What the US can gain from rescheduling marijuana: Tilray CEO

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Reclassification of marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug in the US may be on the horizon, with President Biden endorsing the reclassification of marijuana as a less dangerous drug in May.

Tilray CEO Irwin Simon joins Wealth! with Yahoo Finance Anchor Julie Hyman to discuss the potential for the US to reschedule marijuana on the federal level and how future administrations might handle the drug.

"Cannabis from a recreational standpoint is legal in 27 states. It's legal in 35 states [for] medical cannabis [use]. So for over half the population cannabis is legal today, but it's not legal from a federal standpoint. So I come back and look today at Gen Z and millennials, there's more cannabis being consumed each day now than alcohol," Simon explains.

He points out the funds that the government could make with full legalization: "There are over close to $1 billion in excise tax paid in the Canadian cannabis industry that the Canadian government has been able to achieve with legalizing cannabis. If you take that ten times, there's $10 billion of tax dollars that the US government could be bringing in from cannabis and right now they're not bringing bringing it in because it's all coming through the illicit market or going to the states. "

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This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino

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