Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who runs a publicly traded marijuana products company called Cannabis Sativa, Inc. (stock symbol CBDS), predicts that pot will be legal throughout the United States within 10 years and that by then 20 percent of all legal pharmaceuticals will be cannabis-based.

Johnson, a Republican governor in 1995-2003 and a Libertarian presidential candidate in 2012, told “MidPoint” host Ed Berliner on Newsmax TV Thursday that marijuana already competes directly with legal, opium-based prescription pain medicines.

With recreational marijuana now permitted in two U.S. states, Washington and Colorado, where the medical-marijuana movement helped pave the way, Johnson said he was skeptical at first about the medicinal claims made on marijuana’s behalf. [Read More]