Montana reports $202M in sales during first year of recreational marijuana program

HELENA — On Wednesday, the Montana Division of Income reported estimated figures, giving a full image of the primary 12 months of authorized leisure marijuana gross sales within the state.

The info exhibits $303,563,879 exchanged palms in mixed leisure and medical marijuana transactions throughout the state in 2022. $202,947,328 of that got here from adult-use gross sales, in comparison with $93,616,551 in medical marijuana.

In December, Income reported $25,653,688 in whole gross sales – in line with the month-to-month common all year long. However whereas the general numbers haven’t modified as a lot, adult-use gross sales proceed to take up a much bigger share of the market – from 58% in January to virtually 77% in December.

Pepper Petersen, president and CEO of the Montana Hashish Guild, was one of many lead advocates within the profitable 2020 marketing campaign to legalize leisure marijuana. He says they anticipated $260 million to $280 million in whole gross sales the primary 12 months, so the precise whole was notably increased.

“That’s consultant of about 40 tons of product within the system in Montana, and that’s all Montana-grown and Montana-processed and bought proper right here in state,” he stated.

Petersen estimates the business now helps about 5,000 jobs in Montana.

“It simply exhibits that this market has been right here,” he stated. “I believe that’s what we see, is that we’ve taken from the black market a lot, and put it into the white market – the official market, because it have been, with licensed producers, a really secure product.”

The excessive gross sales numbers and shift from medical to adult-use gross sales additionally means extra income for the state. Throughout a gathering with lawmakers this week, Kristan Barbour, administrator of Income’s Hashish Management Division, stated $35,460,147 from hashish taxes have been in Montana’s common fund as of Dec. 27.

Throughout this 12 months’s legislative session, state lawmakers will think about potential updates to the legal guidelines on marijuana gross sales. One invoice, Home Invoice 128, would make various tweaks, together with extending a moratorium on new marijuana companies for 2 extra years. Presently, solely suppliers that have been working within the medical marijuana system earlier than the legalization vote in 2020 are allowed to make adult-use gross sales.

HB 128 additionally proposes altering the efficient date of that moratorium, to permit some companies that began after the 2020 election to start promoting leisure marijuana. That will be massive information for individuals like Cindy Coleman, who owns Sean’s Approach, a dispensary in Helena. It’s named after her son, who she says benefited from medical marijuana earlier than his dying from most cancers.

Coleman says she began her enterprise in 2017, gave it up for household causes in 2019, and returned to it in 2020. Nevertheless, she says she wasn’t capable of full the state necessities for licensing till Nov. 20 – a number of weeks after the legalization vote, so her enterprise isn’t capable of be a part of the leisure market.

Coleman stated it’s been a problem to proceed working just for medical marijuana.

“$200 gross sales is an efficient day, and but we now have lease to pay and payments to pay,” she stated.

She believes many potential medical clients are giving up medical marijuana playing cards due to the associated fee.

“I flip away no less than ten individuals a day; I can’t assist these individuals as a result of they don’t have medical marijuana playing cards,” she stated.

HB 128 was set for its first committee listening to subsequent Tuesday, however that has been delayed. Rep. Josh Kassmier, R-Fort Benton, the invoice’s sponsor, stated he expects it could possibly be heard the next week.