Just how large is the legal marijuana market, anyway?

It’s always interesting to compare sales for various brands, and the good people over at The Motley Fool decided to compare legal marijuana sales to those of other consumer products.

Here’s what they did. They turned to “infographic-based data aggregating company Statista, which has a brand-new way of allowing the consumer to visualize just how big the marijuana industry has become.

Statista’s solution was to examine how legal marijuana sales in 2015 compared to nine various popular household food and beverages brands in 2014 in terms of annual sales as reported by their respective companies. These aren’t necessarily cherry-picked brands, either. These are popular household items, including Oreo cookies, DiGiorno pizza, Pringles chips, and even Girl Scout Cookies, as well as Dasani water. The results are astonishing.

I know, I know; The Motley Fool’s hype is a little over the top. It’s up to you to decide if these results really are “astonishing,” but they clearly are very interesting when you consider the state of legal marijuana in America: 

Of course, The Motley Fool article is well worth reading because it digs into these numbers and gives a great sense of where they are going, and how they might grow. But, as I pointed out last week, they also very clearly point out the big caveat when you consider any growth in the legal marijuana market — the role of the Federal Government..

They say, again:

Of course, there are also the two gravest concerns for potential investors: the inherent disadvantages marijuana businesses face while the federal government sits on its laurels.

Because marijuana businesses are selling a substance the federal government considers illegal, they’re disallowed from taking normal business deductions, such as rent, when preparing their taxes. This sets marijuana businesses up to pay a much higher tax rate than any normal business would.

The other component here is that financial institutions want nothing to do with marijuana businesses. Banks fear the federal repercussions of offering basic banking services to a business involved in a substance that the federal government finds to be illicit and without any medical benefits. Even though some states do have laws in place allowing banks to work with marijuana-based companies, nearly all banks have chosen to just avoid the industry altogether. Without access to bank accounts and credit, security becomes a major concern for marijuana businesses.”

This language has almost become boiler plate in any and every Motley Fool story about the marijuana market, and there is a good reason for it: These two issues, as they note, make up “a monstrously large group of obstacles for the industry to overcome — and there’s no telling if it’ll be able to do so, even with the support of the public.”

So, as interesting as it is to compare the sales of legal marijuana to Girl Scout Cookies and Oreo’s, it is a bit of a bogus comparison because neither those two consumer products, or any of the other ones in the chart above, are burdened with the same federal restrictions as marijuana.

Yes, it’s great to see the sales comparisons, but consider how much larger the sales of legal cannabis would be if the Feds took their foot off the industry’s neck.

That’s why this graphic has a bittersweet feel to it, because it’s the “what if?” factor that should give everyone in the Cannabis Industry a little pause.