Marijuana News & Update: Study Says Weed Sales Could Quadruple By 2020

As Washington, Colorado and Oregon report "record-setting" legal marijuana sales in 2015, it doesn't come too much as a surprise that the weed industry is proving and growing to be much bigger in the next few years.

In fact, according to cannabis research firm ArcView Market Research, in conjunction with New Frontier data, legal marijuana sales are projected to hit $21.8 billion in total annual sales by 2020. That's four times the size of legal weed sales in 2015.

In 2015, legal cannabis sales rose 17 percent, having a total annual income of $5.4 billion, as compared to 2014's $4.6 billion. The 2015 marijuana sales include over $1 billion of medical marijuana sales in California, almost $1 billion of Colorado's sales, and over $500 million from Washington.

Current projections are now expecting a 25 percent sales growth in 2016, raking in $6.7 billion. "It is undeniable that cannabis is one of the fastest growing industries in the U.S.," said New Frontier CEO Giadha DeCarcer told Forbes. 

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DeCarcer continued, "With nearly a dozen states debating changes to their cannabis laws in the coming year, 2016 will be the tipping point in which a majority of U.S. states transition from cannabis prohibition to some form of regulated legal market."

According to The Motley Fool, the high expectations on the growth of the cannabis industry result from improving poll numbers. "National pollster Gallup showed in October that 58% of Americans now back the legal use of marijuana," the online publication reported. 

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As it turns out, ArcView is projecting the legal weed market to experience "a compound annual growth rate" of almost 30 percent over the next coming years, Fortune reports.

"I think that we are going to see in 2016 this next wave of investors, the next wave of business operators, and people who've been sort of been watching or dipping their toe in, really starting to swing for the fences and take it really seriously," Troy Dayton, CEO of ArcView, said.