving up the GDP by over 20% and may soon surpass the music industry in revenue.
[via Forbes]