Retail marijuana sales declining in Colorado

DENVER (KDVR) — Colorado’s marijuana business says it’s seeing a “troubling development” as retail gross sales decline for the second month in a row and medical hashish gross sales dip to their lowest degree on document.

The Colorado Division of Income retains a month-to-month evaluation of medical, leisure and complete marijuana gross sales relationship again to 2014, when leisure marijuana was legalized.

Whole gross sales noticed a 13% lower in February 2022 in comparison with February 2021. That accounts for about $22 million in misplaced income.

“Having marijuana, as a lot as it’s a want for well being and nicely being, that’s one of many elements the place individuals will spend much less cash as a result of they’re having to spend extra on fuel, they’re having to spend extra due to inflation,” PJ Rinker, vp of The Joint dispensary in Denver mentioned.

Based on Rinker, The Joint, which sells leisure marijuana merchandise, has seen a gradual decline in gross sales for about two years. He attributes a part of that to the truth that extra states have legalized marijuana lately.

“We don’t have the vacationer market that we had earlier than,” he mentioned. “Colorado was a vacation spot place, so individuals travelled from everywhere in the nation to come back and expertise Colorado and to have a dispensary.”

Whereas complete gross sales have been on a decline from document gross sales across the center of 2020, the state’s information additionally reveals that February 2022 nonetheless represents the second-highest quantity of marijuana gross sales for the month of February since 2014. Solely February 2021 noticed extra gross sales.

On the flip facet, medical marijuana gross sales are at their lowest ranges of the out there state information. From January 2021 to January 2022, gross sales of medical hashish merchandise in Colorado declined 40%.

“A brand new legislation that went into impact firstly of the 12 months is impacting the medical market making it a lot tougher for sufferers to entry life-saving medication,” the Marijuana Trade Group mentioned in a press launch in response to the drop in gross sales.

The group is probably going referencing a Colorado legislation that went into impact in January 2022 limiting medical card holders over the age of 21 to buying 8 grams of concentrated merchandise per day. For medical card holders beneath 21, the brand new legislation units a every day restrict of two grams of concentrated merchandise.

“Whereas this new legislation might have been well-intentioned in retaining hashish out of the palms of younger individuals, it has had devastating penalties for sufferers, medical clinics and medical doctors who supply important remedy for Coloradans with difficult-to-treat situations,” the Marijuana Trade Group mentioned.

FOX31 reached out to the state lawmakers who sponsored the piece of laws, however we didn’t obtain a response by press time.