ADAMS RESEARCH / APRIL 20, 2026
The Ice is Breaking Up: $9 Billion in Growth Is Forecast Worldwide
Editor’s note, May 2, 2026
This forecast was finalized before the April 23 Department of Justice administrative order placing state-licensed medical cannabis into Schedule III. The market-level revenue forecasts here are unchanged by that action — international and state-level growth dynamics are the underlying drivers — but operator economics shift materially.
See Three Days That Shook the Cannabis World for the rescheduling analysis.
Overseas markets—and Texas of all places—heat up as older US and Canadian markets mature
By Tom Adams | April 20, 2026
International cannabis markets are finally taking off and will account for almost one-third of every dollar of industry growth over the next five years. In the last two years, population giants Germany and Thailand ceased treating cannabis as a dangerous narcotic and started regulating it as a legitimate tool for medical professionals. The market impact was as quick and effective as a bong rip.
Source: Tom Adams Research analysis of BDSA Final Forecast, April 2026.
Switzerland, Germany and The Netherlands have also launched adult-use pilot programs, implicitly acknowledging that prohibition of cannabis use by adults makes even less sense, and is no more enforceable, than alcohol prohibition. Around the world, more than a quarter-billion humans saw their governments loosen legal chokeholds on cannabis in the past two years. Even Texas, where simple possession could bring a 20-year sentence a generation ago, moved in June 2025 to allow medical distribution of THC products throughout the state.
That regulatory thaw is why the worldwide market is now forecast to grow nearly $9 billion by 2030 (per the latest BDSA update). At that point five years hence, international markets will constitute 13% of a $47.5-billion worldwide market, up from just 3% a decade earlier. Even then the industry will be at the bare beginning of the process that made overseas markets the dominant portion of sales in US-born product categories ranging from theatrical box office (~73% international) and recorded music (~60%), to soft drinks (Coca-Cola unit volume ~80%), and fast food (McDonald’s ~60% of systemwide sales).
The North American Deceleration
Pioneering US and Canadian companies badly need the shot in the arm from newly opening markets. In their start-up era from 2015 to 2020—the period when California, Canada, Illinois, and Michigan all came online and many cannabis companies went public on Canadian exchanges—worldwide legal cannabis sales compounded at 37% annually, from $4.5 billion to $21.8 billion.
Per-annum growth in the post-COVID era slowed to 12% ($21.8 billion in 2020 to $38.5 billion in 2025), as the first wave of U.S. states matured and Canada’s post-legalization sugar rush faded. BDSA’s current forecast (on which we collaborated, focusing on the international markets) puts the 2025–2030 worldwide compound annual growth rate (CAGR) at 4.3%—one-third the pace of the prior five years and roughly one-ninth the rate of the late teens. Without continued progress on legalization in new jurisdictions, the industry would likely be slipping into decline.
The deceleration is sharpest where the industry is oldest. Colorado, once the poster market, peaked near $2.2 billion in 2021 and is forecast to shrink another $151 million by 2030, declining at a –2.4% CAGR. Nine other U.S. adult-use states—Nevada, Michigan, Illinois, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico, Maryland, Maine, and Massachusetts—are also forecast to contract between 2025 and 2030, and the ten mature markets are expected to shed a combined $781 million.
Price erosion is the mechanism. Across the twelve U.S. markets in which BDSA has ongoing retail sales tracking, average retail prices fell 15% from 2023 to 2025. The good news is that there appears to be a floor emerging: Colorado’s flower price per gram dropped only 10% over two years. But prices in newer adult-use states are still racing downward: New Jersey down 29%, Massachusetts down 35% over the same period.
BDSA forecasts U.S. growth of just 3.6% compounded through 2030—far below the 10.6% CAGR the domestic market managed in the prior five years.
The International Breakout
Meanwhile, overseas markets are about where US markets were 10 years ago in terms of legalization: quite a few very limited medical markets and a handful of adult-use programs just getting started. Hence, there is little reason to doubt that enormous growth lies ahead, given the $100 billion illicit market that we estimate existed in overseas markets when the post-2014 legalization era began (compared to the US’s $51 billion).
Germany is the single largest source of international growth in the forecast, adding $1.1 billion between 2025 and 2030. The April 2024 Medical Cannabis Act (MedCanG) removed cannabis from Germany’s narcotics list and allowed any licensed physician to prescribe; telemedicine did the rest. Active patients tripled from less than 300,000 to an estimated 900,000 in under two years, and government data shows flower imports surging from 31 tonnes in 2023 to 200 tonnes in 2025.
Spending jumped 135% to $1.1 billion in that same period. But as supply growth outstripped demand growth, average prices dropped. In the private-pay sector average flower prices fell from €8.33/g in January 2025 to €5.23/g by December—a quick 37% drop, according to the Bloomwell telemedicine platform. BDSA projects Germany reaching $2.3 billion in legal spending by 2030, including $439 million from the nascent adult-use social club channel that launched in July 2024.
Thailand will be the second-largest contributor to international growth, at $509 million of incremental revenue through 2030. A June 2025 ministerial notification formalized what had been a commercially active but unregulated market, converting it to a legal medical market with prescription requirements, GACP supply standards, and dispensary licensing required of roughly 11,000 existing grey-market operators. BDSA projects 240,000 patients by year-end 2026 and nearly 600,000 by 2030, with revenue climbing from $15 million last year to $524 million—a 104% CAGR that ranks among the steepest legal-market ramp-ups in history.
The risk: roughly 4,600 of those 11,000 dispensary licenses expire in 2026 with only a 16% renewal rate so far, which could crimp retail access. The mitigant: a February 2026 election produced cross-party consensus favoring the medical-only framework. Two wild cards not seen elsewhere could make this forecast too conservative. Under Thailand’s PT33 framework, seven professions can write cannabis prescriptions—medical doctors, Thai traditional medicine practitioners, applied traditional medicine practitioners, licensed folk healers, Chinese medicine practitioners, pharmacists, and dentists—a prescriber pool an order of magnitude larger than anything in Europe or North America, where only physicians (and in some jurisdictions nurse practitioners) can prescribe.
Foreign tourists can also be prescribed under the same PT33 framework—a channel not legally available in any other medical market, and a natural complement to Thailand’s existing wellness-tourism economy around Phuket, Chiang Mai, and Bangkok.
Australia ($296 million in incremental growth), the United Kingdom ($148 million), and Switzerland ($147 million) round out the top five international contributors to growth through 2030. Australia’s patient base almost doubled to 375,000 in two years, but Therapeutic Goods Administration enforcement actions against telehealth prescribers signal deceleration ahead; BDSA projects a 7.6% CAGR to $966 million by 2030.
The UK has built its medical market almost entirely through private clinics operating outside the NHS, reaching an estimated 62,000 patients and $178 million in 2025; a Home Office review of the 2018 rescheduling could unlock NHS prescribing and accelerate growth beyond the forecast.
Switzerland’s adult-use pilot program, with seven licensed trials serving 10,000 buyers, is expected to scale substantially once the federal Cannabis Products Act establishes a national framework around 2027, pushing combined spending to $217 million by 2030 at a 25% CAGR.
The international market is forecast to reach $6.25 billion by 2030—a 13% five-year CAGR—a number that leans heavily on Germany and Thailand delivering, though the supporting cast is deeper than at any point in the industry’s history.
Texas, Minnesota, and the American Growth Pockets
The most dramatic U.S. regulatory story of 2025 played out in a state most cannabis companies and investors had written off, despite it being the second-largest U.S. state. Texas HB 46, signed by Governor Abbott in June 2025 and effective September 1, overhauled the Compassionate Use Program from a tightly restricted low-THC regime (less than 1% THC) into a fully functional medical-cannabis market.
Chronic pain was added to the qualifying conditions, the THC cap was restructured from a blanket 1% limit to 10 mg per dose, vaporizers and patches were authorized, and the licensed dispensary count quintupled from three to fifteen, all of which can operate satellites in each of Texas’s 11 statutory medical sub-regions. Texas medical sales are now forecast to grow from $275 million in 2025 to $451 million by 2030—a 10.4% CAGR that reflects 31.9 million people gaining access to what is, at last, a real medical program. The 2027 legislative session could push the state further, particularly the potential for restrictions on hemp-derived THC, which became widely available when licensed cannabis supply was so strictly limited.
But developing the Texas opportunity will take time. The single largest U.S. growth market over the next five years will be Minnesota—only the 22nd-largest state by population, but forecast to add more than $1 billion in revenue by 2030 in the wake of its much-delayed adult-use launch. That windfall reflects Minnesota’s 2025 adult-use launch into a market insulated by surrounding medical-only and prohibition states—Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota—and a tiered, lottery-allocated licensing framework designed to ration supply and avoid the oversupply that has compressed prices across older markets.
Pennsylvania will be the second largest U.S. growth market by dollar contribution through 2030: $816 million of incremental revenue, driven by an adult-use launch now forecast for 2028. The state’s mature medical infrastructure—185 dispensaries, 30 growers and processors, roughly 439,000 registered patients—positions it for the fastest med-to-rec conversion yet seen. The political path, though, remains tortured. The 2028 launch timeline hinges on federal rescheduling providing political cover; without it, the date could slip again.
New York and Ohio add another $1.5 billion between them through 2030 but show very different adult-use adoption curves. New York—legalized in 2021 but crippled for three years by regulatory dysfunction—finally exploded from just $303 million in 2023 to $1.8 billion in 2025. It can be expected to see growth slow to a 7.7% CAGR as prices compress, reaching $2.6 billion in 2030. Ohio, where legal adult-use sales opened only in August 2024 and only through existing medical dispensaries for two years, is expected to build out stores slowly and compound at a 10.4% CAGR to $1.76 billion in 2030, adding $689 million.
The Next Five Years, and Beyond
Growth to $47.5-billion in worldwide spending at a 4.3% five-year CAGR depends on the handful of markets charted in the graphic above—two international medical programs, four U.S. adult-use states, Canada, and two “other” contributing clusters—working against the drag from ten contracting mature markets.
There are indeed critical risks to reaching that target: Pennsylvania letting adult-use launch slip again, or Thailand’s dispensary cliff disrupting easy retail access, or efforts in Germany or Poland to roll back telemedicine prescribing biting harder than expected. Any of those could make the $47.5-billion 2030 target start to look aspirational.
In contrast, several developments could make it look conservative: for example, Germany moving beyond the adult-use club model to real retail availability, or Thai entrepreneurs bringing traditional healers on staff at Phuket resorts to treat the stress, anxiety and depression of tourists from around the world, or Brazil (home to 212 million people) following through on recent moves to allow flower as a product.
Given how slowly overseas governments have legalized to date, it would be unwise to think too much liberalization can happen in the five-year window of this forecast. And it may be that the worldwide legal cannabis market, given the inevitable disappearance of the “illegality premium” built into illicit market pricing, will never reach the size of the $151-billion illicit market of the pre-legalization era, at least in 2013-equivalent dollars.
Skeptics can point to how long it took for legalization in the US to spread after Californians voted to legalize medical cannabis on November 5, 1996. But you can also turn the telescope around and look at how very far the domestic cannabis industry came in those three decades: in 2024 it surpassed the sales of the $29-billion craft beer segment, which sells a similar leisure-time product that adults are legally allowed to consume in all 50 states.
TOM ADAMS, president of Adams Research, is the most experienced strategic consultant in legal cannabis. As founder of Adams Media Research, head of Industry Intelligence at BDSA, and CEO of Global Go Analytics Tom pioneered many of the analytical tools used to develop strategies in explosively growing new consumer product categories. He can be reached at tom@adamsresearch.net
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