The Global Cannabis Report: Growth & Trends Through 2025, a new report from Washington, D.C.-based data, analytics and technology company New Frontier Data, TSRGrow, FTI Consulting, and SoRSE shows increasing social acceptance and expanding legal access will likely double worldwide cannabis sales by 2025.

The study covers six adult-use markets and 23 regulated medical cannabis markets in 24 countries. It includes an analysis of annual global cannabis demand based on pricing, usage rate, and data on consumer spending sourced from both legal and illicit markets across all 217 countries.

One of the report’s charts notes that after the U.S. and Canada, the next five largest legal cannabis markets in 2020 were, in descending order: Germany, Israel, Puerto Rico, the Netherlands, and Australia. Although not included in the report data, “should it become fully legalized and regulated,” Spain could move into third place for sales. “Sales through clubs in Spain totaled an estimated US$431 million in 2019,” which was pre-COVID-19.

The authors noted that “…the 38 U.S. states having legalized either medical or adult-use are home to a population six times the size of Canada’s” and over the next few years “the legal market opportunity in the U.S. alone will account for the lion’s share of legal global demand.”

The report suggests that consumers who haven’t tried marijuana, the “canna-curious,” will play a substantial role in marketplace growth as social acceptance widens but that “illegal sales still represent the majority of consumer demand, and that failure to incorporate the impact of the illicit market on any global study is a shortcut likely to result in rudimentary and inaccurate projections,” said Giadha DeCarcer, New Frontier Data’s founder and executive chair.

Increasing social acceptance of marijuana’s therapeutic value and expanding legal country markets will drive the global market from US$415 billion in 2020 to US$496 billion in 2025.

“The trend toward increased use is expected to continue as science affirms that cannabis is comparatively safer than alcohol, and as young adults come of age in societies where cannabis is increasingly viewed as an analog or substitute to alcohol, rather than as a dangerous narcotic,” the report’s authors wrote.