If marijuana was a revenue-generating industry.
Imagine a world in which joints flow freely, pot is smoked in bars, hash cookies are chomped at the café tables, cannabis cigarettes are chock-full in boxes and the crushing, segregating and rolling efforts have been saved by the industrial products. If this would be the picture of the new world, will there be a financial ascend or economic upheaval? Will marijuana prove to be a profitable commerce?
Target segment
Let’s look at the approach that marketers would adopt. Already, they have a pervasive target segment of millions of pot smokers who would be high with happiness to be a part of the legal marijuana community. The foremost requirement of a business model is having a customer segment which is in abundance here. Stats say 19.5 million Americans used marijuana out of which more than 3 million are likely to be daily smokers.
Estimation of quantity of product
With illegal marijuana, consumption is restricted under the enforcement of law and order for its prohibition and possession related penalization. Even while this pertains, the amount is assumed to be nearly 1800 metric tons of 6% THC cannabis per annum in US alone. But these figures are mere estimates and can reach up to 4700 metric tons in numbers apparently because illegal sales are not kept a kempt record of. Another factor that turns up with legalization is emancipation of marijuana crossing out the fear of illicit practice. So undoubtedly the consumption will expand where there are no redundant obligations. Also, with home growers, actual quantity of intake would be higher than what’s put up for sale in the market.
Revenue
Revenue from marijuana will only include what is being sold and purchased. The entire revenue will be the addition of by-products of this herb that are commercialized. If minimum price is set to $1 per joint and ½ the price as excise tax the overall sales would be 14-28 million joints per day (considering the daily and infrequent smokers). This calculates out to be 2.5-5 billion dollars in tax revenue. This industry will be on par with the cigarettes and alcohol industries with funds obtained through federal taxes equivalent to $5 billion and $8 billion respectively. This is only when the base price is fixed at $1 per joint. With an incremented price for each item the industry might turn out to be a more lucrative source of revenue than any of the other two mentioned previously.
How big is it?
The above analysis is on the rudimentary basis. For this, we considered only one derived product: joint, out of a range of products like blunts, doobies, cannabis food like cakes and cookies, oil, butter etc. , only one type of industry based on direct sale of joints behind the desk in addition to coffee houses and gardening-related spinoff-industries and one type of tax out of many others including sales tax. The variety is vast than it seems in the restrained world today and so is the earning and the sources of revenue. This was just one streak of commercial marijuana domain. A several more lie closed out there, just the gates of law are to be opened to give this economic flow a way.
