According to a new report, the 2024 forecast for legal adult-use and medical sales will top $31.4 billion, an increase of $2.6 billion from 2023.
Conducted by Whitney Economics, a global leader in cannabis and hemp business consulting, data, and economic research, the report finds that the legal marijuana industry will see a compound annual growth rate of 9.14% between 2023 to 2024, and will more than double to a value of $67 billion by 2030.
“Cannabis legal sales have been suppressed since the end of the pandemic, partly due to changes in consumer purchasing behavior, macro issues such as higher interest rates, declining cannabis business conditions and slower than normal regulatory implementations in new markets”, states a press release from Whitney Economics. “Despite these headwinds, growth rates have remained positive in the U.S. overall, however, legal cannabis revenues declined in 10 states in 2023.”
Beau Whitney, chief economist at Whitney Economics commented, “We are quite proud of our predictive analytics that resulted in last year’s forecast versus actuals being 98.3% accurate. Although there are uncertainties in the near-term outlook, demand for legal cannabis in the U.S. will remain strong throughout the decade, with growth coming from newer markets.” Growth in the states that have matured since rolling out their regulatory programs in the period of 2014 – 2019, have peaked, meaning future growth will come from the newer markets.
As part of the annual forecast refresh process, the firm examined industry trends, the effectiveness and pace of state ramps, the level of influence of the illicit market on a state, previous cannabis revenues in the state, as well as regulatory and legislative policy. It also looks for potential changes in the legal states or transitions from medical to adult-use regulatory structures. The annual refresh is a comprehensive process.
Based on the 2024 forecast, the U.S. legal cannabis sales forecast for future years are as follows:
2024: $31.4 billion (9.1% growth from 2023)
2025: $35.2 billion (12.1% growth from 2024)
2030: $67.2 billion
2035: $87.0 billion
The forecast does not incorporate any changes to the scheduling of cannabis by the federal government. These numbers also do not include demand for industrial hemp.
