Medical marijuana refers to the use of plant parts of a herb called cannabis, as a medicine or herbal therapy as recommended by a physician. From the same plant the marijuana drug is also derived and hence the use of medical marijuana is often controversial. Majority of governments do not recognize the use of these plant parts for medicinal use. However, other governments such as US allows its use in varying degrees for one or more disorders.
If we observe the statistics or the number of medical marijuana users alone in US, we will know the fact behind US government for allowing the use.
From the data collected by NORML from state medical marijuana registries and patient estimates between 1 – 1.5 million Americans are legally authorized by their state to use marijuana in United States. If we calculate by assuming the usage of one half to one gram of medical marijuana per patient per day it represents $2.3 to $6.2 billion dollar market annually.
Based on the same data, it is estimated that these legal marijuana users can posses 566-803 thousand pounds of legal usable marijuana, allowed under state laws of America. That means these patients are allowing to cultivate 17-24 million legal cannabis plants. Further if the limits in some states like California and New Mexico are exceeded with doctors permission, 1 million pounds of state legal cannabis are allowed under the law in America.