Weed Insurance – Yeah, It’s Gonna Be a Very Big Deal!

Do you want to know how I know weed will soon be legalized at the federal level? Insurers are preparing. Correctly! Someday, you’ll be able to get weed insurance for your plants, cannabis-related businesses, and more.

There’s no denying that cannabis is BIG business. Some estimates suggest that the cannabis industry could reach $ 41 billion annually by 2026. Despite the cannabis industry’s annual revenue, insurers have only written about 250 million in policies and, in many cases, charge far more than typical retailers with extreme limits.

Photo by Ivan-balvan / Getty Images

This may not be essential for consumers, but if insurers are given the chance to play with the cannabis industry, it could revolutionize the industry in a matter of months.

Right now, it’s incredibly difficult to get into reporting because of the Appendix I status of cannabis, which puts it in the most restrictive category of the Controlled Substance Act. This means that an insurer currently working with a cannabis company would be technically breaking federal law. This could endanger your entire operation. For this reason, most of the major insurers use proxies within the state to provide coverage, but sometimes with a 20-30% increase in costs.

How does this affect the end user?

The cannabis industry is currently in a political limbo. It’s not legal, but at the same time it’s “kind of legal” in some places. This means that doing business in the cannabis industry is very risky. Things cost a lot more and a lot of that expense is outsourced to the consumer.

If insurers can get into the cannabis game, they reduce the risk and could compete with each other to offer more accessible tariffs.

RELATED: Will the Life Insurance Industry Cover Cannabis Users?

With more security comes more investment capital and as soon as banking transactions come into play, it’s checkmate! And when industry is legitimized, good old capitalism will do the rest to bring prices down to a fair price and establish a national “norm”.

Of course, politicians will be involved, and cannabis lobbyists will influence politicians like any other industry, but that’s a good thing. It means that cannabis is fully legitimized at all levels.

A recent Reuter article estimates that full legalization will happen sometime in 2022:

BDSA expects some form of state legalization in 2022, and NCRMA’s Petrilli said that could bring insurance sales to cannabis companies to more than $ 3 billion over the next five years if the industry were insured like regular companies.

“Those who insure this industry with the necessary coverage at a reasonable price will be very, very successful,” said [Gavin] Kogan [CEO of Grupo Flor, which is a licensed cultivator, distributor and manufacturer with five dispensaries in California].

Signs are everywhere!

As someone who has been writing on cannabis-related topics for about 10 years, it’s interesting to see how the general climate has shifted towards the plant. I started writing a few years before Washington and Colorado legalization.

Most of the content I wrote at the time concerned anecdotal evidence about the healing potential of cannabis. After scientists examined it, it turned out that many of the results were backed by science.

Even so, there hasn’t been much positive evidence of cannabis or marijuana in the mainstream. But fast-forward to 2021 and you’ve got Apple and Amazon on board with cannabis.

RELATED: Why Cannabis Tech Is Now More Valuable Than Cannabis Itself

We see different factions of politicians begin to propose pro-cannabis legislation and general disdain for the anti-weed sentiment.

When you see all of the different sectors advocating for legal cannabis, the only question you can ask is how long the government can resist state legalization.

More importantly, what are you waiting for?

The North American Cannabis Coalition

There is global potential between Canada, the USA and Mexico. The only player who hasn’t officially joined the legal weed party is the United States.

Mexico is also lagging behind, repealing but not removing from the penal code only part of the constitution that bans adult cannabis use. That means that legalization is in legal limbo there too.

RELATED: Mexico Failures to Legalize Marijuana as Chaos Grows in Drugs War

Analysts hope that by the end of the year there may be some “formal” rules on the table. Until then, Mexico is a bit like the Wild West with many participants eagerly awaiting industry standards and laws.

Still, as soon as Mexico, the US

Photo by Nathan Griffith / Getty Images

and Canada are all campaigning for the legality of cannabis, they have the potential to rule the globe with cannabis production. Mexico with its cheap labor, the US with its huge consumer market, and Canada with its already entrenched, strong pharmaceutical interests, we can easily imagine how that would affect the global cannabis scene.

Once these three powerhouses come into play, we can expect other countries to legalize pretty quickly thereafter. The United Nations would probably have to rewrite part of its drug policy, since the US and Mexico and Canada would have broken the agreement at that point.

Ultimately, what the United Nations say is always a recommendation, not a law. However, this would send a message to the rest of the world. The US is the most important factor influencing the War on Drugs.

If the US pulls out of a drug deal and legalizes a drug for profit, that will reshape the conversation. Additionally, it would open a number of questions regarding other drugs like psilocybin, LSD, and other psychedelics – all of which have shown benefits in the medical context.

Bottom line

When insurers and large retailers support cannabis policies, we can conclude that something is going on behind the scenes. These mega-corporations pay lobbyists a lot of money to know what will happen in terms of political change.

If you prepare for it, it is safe to say that cannabis will and will go mainstream!

This article originally appeared on Cannabis.net and was republished with permission.