Ten Reasons Why MMJ Is Cannabis Commerce’s Ball And Chain

Part 4: MMJ limits cannabis’ contribution to GDP to a fraction of what it could be

Fireworks enliven every Cannabis Commerce story.

When you’re Cannabis Commerce, and an eager world turns to you for the real poteconomics lowdown — on a Fourth of July weekend no less — you’ve got to give the people what they want. And what they want is fireworks. Check. This section illuminates cannabis commerce’s contribution to Gross Domestic Product [GDP].

Why is GDP a big deal? It has everything to do with the perception of confidence in the economy, at home and abroad.

Let’s see if we can shoot off a Roman Candle or two and shine white light on this neglected topic.

Ah — here’s one. If activist Jon Gettman and cable colossus CNBC are correct, MJ and MMJ combine for $115 billion in annual sales. Of course MJ sales bring home the bacon to the tune of $113 billion a year. MMJ sales contribute all of . . . $1.7 billion.

In Part 2, it’s fair to say yours truly was disdainful about MMJ’s $1.7 billion contribution to GDP. If I recall correctly, my poetic metaphor for that constricted trickle of a revenue stream was “newt piss.”

Yet even that humble-sounding MMJ number absolutely sparkles when you stack it up against crops one might imagine sell circles around it. Take oranges, for instance. Oranges are a $2 billion a year industry. Total orange sales don’t exceed total MMJ sales by whole heckuva lot. And America the edible consumes an awful lot of oranges [I’m reaching for one now].

Would you bookmark a site called Oranges Commerce?

Did I pick that $2 billion number out of hat? Yeah — a 10-gallon hat worn by a lil agency called the United States Department of Agriculture [USDA]. USDA crop statistics are available here.

You may also be surprised to discover that peanuts are worth, well . . . peanuts. I was. Mr. Peanut’s a real trooper. But despite the dancing legume’s best efforts, Americans ”shell out” a mere $1 billion a year for the all-American nut.

At first glance, the USDA stats for “competing” crops seem shockingly low. I stared at them awfully hard before they sank in.

Mr. Peanut’s got it all going on — the spats, the top hat, the cane. “There’s no business like grow business, like no business I know . . . “

The USDA has cotton down for $7 billion a year. Wheat — a.k.a. the “amber waves of grain” — weighs in at $13 billion. Apples total $2 billion. Rice chips in with sales of $3 billion.

You may also be astonished to learn, as I was, that the coffee industry in the United States is valued at only $19 billion a year [courtesy of coffeemarvel.com].

How about “pitting” MMJ vs. the champion of the drupes? Peaches don’t even add up to a billion in annual sales and neither do cherries. I’m still having a hard time processing the fact MMJ outsells peaches and cherries put together. But it’s all there in black and white.

What legerdemain explains how MMJ sales compete so favorably with the above-mentioned staples? Uh, there is none.

Commodities priced at $3,500 a pound are always going to add up a thousand times faster than sales for commodities priced at $3.50 a pound. So much for that mystery.

Now let’s compare the largely outlaw MJ crop, valued around at $113 billion a year, against all crop sales in the United States for 2010. The USDA values these at $160 billion. That tells us that all crop sales put together are only 40% higher than MJ sales alone. Gonzo for ganja, Americans may soon spend as much on marijuana as they do on all other domestic crops combined — if the upward trend continues.

Here’s another Roman Candle.

The total US GDP in 2010 was $14.7 trillion, according to the Department of the Treasury. The performance of cannabis, with $115 billion in sales, isn’t shabby at all. Seen in a different light [one without MMJ’s glow], cannabis commerce has all the makings of a shining star in an otherwise dismal economy.

There’s just one problem.

We can’t count it.

Any of it.

It’s all off the books.

It never happened.

Agrimoney.com doesn’t give us a syllable about cannabis . . . or hemp. They don’t exist. It’s the biggest joke in the history of commodities, crops, or agriculture. But the joke’s on us. All of us.

What we’re seeing is a scintillating display of economic might that we can’t count.

If we could count it, we could tax it. Then we might feel better about our ability to chip away at the national debt, break out of the austerity cycle, and adapt to forthcoming green imperatives. That omnipresent sense of economic foreboding might lift.

Going one step further, if cannabis and hemp sales counted toward GDP, other countries would naturally want to replicate our success — couched as a reprise of “good old American ingenuity.” We’ve already seen that cannabis prohibition is a world problem, not a national problem, as reported in Further Reflections on Cannabis Commerce in The Netherlands.

“For Purple Kush’s majesty, above the fruited plains . . .”

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The big question in the here and now is, “As far as GDP is concerned, why are actual sales phantom sales?”

I can give you the answer in an extended treatise or reduce it to eight words. Let’s go with the eight words.

It all comes down to MMJ vs. MJ.

MMJ sales, which count, are a dribble compared to the free-flowing MJ sales, which don’t. Simple as that.

Cannabis commerce’s contribution to GDP is hogtied. Most likely, it will remain in irons unless until sanity is somehow restored.

Alternatively, we could be bragging to a “me, too” world about how we set an example for every country to emulate. “Look! We did it. We turned around an eroding economy by nurturing our emerging cannabis and hemp industries into the shining economic stars they wanted to be all along.”

Nope. Too idealistic — at least for the time being.

The town criers are mum.

No one’s protesting in front of Town Hall.

Cannabis — America’s #1 cash crop — is a ghost commodity.