Back in 2016, market research experts predicted that the legal cannabis industry would earn over $21 billion by 2020. Looking back on that prediction after all of the lucrative advancements made by legal marijuana businesses and entrepreneurs since then, that figure seems fairly conservative at this point. CNBC recently highlighted that sentiment in a story about the predictions made by the New York City comptroller. The comptroller, Scott Stringer, said that legal cannabis in the empire state could be over a $3 billion dollar market, right from the start.
“This is a new revenue stream,” Stringer said on the show Power Lunch. “This is going to impact the kinds of resources we’ll have to invest in education, to invest in health care.”
As we’ve already seen in states like Colorado, many pro-pot lawmakers are eager to get bills passed into laws, most likely due to the vast amount of tax dollars they could rake in if such laws came to pass. If the $3+ billion dollar market estimate is accurate, New York state as a whole would stand to take in $435.7 million in annual tax dollars, while New York City would get about $336 million, according to Stringer.