States With Potential to Pass New Cannabis Legalization Measures in 2020

January 12, 2020

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As 2020 begins, 19 states are actively debating reform policies: 11 states with active medical cannabis programs are considering legalizing it for adult use, and 8 states may adopt their own medical-use programs.
Such additional state markets could collectively generate $3.5 billion in the first full year of sales, growing to a collective $11.5 billion by their fourth year of operations (CAGR 48%).
Annual sales across the 33 states (and D.C.) already having operational cannabis markets are projected to reach $30.1 billion by 2025; were all 19 potential new states to pass legalization measures and become operational by 2022, the projected 2025 total size of the U.S. legal industry would increase by 38%, to $41.6 billion.
As 2019 ended, there were 223.4 million people living in states with access to legal medical or adult-use cannabis (68% of total U.S.). Should all the additional programs pass, they would increase the percentage of the population living in states with access to legal cannabis to 90%.
As 2020 begins, 28% of the U.S. population lives in a state with access to legal adult-use cannabis. If all 11 potential adult-use states activate reform, the overall proportion of residents living in legal adult-use states would increase to more than half the country’s population (54%).