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Predictions for the cannabis industry

It looks like 2019 may be a blazing year for cannabis. TheGreenEntrepreneur.com polled successful entrepreneurs on what to expect – here are the top 3 things they came up with:

• Cannabis will become even more mainstream

According to Nick Kovacevich, CEO of Kush Co Holdings, "Thought leaders, CEOs, government officials and local community leaders will continue to drive the new and emerging narrative in mainstream media. He continues to say "cannabis is here to stay and the people buying the products are our neighbors, physicians, stay-at-home parents, young adults, seniors and more."

• Latin America will make a big play

Jessica Billingsley, co-founder and CEO of MJFreeway says, "Colombia and Mexico are poised to establish their global dominance in short order, which leads to my prediction that cannabis will soon become a very valuable, sizeable addition to Colombia’s legal agricultural exports and local economy."

• Big Pharma will join the CBD party

"While beverage and alcohol companies are joining the CBD bandwagon, it makes sense that big pharma will step in, too," says Dr. Jonathan Rothbard, senior research scientist at Katexco Pharmaceuticals. He also says, "there will be a plethora of start-ups, but relatively few serious companies designing cannabis-derived drugs will make it far for the obvious reason that unlike "natural products", new pharmaceuticals will take an average of 10 years to develop.”

Expected CBD sales by 2022

This static shows CBD sales in the U.S. from 2014 to 2022 by channel.

According to this stat, CBD sales in the pharmaceutical channel will rise up to $310 million U.S. dollars by 2022. Compared to the estimated $65 million forecast for 2019, this is a huge rise.

Even though pharmaceutical CBD sales continue to rise, marijuana and hemp derived sales still top the charts.

In fact, by 2022 experts expect hemp-derived CBD sales to go up to $1,299 million in the U.S.

Overall, this is just testament to the growing market for CBD.