Legalizing marijuana everywhere would create more than a million new jobs within the next decade, a new study says.
Analysis by New Frontier Data , a firm that focuses on the marijuana industry, also found that the government would stand to gain at least $131.8 billion in federal taxes over eight years if cannabis were legalized in all 50 states.
With federal legalization, 782,000 jobs would be created immediately, and the company expects that number to increase to 1.1 million by 2025, including growers and retailers.
In 2015, a year after Colorado legalized recreational marijuana sales, the legal marijuana industry created 18,000 full-time jobs and $2.4 billion in economic growth in the state, according to theMarijuana Policy Group . New Frontier suggests this trend could be sustainable nationwide.
“If cannabis businesses were legalized tomorrow and taxed like regular businesses at a standard 35 percent tax rate, cannabis businesses would provide the U.S. economy with an additional $12.6 billion a year,” New Frontier CEO Giadha Aguirre De Carcer told The Washington Post .
Economic growth would be boosted by increasing demand for various industries, according to the Marijuana Policy Group. Growers need storage, and they buy specialized equipment like lighting and irrigation systems to grow marijuana. In states like Washington and Colorado, legal recreational marijuana has also led to increased tourism in some areas.
California became the eighth state to sell legal recreational marijuana on January 1, 2018, and 29 states now allow medical marijuana. Federal legalization, while popular among nearly every American demographic, is facing new challenges from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose strong opposition to statewide marijuana laws has slowed the bipartisan push. In late October, Sessions repealed an Obama-era law that told federal prosecutors to leave marijuana alone in states where it had been legalized, leaving questions about the future of the once-promising industry.
By now, almost every day there is news about legalization from America, Europe (see the recent case of Greece and Luxembourg) and even from the East !
Update May 2019 (Source La Repubblica )
The damage that would result from the closure of low-THC hemp shops and derivatives, which the Minister of the Interior has committed to, would fall on these.
The count, reported by the Radiocor agency based on data from the National Consortium for the Protection of Industrial Hemp, led the general director of the consortium, Stefano Zanda, to underline that "the industrial hemp sector has nothing to do with narcotics, or with the recreational aspects of cannabis. The statements of some politicians, poorly informed, are causing immeasurable damage to the sector and undermining its development".
The law for the promotion of the supply chain came into force in January 2017. The turnover calculated by the consortium (which was presented to the Chamber only two months ago) is 150 million euros in 2018 and for 2021 a turnover on a European scale of 36 billion euros is expected, given the growing interest from various sectors including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food, packaging, construction, design. Also in 2018 in Italy there were 2500 hectares cultivated with hemp and the forecast to close the year with a doubling of the surfaces.
Salvini has declared that he wants to "close all the alleged tourist cannabis shops one by one", and the world of industrial hemp has gone into fibrillation: "We distance ourselves - Zanda added to the agency - from any illegal behavior by some shopkeepers. However, we ask for maximum respect for the sector, made up of many professionals and serious companies. The government should be far-sighted and not waste time in regulating the sector, giving dignity and the necessary stability to companies, to face and attract the investments necessary for development".
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