Last year might have been a terrible time to be a marijuana stock investor, but there's no denying the long-term potential of this industry. After all, global sales more than tripled between 2014 and 2018 to $10.9 billion, all while tens of billions of dollars in black-market sales continue to take place behind the scenes. If additional countries around the world, as well as U.S. states, give cannabis the green light, worldwide weed sales should have no trouble hitting $50 billion on an annual basis by 2030.
Of course, a healthy chunk of this global revenue is bound to come from the United States. Even with cannabis firmly remaining a Schedule I substance at the federal level in the U.S., the U.S. is far and away the most lucrative marijuana market in the world. That means investments in vertically integrated multistate operators (MSO) could prove particularly profitable over the long run.
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