How much Cannabis do we consume in Brazil?

Column by Paulo Jordão*

In this article, I present the version that it is complex to position oneself on the size of the real Brazilian Cannabis market due to the difficulty of accounting for consumption data in a country that does not allow its adult use, also known as recreational use.

Cannabis is a plant predominantly grown illegally, with the largest areas of Cannabis production in the world being in countries that did not allow medicinal or adult use in 2015, as shown in table 1.

Table 1 - Countries with the largest areas of Cannabis cultivation in the world in 2015

The 2016 Economic Impact Report of Cannabis Legalization in Brazil points to the Brazilian market as having 2.74 million consumers (table 2), with a market of R$ 5.69 billion in 2016, or a market of U$ 1.89 billion (average dollar in 2016 of R$ 3.00).

This data places us in adult use close to the consumption of countries like the United States. According to The New Frontier, in 2016 Americans consumed U$ 4.67 billion medicinally and consumed U$ 1.89 billion for adult use.

To elucidate the consumption of Medicinal Cannabis in Brazil, one can resort to government databases such as Comex Stat. Brazil consumed U$ 6.78 million of Medicinal Cannabis between 2015 and 2020 (image 1). In 2016, the consumption of Medicinal Cannabis in Brazil was U$ 380,500 in 2016.

Image 1 - Import Data of Cannabis-Based Products and Cannabis Input.

Source (CANNAPI, 2019, adapted from Comex Stat).

There are other sources of Cannabis oil production in Brazil by Medicinal Cannabis Patient Associations or by patients with habeas corpus. There are also data on Cannabis seizures, which in 2020 amounted to 1,015 tons between January and December.

If we use the value of U$ 1.00 per gram of seized Cannabis, this represented that security forces removed U$ 1,015,000,000.00 from the market in 2020. It remains to be seen how much Cannabis was not seized and commercialized.

Measuring the Cannabis market in Brazil is a complex activity, and what can be concluded about adult use is that consumption data are only projections. However, in a country that seizes close to U$ 1 billion in Cannabis, it is estimated that at least 10 times this amount was not seized. The Medicinal market, on the other hand, grew from at least U$ 94,000.00 in 2015 to U$ 2.98 million in 2020.

¹ UNDOC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) - Global Overview of Drug Demand and Supply: Latest trends, cross-cutting issues. World Drug Report, 2017.

CANNAPI - Annual Report, 2019.

² SILVA, A. N., LIMA, P. G. C., Economic Impact of Cannabis Legalization in Brazil. Study/April 2016. Chamber of Deputies, Praça dos Três Poderes, Legislative Consultancy, Brasília, DF, 2016.

³  NEW FRONTIER DATA The Cannabis Industry Annual Report: 2017 Legal Marijuana outlook. New Frontier Data, 2017

⁴ Drugs: Drug seizures hit record in the year; what does this mean? (uol.com.br)

*Paulo Jordão is a Ph.D. in Administration, professor at the Federal University of Piauí, partner at Cannapi, and columnist for Sechat.

The opinions expressed in this article are personal and the responsibility of their authors.

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