Study Finds Legal Cannabis Will Cause a $2 Billion Drop in Beer Sales, Alcohol Lobbies Freaking Out

Cannabiz Consumer Group (C2G) has completed a study which found that alcohol producers are set to lose over $2 billion in beer sales, with legalized marijuana sucking up 7.1% of the beer industry’s profits. Apparently legalization will create a $50 billion industry when all is said and done.

Gee, could this have anything to do with the reason why alcohol lobbyists are spending thousands to fight legalization in states across the country?

Similar questions include, “Are major modern American protests always funded by George Soros?” and “Does a bear crap in the woods?”

All over the nation, alcohol lobbies are tossing money at anti-legalization campaigns, including over-the-top propaganda commercials trying to scare people that the whole world will get high and go insane if marijuana is legal.

Check it:

In fact, Wikileaks revealed that the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) were tossing money at Congress in an effort to get members to support anti-drugged driving legislation targeting legal marijuana. Considering that a federally funded study has actually confirmed that there is no “significant increased risk of crash involvement” due to marijuana use, and alcohol contributes to a full one-third of all traffic-related deaths in the United States in any given year (and it’s completely 100% legal), the whole thing is beyond a huge joke.

What’s more, in states that have fully legalized marijuana, alcohol sales have actually increased.

Marketwatch did a whole analysis on it, pointing out —

By 2015, when Washington cannabis sales were in full swing, tax revenue from legal marijuana jumped to $64.6 million. How did that affect beer? Well, beer-tax revenue actually increased to $30.8 million without an increase in the tax rate. It’s a similar story in Oregon, where legalized marijuana first went on sale in July 2015…

Actually, one of the biggest things that does drop when cannabis is made legal is Americans’ dependence on pharmaceutical painkillers.

Not only have opioid overdose deaths dropped a full fourth in states with legal marijuana, but the Guardian reports,

Medicare saved roughly $165m in 2013, according to the study, which estimated that expenditures for Medicare Part D, the portion of the government-funded health insurance program that subsidizes prescription drug costs, would drop by $470m annually if medical marijuana were legalized nationally.

Hm. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this would be why Big Pharma has turned into one of the biggest anti-legalization lobbies, spending some $19 million against legal marijuana in 2015 alone.

Another huge legalization opponent, just by the way? The noxious scourge on America that are for-profit private prisons that would see a decrease in reasons to lock people up (and thus, bottom lines) which why they are spending millions against legalization as well.

Currently, 17 states are in the process of moving toward full marijuana legalization. The country has finally come together and realized [amazon text=Refer Madness&asin=B001BSBBDU] wasn’t real. Hopefully they can see through the lobbies who are only interested in their bottom lines and not what the American people actually want.