Legal Marijuana Sales in 2015 Topped $5.4 Billion

Americans absolutely love getting high.

At least, that's the conclusion of the data provided in a new study by ArcView Market Research and New Frontier Data, two marijuana industry market research groups.

The Denver Post reports that there has been massive growth in the revenue of the marijuana industry, unsurprising information when one considers how many states have legalized pot in the past few years. This growth is expected to continue to grow as more and more states legalize pot.

To put the $5.4 billion in sales--of legalized weed, mind you, not including the much, much larger piece of the marijuana pie, illegal sales--into other terms:

[T]hat's more money than the $4.9 billion Americans spent on Doritos, Cheetos and Funyuns combined in 2015, according to market research firm Euromonitor.

With $5.4 billion, you can get America legally stoned for a year. Or you could have used the money to send the New Horizons probe to Pluto, the Curiosity rover to Mars, and had enough money left over to purchase the entire output of the Cheescake Factory for a year.

That's a whoooole lot of money. Maybe seeing the infusion of this amount of cash will convince more states and possibly the federal government to take advantage of the potential tax revenue dollars this seems to provide.