CHICAGO-- Growing public support and successful legalization efforts in several states are boosting the potential for marijuana at retail in 2017, even as regulatory challenges continue.
Here are some of the victories and hurdles facing marijuana as the new year unfolds …
A Gallup poll taken last fall showed that 60% of Americans support the legal use of marijuana. It was the largest percentage for legalization ever recorded, with support increasing among all age groups. When Washington, D.C.-based Gallup first asked the question in 1969, only 12% of the population favored legalization.
Four states voted this past November to legalize the recreational sale of marijuana, including California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada. Voters in Arizona said no. Three other states, Arkansas, Florida and North Dakota, approved medical marijuana.
A Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Department of Justice could not fund prosecutions of recreational- or medical-marijuana users in states that legalized pot. Nor could the federal government fund efforts to deter states from voting on legalization.
On one hand, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) declined to reclassify cannabis under the Controlled Substances Act, keeping banks from embracing the industry (which works largely on a cash basis today) and normal tax breaks out of reach. On the other hand, the federal government also made access for research easier, upping the number of authorized manufacturers that supply the substance for study purposes.
North American marijuana sales grew by 30% in 2016 to $6.7 billion, according to ArcView Market Research, Oakland, Calif., and is expected to hit $20.2 billion by 2021, assuming a compound annual growth rate of 25%. As for the industry itself, research firm Cannabiz Media, Killingworth, Conn., says the industry is entering 2017 with 2,966 medical dispensaries and 3,973 retailers across the country, with more than 4,200 cannabis cultivators.
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