Legal Marijuana Is The Fastest Growing Industry In The United States

This past weekend I was in Aspen, Colorado for the Winter X-Games. Once upon a time, between college and moving to New York City to get BroBible running on all cylinders, I spent a season skibumming in Aspen. It’s a special, inspiring place. In the five years since I’ve been back, the character of the town is slightly different place than how I remember leaving it: There’s still awesome skiing, charming Victorian cottages, tourists, quirky mountain town bars, and millionaires/billionaires. But there’s also marijuana. Legal marijuana. It’s EVERYWHERE, too. In fact, there are six dispensaries in a downtown area that’s much smaller than most college towns. All the dispensaries have their own loyal customer bases, marketing tactics, and price models, too.

My point: It’s a business and its thriving. Capitalism is fucking awesome.

Legal marijuana is booming in Colorado and Washington. It soon will be in Oregon, Alaska, and Washington D.C. As prohibition laws starts to crumble, it’s becoming quite a lucrative industry to break into, too. Just ask the four Bros in Washington State who are making $40,000 a day selling cannabis oil. There are similar stories of green fortunes being made in Colorado, too.

Unless the politics around marijuana legalization start blowing the other direction, it’s not going to change, either. The ArcView Group out of Oakland, California released a report saying that the legal marijuana business is one of the fastest growing industries in the United States. According to the report, legal marijuana grew in 2014 to $2.7 billion, which is up from $1.5 billion in 2013. That’s a margin of 74%, which is INSANE for any industry. Via the Hunffington Post:

The group surveyed hundreds of medical and recreational marijuana retailers in states where sales are legal, as well as ancillary business operators and independent cultivators of the plant, over the course of seven months during 2013 and 2014. ArcView also compiled data from state agencies, nonprofit organizations and private companies in the marijuana industry for a more complete look at the marketplace.

“In the last year, the rise of the cannabis industry went from an interesting cocktail conversation to being taken seriously as the fastest growing industry in America,” Troy Dayton, CEO of The ArcView Group and publisher of the third edition of the State of Legal Marijuana Markets, said in the executive summary of the report. “At this point, it’s hard to imagine that any serious businessperson who is paying attention hasn’t spent some time thinking about the possibilities in this market.”

There’s more good news for ganjaprenuers, too. ArcView predicts the market to grow by 32% this year and continue exploding as more states legalize for both recreational and medical use:

The report also projects a strong year for legal marijuana in 2015 and projects 32 percent growth in the market. Dayton said that places “cannabis in the top spot” when compared with other fast-growing industries.

Over the next five years, the marijuana industry is expected to continue to grow, with ArcView predicting that 14 more states will legalize recreational marijuana and two more states will legalize medical marijuana. At least 10 states are already considering legalizing recreational marijuana in just the next two years through ballot measures or state legislatures.

A few more facts from the report, all compiled via Huffington Post:

-More than 1.5 million shoppers purchased legal marijuana from a dispensary, either medical or recreational, in 2014.
-Five states now boast marijuana markets that are larger than $100 million.
-Consumers in Colorado and Washington, which have the first retail marijuana shops in the U.S., bought $370 million in marijuana products last year.
-Oregon and Alaska are expected to add a combined $275 million in retail marijuana sales in their first year of operation
-Despite being legal for recreational purposes in Colorado and Washington, California has the largest legal cannabis market in the U.S., at $1.3 billion.
-Arizona was found to have the fastest-growing major marijuana market in 2014, expanding to $155 million, up more than $120 million from the previous year.

That’s big money. Huge money. It all adds into state tax revenue, too! Horray, roads and better schools!

In a couple years, we will without a doubt have a class of billionaire entrepreneurs who got rich off legalized marijuana. And they’ll all be chillin’ in respected circles with moguls like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett on their Maui Wowie cash thrones and laughing through hazy bong hits about how many didn’t take their industry seriously.

What interesting times we live in.