Sylios Corp. (fka UNGS)

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A marijuana market research company will in the coming weeks release more than 200 pages outlining the economic impact of cannabis in North America.

Arcview Market Research estimates North American consumers spent $53.3 billion on marijuana — legal, medical and illicit — in 2016, according to a full summary of the report released this week. A report by Miami-Dade County Commission staffers, released in August, indicates just the “southern region” of Florida (Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Monroe and Martin counties) would take just under $300 million — and that’s medical marijuana alone.

The multibillion-dollar sum, however, is only part of the story as the industry evolves and politics come into play, Arcview suggests. For one, the way in which consumers use marijuana is changing.

No longer just rolled into cigarettes, marijuana can be used in the form of oil, edibles and other forms. The alternative consumption section of the industry increased from 30 percent of legals in the first quarter of 2014 to 45 percent in the third quarter of 2016. (Overall, legal sales are projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 26 percent, from $6.9 billion in 2016 to an estimated $21.6 billion by 2021.)

“This is the most dynamic market I have analyzed since the early days of the Internet in the 1990s,” said Arcview Market Research Editor-in-Chief Tom Adams.

Taking the illicit portion of the market into consideration, spending on marijuana jumps more than 80 percent, given that only 13 percent of spending occurred through legal channels, according to the report, called The State of Legal Marijuana Markets Report, the fifth published by Arcview to date.

The discrepancy therefore suggests a pressing need to more broadly legalize the substance, says Arcview Market Research CEO Troy Dayton.

“In contrast to comparable markets with fast growth from zero to tens of billions in recent decades such as organic foods, home video, mobile or the internet, the cannabis industry doesn’t need to create demand for a new product or innovation — it just needs to move demand for an already widely popular product into legal channels,” Dayton said.

http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/news/2017/01/18/report-pegs-marijuana-market-at-53-3b-but.html