NEW YORK (Bloomberg) – Here's some holiday cheer: At least one US industry is not only booming but avoids government intervention like the plague. When these folks need a bailout they call their lawyers, not their lobbyists.

"Marijuana Nation", which airs tonight on National Geographic Channel at 11 p.m. Bermuda time, is an intriguing look at the US marijuana business, estimated to turn a tidy $65 billion annual profit despite an often perilous sales environment.

Anchored by Lisa Ling, former co-host of "The View", this hour-long show presents enough market stats to make an analyst salivate.

Marijuana, first used as an intoxicant in China some 5,000 years ago, is now the most widely used illegal substance in the world, according to Ling. About 200 million people use pot in one form or another and the market is growing steadily, with two million Americans projected to try it for the first time this year.

They're smoking some powerful weed. In the 1960s most marijuana contained 3-4 percent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – the substance that makes you high. That's like near beer next to today's cannabis, which can boast concentrations of over 20 percent.

Ling, whose waist-length hair and slim figure make her look like a Grateful Dead twirler, spends much of the program in California, where 22 million marijuana plants are estimated to have been harvested in 2006. That represents a 10-fold increase over 15 years ago. Pot is far more profitable than the state's wine industry, according to the show.

California is also benefitting from sales of medical marijuana, which brought an estimated $3 million in tax revenue to Oakland in 2003. Ling points out that a prescription isn't all that hard to come by. One stoner on the programme says he needs weed because he broke his finger several years ago.

The first anti-pot laws were passed in Texas in 1914 in response to toking among immigrant workers. By 1937 the drug was illegal throughout the US and federal law still puts it in the same category as heroin.

Ling dons a helmet and fatigues to join a bust deep inside California's Sequoia National Forest, where she rappels from a helicopter like a special-ops warrior. Public land is popular with pot farmers; in 2007 more than 250,000 plants were seized in this forest alone.

Yet these efforts seem futile. Law-enforcement officials say growers often plant five plots, assuming two will be seized by police and/or "pot pirates" while animals will eat the equivalent of another. That leaves two plots that can produce millions in profits.

Other entrepreneurs have taken operations indoors, turning their homes into hothouses where three to four annual harvests are possible. Florida, the show says, is the capital of the indoor trade.

The programme also looks at spinoff businesses, including an Internet seed catalogue that offers brands such as White Rhino, Wonder Woman and Haze. Bongs as long as bazookas, and one that looks like an octopus, are also available to aficionados.

There are a few humourous touches, including a worker at a pot dispensary wearing a "DARE To Keep Kids Off Drugs" T-shirt. Ling also lists negative side effects, ranging from memory loss to depression and abnormal heart rate. But she also reminds viewers that marijuana is a blessing to some cancer patients and may help combat osteoporosis.

Last year, 800,000 Americans were arrested on pot charges, 90 percent for possession. In Virginia, where George Washington grew hemp, two plants can get you up to 30 years in prison.

Now that's really dopey.