As any industry starts up, it is typically very difficult for them to get a foot in the door. However, that has not been the case for legal cannabis, which has been growing at an extremely quick pace. Legal cannabis sales generated $5.4 billion in 2015 up from $4.6 billion the year before. Also, sales are expected to grow by twenty-five percent in 2016 to approximately $6.7 billion, as per research firm Arcview’s newest cannabis report.
“We are going to see the legal cannabis industry create, tailor to and adapt the technology for agriculture, plant compound extraction, security and finance,” Leslie Bocskor, a funds manager who looks at cannabis businesses for Electrum Partners, says. “As the industry grows, it will rely on technology to facilitate the development of businesses from an innovation perspective, which will create a more fertile environment for investment.”
“We at Electrum expect the legal cannabis industry to be the leading creator of new jobs, leading provider of new tax revenue, and the overall leading creator of wealth in the U.S. for the next ten years,” Bocskor, who would not state how much cash his firm has in cannabis-related businesses, added. However, Bocksor compares the industry to the arrival of new medicines in the early twentieth century.
“We’re only at the very beginning, essentially like being at the very beginning of Sir Alexander Fleming discovering penicillin as mold in a petri dish. That’s how it started, and now how broad are antibiotics as a category of medicine? In the same sense we’re just looking at the very beginning of cannabis,” Bocskor added.
However, there is always some type of risk involved. The growth of the cannabis industry, including cannabis technology companies, are halted by legal issues. Medical cannabis is legal in twenty-three states, the District of Columbia and Guam. The federal government has still deemed pot as a dangerous drug, and it is still federally illegal to distribute the drug.
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