Viridian's President: If Federally Legal, The U.S. Cannabis Market Could Surpass $100 Billion Per Year

Viridian Capital Advisors is one of the world’s main financial and strategic advisory firms for the cannabis industry. Every week, the company publishes two reports, one tracking the performance of its Cannabis Stock Index and another tracking the most recent investment and M&A activity in the marijuana industry — which recently surpassed $1 billion.

Talking about the most recent results, the company’s founder and president, Scott Greiper, shared a rough estimate of the size of the U.S. cannabis market with Benzinga.

Considering All Verticals

Some of the most cited appraisals come from Cowen & Co. and the ArcView Group, both of which expect the legal marijuana market to hit $50 billion by 2026. However, Greiper noted, most estimates are not taking into account all of the verticals and ancillaries, which could boost companies like Constellation Brands, Inc. STZ, Innovative Industrial Properties Inc IIPR, VAPE HLDGS INC COM USD0.00001 VAPE, Hemp Inc HEMP, and even Microsoft Corporation MSFT and Philip Morris International Inc. PM.

“If you want to have just a small inkling of how big the U.S. [cannabis] market place could be in a fully legal national marketplace, just look up what’s happening in Canada since the Trudeau administration came in and rolled out,” Greiper voiced. “They have about as many users as California does in a single state up in Canada; so, multiply that by 50 states [...] This gets to the higher end projections that we’ve been seeing in the industry. It’s not a $50 billion market [which is] the amount of cannabis bought every year in the black market.”

“When you consider all of the new users, medical users [...] the fastest growing demographic of consumers of cannabis today are 50 and 60 year olds,” he explained. “The market size, all the ancillary services that come in when states legalize: the software, the ERP systems, the security providers, the real estate brokers [...] This is probably in excess of $100 billion annual in the States, in a federally legal marketplace.”