U.S. Cannabis Industry’s Economic Impact Could Hit $123.6B in 2025, According to MJBizDaily
The U.S. cannabis industry is on track to contribute up to $123.6 billion to the national economy in 2025, according to MJBizDaily reporter Andrew Long in a new summary of findings from the MJBiz Factbook’s first quarterly update of the year. That figure marks a 9% increase over 2024, driven by direct sales of medical and recreational marijuana—estimated at $35.3 billion—and an additional $88.3 billion in broader economic ripple effects.
Despite a lack of progress on federal reform and continued uncertainty around marijuana’s legal status, the Factbook sees potential stability in the year ahead, especially as newer markets like New York and Ohio begin to ramp up. However, hopes for a major breakthrough in 2024 were dashed, with federal rescheduling still on hold and state-level legalization efforts—such as in Florida—failing to gain traction.
California, once the epicenter of cannabis growth, is now among the Western states facing sustained sales declines. Still, the Factbook notes that sales in California and Colorado “somewhat stabilized last year,” offering a modest sign of resilience even as these mature markets adjust to pricing pressures, competition, and regulatory hurdles.
As the industry looks to the future, further expansion is expected to continue, potentially adding $200 billion to the U.S. economy by 2030. Yet, broader economic conditions may ultimately shape the industry’s trajectory more than policy. As Long concludes, “The only thing that could destabilize the cannabis industry in 2025 is a broader economic recession, which seems more likely now than it did at this time in 2024.”
Read Andrew Long’s full article at MJBizDaily for deeper insights and data.
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Most of us are out here scraping by just barely able to pay bills and lots have had to move or lost properties, cars etc. The corporations are raking in billions on corporate weed. I am an old outlaw. I never ever wanted weed to be legal because of this very thing. Weak ppl who should of never been in the weed game ruined it just like weak ppl have ruined California and our whole country basically. What a total freaking joke. The rich always find a way to squash the little guy and in this case just like covid and every other b.s. move a little fear and the weak ppl give up everyrhing and we all suffer for it.
Amen. A nation of sheep, ruled by wolves, owned by pigs…
Too true. The newcomer pansies that were too chickenshit to grow guerilla in their states blew it up and stole the love right out growing weed. Now it’s all fixed with dispensaries everywhere with happy little smug twenty somethings tickled pink to work straight retail.
victimhood sounds like weakness. change is the only constant. adapt or just keep crying me a river.
And the rich are really screwing us with their fearful orange leader.
It was the weak liberals and democrats who sold us out to the corporations so what are you talking about??? Politics are for idiots dude and you just exposed yourself as weak and stupid.
Physician, heal thyself.
//” The corporations are raking in billions on corporate weed. “//
Every single big corp I know of (and I keep reasonable track) are losing hundreds of millions (and some billions).
The only folks I know of that are doing barely well at all, are a few very well run, old time growers who have managed to make the switch.
Your experience checks out. Most local people around here aren’t closely connected with the likes of Medmen and Ignite (I hope…) But that’s like saying that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the real losers, because they lost SO much more than your neighbor who’s home was only worth $110k when it went into foreclosure… apples and oranges my friend 😌
it’s TRUE and I am GONNA say it… I’ve seen SOME small farms with low overhead and stable organization (and no addicts in charge 🫠) be able to pull through. It takes a village. “Barely doing well” is pretty generous… but for those who have made it this far, there is likely a light at the end of the tunnel 🌞🙏🏻🌱
I 100% feel the impact of losing that strong local economy… it sucks.
For me, transitioning from the hill to retail was incredibly frustrating and heartbreaking in so many ways. Not because running a register is more difficult than farming, but because commercialization ALWAYS has a negative impact on product quality. No produce that’s packaged-for-sale can match the freshness of direct-from-farm goods.
In my beginning, I was a trimmer. 2014. I would geek out thinking of who was going to benefit from the herb that I had a small part in processing. Having a positive impact on my environment and community has always been important to me. Even though my parents took me away from the triangle at a young age BECAUSE of disagreements with growers, and I was peripherally aware of the shady reputation of the industry… I wouldn’t have chosen to continue in this..err.. field.. if I felt I was hurting people. Between the bad characters, there are the Casey O’Neil’s who make the most of the abundance provided by our region, sharing that bounty with all who are fortunate enough to have an encounter—showcasing resiliency and walking the talk. There are a handful of OGs holding it down, a lot of losers and fakes have been weeded out, and the process is far from over.
We have a special climate. Sure, people could do “geurilla” indoor out-of-state, but there is a reason this place blew up and it has everything to do with the fact that we have the perfect climate for this crop. It’s not because they were “too pansy” to do it in their home state… it’s because there is something SPECIAL here that they didn’t have at home. You can’t stick the weather in a duffel bag and take it with 😉 would be pretty cool if you could though!
ONE thing—a silver lining from the perspective of someone who is concerned about how they affect others—is that MAYBE fewer people go to jail for the work I do than they did before. It never sat right with me thinking that the herb I processed would get someone in trouble. Furthermore it was an internal conflict knowing that my pay might be greater if more people DID go to jail (because the value of the product increases with risk involved and every lb seized by LEOs creates scarcity [i.e. demand] by punching a hole in the supply chain to be filled.)
None of that is about herb though specifically.. that’s just capitalism and the prison industrial complex doing their thing. The price drop has definitely trickled down to workers, and I lament the loss of the lifestyle for so many multigenerational farms. I know we aren’t seeing it yet but in the long-run, I HOPE that, despite the legislation being overwhelmingly destructive and unhelpful, maybe constructive conversations are happening and eventually systems causing suffering among all people will be dismantled and replaced by the freedom to cultivate wellbeing for everyone 🙏🏻
Is this really good for our country? Americans aren’t very smart or energetic in the workspace as it is. I mean, now that I’m not making money from it, I have a different perspective.
Good for the country ? Well yes obviously economically and tax based. Let’s not broad brush with generalizations. We have some of the brightest and dimmest folks in the world. Americans worldwide are known to be hardworking just like many other known countries with a hardworking population. Herb doesn’t make the people lazy nor stupid. They were born and raised that way. If anything herb helps with hard work when used responsibly. Some of the hardest working Humboldt Allstars I personally know are daily consumers. Normally I find your comments to be right on the money !
Yeah, not really. Some people are high functioning stoners and I know quite a few. But most are not. When given the chance to be degenerate, they will take it! It’s not the building block of a great society, let’s put it that way. I do believe in personal freedom however, so on that front it is a positive.
Cannabis may not be perfect, few things are, but it is a far less destructive and dangerous recreational/social drug than alcohol and tobacco. It was a prescription drug before 1937. The idea of some horrendous, horrible new phenomenon WEED OH GOD is mostly a cultural bias. Like standing by a local river that has been clear-cut, damned, dynamited, overfished, bullldozed with roads and burned over and then say: oh, look, the BAD sea lions ate all the fish! Alcohol got the Impramatur of Christ at the wedding feast of Cana and it’s been downhill ever since. Yeah, I drink a little, cautiously, and I advise the dame for others.
Many believed the lie of “Reefer Madness” and still do. I have some senior friends that still call it the “devil’s weed” and I have to laugh as they would actually really benefit from using cannabis.
Most workspaces outside the industry prefer dumbed down employees anyway. They often don’t like workers getting smart ideas. The problem with weed is that it makes workers think and question the leadership/objective of the employer. That’s just my opinion… I’ve rarely earned above minimum-wage and I’m sure some workspaces encourage innovation more than others.
“The U.S. cannabis industry is on track to contribute up to $123.6 billion to the national economy in 2025, according to MJBizDaily reporter Andrew Long in a new summary of findings from the MJBiz Factbook’s first quarterly update of the year.”
______________________________________
Hmmm….
Really…???
Have these guys been rigorously fact checked…???
I mean, COME ON, SERIOUSLY…???
DO THESE GUYS EVEN SMOKE WEED…???
COULD THAT BE THE PROBLEM…???
Let’s use some common sense, and just a modicum of critical thinking skills, mmkay…
Where is this $123.6 Billion supposed to be actually coming from…???
Out of thin air…???
Out of people’s piggy banks…???
Credit cards…???
The industry selling weed isn’t going to be “contributing” $$$, so much as it’s going to be REDISTRIBUTING $$$, from other types of discretionary spending, right…???
Whatever $$$ gets spent on weed now, just isn’t going to be spent on something else that the $$$ we’re previously contributed to…
So, only to the extent that the overall National economy “suffers” in the future somewhere else, can the overall National economy “benefit” in the future, to the same extent, by the new cannabis industry…
It’s just replacing Peter with Paul…
Peter and Paul won’t both still be getting paid…
It will be just one or the other, proverbially…
In a matter of speaking…
Whatever $$$ cannabis rakes in, the same $$$ just won’t be going to the other industries where it used to go…
The National economy ain’t gonna change…
The only thing that will change, is what the $$$ will be spent on, and what people will ultimately have to show for it, at the end of the day…
Durable goods, say, or maybe just, say, an overflowing ash tray…
Take your pick…
To say that the amount of $$$ that gets spent on getting high, is actually contributing anything to the national economy that it isn’t actually taking away $$$from the National economy somewhere else, to the exact same degree, is a complete crock of total shit…
Only $35 billion was spent on “direct sales of medical and recreational marijuana.” The remaining $88 billion was spent on cannabis leaf t-shirts and other “broader economic ripple effects.”
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/marijuana-legalization-is-a-significant-threat-to-alcohol-industry-because-people-substitute-cannabis-for-beer-and-wine-analysis-finds/
The wine industry is losing. Younger folks just don’t drink wine so much. It’s going down and people are selling off interests in their wineries. Could some of this be related to weed sales? I say yes- there is only so much discretionary money and what the kids spend on weed they then can’t spend on wine. So if we keep harvesting their money in black market sales we can not only destroy the corporate pansy BigWeed but also help destroy the Wine Cartels of Napa and Sonoma YeeHaw!
Alcohol is far more dangerous than cannabis. Sorry-not. Deal with it. Live with it. It’s a positive development.
👏🏻 SECONDED 👏🏻
Would I preform better at some times if I used less cannabis? For sure! Does smoking ANYTHING cause cancer? Definitely!
It takes about three strong beers for me to black out. I still do and say tons of stupid stuff being sober, but I can at least REMEMBER it and LEARN from it so that I don’t do it over and over again. Alcohol causes heart disease… stroke… hundreds of thousands of people die from alcohol use every year.
Maybe young people grew up watching their parents suck down a bottle of wine every night and have an aversion to that behavior. Mommy getting potty every night, fighting with Daddy…Besides, it tastes like old socks.
OK, put the coffee down, step away from the decanter. Take a seat, catch your breath. The American economy changes all the time. See, it depends on what people want in goods and services. Kentucky’s whiskey business (party drug) worth billion$, will be hit with reciprocal tariffs due to President Grinch stealing Christmas. America’s economic growth did not evolve over 250 years by cannibalizing itself, OK, bunky? It grew. At least until now. No wonder America is self-destructing with Putin’s Pal as president.
Yeah, well, Kentucky has a two billion dollar whiskey economy that does a whole damn lot for their economy, in case you didn’t notice. We’ll see how they do. Trump engenders hate for everything American. Tariffs and the contempt and hatred sowed by Trump comes back, a bumper crop of hatred and contempt for American products.
The evidence keeps piling up! People who hate the herb, never use it, but go nuts just thinking about it. Whoooo-eeee!
California sales declining as black market regains volume
“same, same, but different”.
Ha Ha Ha!!! So…Congratulations, Everybody! You created a multi-Billion dollar industry and then you just handed it over to the corporate assholes while your own counties slid into extreme poverty. YAY!!! Well…at least we are all “free” and “safe” now, right? Ha Ha!! But better yet we “legalized” it so we “won” that now, didn’t we? Suckers are born every minute….Enjoy!
“There’s a sucker born every minute” P.T. Barnum.
That was back in Barnum’s day, There are ten times that many today.
These days… there’s a sucker born every second.
“Idiocracy” is a highly informative documentary on this exact subject
https://youtu.be/6Ub82AG3vwI
Running people through the court system and labeling them “felons” was not a viable basis for a sustainable cannabis economy, just like it wasn’t for alcohol. I want to thank everyone, once again, for supporting my theory that marijuana distorts the ideation process of people who DON’T use it! Absolutely fascinating.
Plus, a slim majority gave us a president determined to create the most imperfect union he can and destruction of American Democracy we loved, I thought.
Recession?
“Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope”
— Freewheelin’ Franklin
Only dopes buy dope. Any low level moron can grow quality dope.
Spoken there, someone who obviously has never grown cannabis
Only users lose drugs.
To me, Long term Weed culture nosedived any semblance of authentic culture in nor cal.
backwards hat boneheads, imported residents, monster energy drinks, fancy capitalist liberals, hoop houses and fox racing coke and meth heads.
but what we had prunes, apples, sheep, wine, timber and tourism too in times past..
export export export export
it’s all about money?
economics is culture apparently?
where we get our money is what makes people a thing?
so lame.
capitalism sucks!
economics has no permaculture!
Outlaw weed culture was a scammer culture of tricksters, opportunists and swindlers.
so lame we celebrate that humanity has been reduced to cheering money worshipers.
ungodly systems “put food on the table”..
“Where we get our money is what makes people a thing? So lame. Capitalism sucks!” “Socialism works great until you run out of other people’s money.” “Ungodly systems “put food on the table”.. when you run outta other people’s money there is no food on the table.
I don’t know about you… I don’t really like eating paper 🤑 relatively low nutritive value.
Worship your profits… extract it all… remember the dust bowl… you’ll poison the oceans in pursuit of profits. Just because NOAA isn’t on its game right now doesn’t mean the consequences of our actions aren’t making Americans refugees from extreme weather caused by our “industry”. The Industries stole the Land from the People. That is the reason People struggle to put food on the table. Most of us were robbed of our access to arable land generations ago, forced to bend to hegemony…
P.S. Democratic socialism is COMPLETELY different from socialism. In socialism, there IS NO money. Democratic socialism still relies on an economy based in capital. 🙂
-Long concludes, “The only thing that could destabilize the cannabis industry in 2025 is a broader economic recession, which seems more likely now than it did at this time in 2024.”-
Jp Morgan now saying “recession is the best possible outcome” from Trump’s economic policies. Thanks Trump voters!
IMHO Meanwhile:
—
Gavin Newsom’s 26% cannabis tax hike is now officialThe state of California plans to increase pot taxes to the highest level allowed by law—
California’s beleaguered pot industry was given another piece of bad news Thursday afternoon: The state cannabis tax rate will increase from 15% to 19% on July 1, the highest allowed by state law.
—
The 26% change, devised by Gov. Gavin Newsom, is ironically being made precisely because the state’s legal industry is floundering while the illicit market thrives.
—
Representatives with the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration announced gross receipts tax level during a cannabis advisory meeting Thursday. State law requires the department to increase the pot tax rate this year if cannabis excise revenue falls.
—
It’s all about MONEY. Yee hah !!!
The black market is the only thing keeping the licensed farms afloat, and paying off the State taxes and agency fees. Prices paid by licensed distros for the cleanest healthiest weed is close to break even. At my scale I’d need to see about $600 a pound to even earn net income up to the poverty line. Meanwhile, despite not having employees, I have to HAVE NOTORIZED a Labor Agreement document to hold on file just in case I have employees ( as if that’s all you have to do with payroll and legal employment. It’s just one of the 40 or so “Gotcha” hurdles you have to jump.) The State never thought about the livelihood and living wages of the people WHO ALREADY ESTABLISHED A FUNCTIONING MARKET. What was the total economic impacts of weed in 2015, and before?
The dispensary I worked at didn’t pay out distros at all 🙈 it’s a bloody mess…
I wouldn’t say illicit farms are thriving. They do get to avoid the rapid fire billing from the dozen agencies. They also avoid either hefty consultant bills, or the huge sideways time suck of filing requirements. If you do it by the book, it requires about an hour of METRC every day. It takes hours just to sort through the duplicative billing from the Waterboard programs: there’s no rhyme or reason, $800 bill, just says “cannabis” in December. Same looking bill for $750 in March, the only reference is your WDID…WD-HUM1X34532GB, oh the other one says WD-HUM-765B4123D? CDFW waves a hand and is the first official entity to say “you need a domestic withdrawal permit” from the WaterBoard. This is separate from the Cannabis water system.. (This is 9 years into the permit, water withdrawal since the 1920’s, on a County database. I will admit I heard about Domestic Withdrawals on the KMUD news in 2013, but that’s far from an official request for information. I have a mailbox.)..ok 3 hour application and $250 is required to be MAILED. 5 month later I’ve heard nothing back about this super important filing to protect the citizens. Oh yeah, by the way, it’s $550 to amend your Lake and Stream Agreement with CDFW to reflect the Waterboard filing that they are ignoring.
So, what you won’t see me spending money on these days is tires, tools, fuel, cylinder heads, hydraulic seals, tracks, roofs, lumber…and I got no time for the local Fire Department, School, restoration project, or County Committees.
That 120 billion use to come through our community every year now Humboldt is being sold off for scrap so Jim belushi
can grow in his million dollar green house
and the government rakes in taxes
Well, I doubt what they project about recession hurting the industry.
I should think that recreational means, like cannabis and alcohol, are recession proof.
Actually, in times of recession or depression, sales would probably flourish…*
We’ll see.
I wonder how orange is going to try to f this up?? A green tariff?
*Think of the bootleggers during prohibition which coincided (I think?) with the great depression of 1929… Bathtub gin was all the rage.
One of my all time favorite films is “Auntie Mame”, the early version with Rosalyn Russell.
The film started before the depression and went through it. It opens with a party supplied by bootleggers… So it was during the same time.