Cannabis is current not legal on a federal scale in the US, however some states have passed legislature allowing it to be legal; California was the first to make it legal in 1996 while in 1998, Washington State legalized medical marijuana followed by Colorado in 2000. In 2012, both Washington and Colorado legalized recreational marijuana. On October 17th, 2018, the Cannabis Act became a reality in Canada by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. This made the cannabis industry a reality for Canada. How will we know what will happen after legalization? How will this Act potentially affect Canada’s economy; or specifically British Columbia’s economy? Well, we cannot know for sure what exactly will happen, but we can learn from other examples of legalized jurisdictions and use those results to anticipate what may happen in Canada. By conducting an analysis on Washington and Colorado, we can begin to take a guess as to what the future of cannabis sales could look like for BC.
