Pawtucket, RI–(ENEWSPF)–September 11, 2015. Retail cannabis providers are far more popular with consumers than are illicit market providers, according to survey data compiled and published by Marijuana Business Daily.
Sixty-nine percent of respondents who resided in states that permit regulated marijuana sales reported no longer purchasing cannabis from the black market.
Pollsters surveyed more than 1,600 medical and recreational users across the country. The results appeared online Tuesday.
The data rebuts concerns that many consumers would continue to solicit the underground market in order to avoid paying taxes or other regulatory fees.
“The figures provide one of the clearest indications yet that marijuana legalization and cannabis businesses are highly effective in steering patients and general marijuana users away from the black market,” Marijuana Business Daily staff writer Becky Olsen wrote. “Certainly the cannabis black market can never really be entirely eradicated, even under the ideal scenario of full federal legalization. However, the size and influence of illicit markets can be reduced sufficiently so as to be rendered inconsequential, the figures show.”
Source: www.norml.org
