The North American market for marijuana topped $53 billion in 2016. That includes the legal recreational (adult) use and medical markets, as well as the illegal market. The latter pulls more than 85% of the sales, an estimated $46 billion.

The data were collected by the Arcview Group and are included in the executive summary of its annual “State of Legal Marijuana Markets” due out in February.

Interestingly, the illegal market is shrinking as more states add legal medical and recreational use sales. The researchers note:

The illicit market grew steadily throughout the last 40 years of the War on Drugs to what [Arcview Market Research (AMR)] estimates was a North American total of $47.1 billion when adult-use sales first began in 2014 in Colorado and Washington. Illicit sales are now being rolled back at the fastest rates in those states with the most mature legal adultuse markets. …  Most dramatically, what AMR estimates was a $1-billion illicit market in Colorado is now less than $500 million, which represents just 28% of a $1.8-billion overall market.

The legal North American marijuana market posted 2016 revenues of $6.9 billion, up 34% compared with 2015’s total. Arcview projects that total to grow to more than $8 billion in 2017 and to nearly $11 billion in 2018. The projection through 2021 calls for a North American market of nearly $31 billion.

Projections are remarkably aggressive, mainly because the market is already established, and all that needs to happen is that it needs to become legal. And that will happen sooner, rather than later, provided President Trump’s nominee for U.S. Attorney General loosens up a bit. The states will be clamoring for the sin tax revenue from a legal marijuana market, and that pressure may be too much to resist.

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