Americans now spend MORE on legal weed than on chocolate: Sales of marijuana from dispensaries topped $30billion in the last year compared to $18billion on the sweet stuff
Americans spent more money on legal weed last year than chocolate and craft beer combined after major changes to marijuana laws, a new report has revealed.
Tapped at $30billion by cannabis website MJBizDaily, the monetary measure of legal marijuana sales increased by more than $12million from the year before, when only Washington and Colorado were allowed to shill the smelly stuff.
Since then, another 20 states have followed their western counterparts' example, allowing licensed retailers to sell the drug recreationally - though federal regulators remain split on a more widespread decriminalization.
To measure the industry's worth, MJBizDaily consulted with economists and analyzed several databases - ultimately coming to the conclusion that by 2024, the amount spent on legal weed should increase by another $3.6billion.
By 2028, the firm expects marijuana sales to approach $57billion - a marker that will see it surpass currently waning big tobacco, an industry that drew in $52.7billion from US residents this past year. That comes despite tobacco being legal nationwide, while recreational pot is only allowed in less than half of the country.
The growth outpaces that of steady earner chocolate, which, by the end of 2026, is expected to reach $26billion, according to a recent report from the New York Post.
Moreover, these are just the legal numbers for cannabis, the report repeatedly points out - with the true sum spent annually by pot-smoking Americans likely standing at up to three-times the amount calculated by MJBizDaily.
And as more citizens ditch dealers for increasingly available retailers, the gap between cannabis and other commodities, like craft beer, which only drew in $7.9billion in 2022 per Business Insider, will only continue to lengthen.
The paper remarked about the literal cash crop's increasing prominence in the US states where it is now legal, after older measures only estimated cannabis's illicit American gains.
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