Just thinking about my last post. So here is a “back of the envelope” estimate of the jobs that a marijuana industry might create . . .

3 years ago, the US alcoholic beverage industry accounted for almost 2 million direct jobs and $167B in direct sales.

http://www.discus.org/assets/1/7/2009-Economic-Contribution-Report.pdf

Annual marijuana sales in the US were estimated to be somewhere around $40B in 2010.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/36179677

Keep in mind that the actual number may be substantially higher. Also, this figure would probably increase once prohibition is discarded. So, if you did a simple ratio of employment to sales using a similar industry (alcoholic beverages), you get:

$40B/$167B = 24% * 2M employees or approximately 480,000 employees for a marijuana industry.

Like I said, this is just a back of the envelope calculation. If these numbers were refined and proved to be credible, it seems like one campaign strategy would be to stress that ending marijuana prohibition could create “thousands of new jobs in our state.”