Forget Joe Biden. The real, entirely undisputed winner of the 2020 U.S. election was the marijuana industry. All five states with legalization measures on their ballots saw those initiatives pass comfortably into law.
This is not only a victory for pot companies and consumers; it's also one that can and will be enjoyed by the powers that be in the affected states. Healthcare and Cannabis Bureau Chief Corinne Cardina Jurney and veteran Motley Fool contributor Eric Volkman discuss why in this video snippet from Fool Live.
Corinne Cardina: Let's talk about some of the ballot initiatives that are coming up on November third. We've got five states with cannabis measures on their respective ballots. Any that you find particularly interesting having implications for some of the stocks?
Eric Volkman: Yes. I find, even though it's a sparsely populated state, South Dakota, to be particularly interesting because they're flipping 180 degrees. They're going for both recreational weed legalization and medical weed all at a shot. Formerly, they were quite prohibitive and until recently they didn't really seem to be all that interested in it. But I think if we look at it as a whole, it's a wave. It's a trend. People want this. On top of that, you have political will to do that. Why do you have political will? Well, you look at the coronavirus pandemic. This is something we are going to be touching on later, I think. The pandemic has affected every state economy and every corner of the economy. So states are going to have a problem with budgets. Their budgets are going to be lower than the income that they're making from taxes and all their other take is going to be significantly lower. They are going to be looking for ways to bring in more tax revenue. This is a brilliant way to do it. Is it going to make a big difference to their budgets? I'm not really sure. I don't think ultimately the world is full of closet pot smokers these days. I don't think all of a sudden every state is going to have millions of people going to their local pot store every three days to buy a product. We're not talking billions of dollars here, and you've seen that in states that have legalized. They are bringing in more money, it's just not what you would call a game changer.
