The Arizona hashish market has already offered greater than $1.2 billion by way of October 2022, placing it on tempo to simply eclipse the $1.4 billion offered in 2021.
By David Abbott, Arizona Mirror
For the eighth straight month, and the eleventh time up to now 12 months, medical marijuana gross sales dropped from the month prior, clocking in at about $31 million in October 2022.
In contrast, adult-use hashish gross sales that voters authorised in 2020 hit a brand new excessive in the identical month, with greater than $85.4 million in estimated gross sales, in accordance with the Arizona Division of Income (ADOR).
The crumbling of the medical program follows a sample different states have seen with medical markets outpaced by leisure gross sales within the wake of legalization.
The latest ADOR report exhibits October gross sales at $31.4 million, greater than $1 million lower than the September gross sales of $32.5 million. The ADOR revised preliminary September gross sales estimates up from the earlier report of $30.9 million.
Grownup-use leisure gross sales for October shot up greater than $5 million from September’s $80.4 million in estimated gross sales. (September estimates had been revised upward by about $5 million in the latest report.) August gross sales got here in at slightly below $78 million.
General, leisure gross sales have been on the rebound from a low of $68.5 million in January 2022, the bottom month of the 12 months. September and October mark the third and fourth time in 2022 that adult-use marijuana gross sales had been better than $80 million.
In keeping with the latest numbers, the Arizona hashish market has already offered greater than $1.2 billion by way of October 2022, placing it on tempo to simply eclipse the $1.4 billion offered in 2021. Since leisure gross sales started in January 2021, the Arizona hashish market has totaled greater than $2.6 billion in gross sales.
Tax revenues collected by way of October complete $13.6 million from medical gross sales and $22.5 million for leisure.
The state collects 16 % excise tax on leisure gross sales along with the usual gross sales tax; medical sufferers pay roughly 6 % in state gross sales tax, levied as a Transaction Privilege Tax on hashish retailers. Native jurisdictions cost a further 2 % or so for all marijuana gross sales.
One-third of leisure taxes collected are devoted to group faculty and provisional group faculty districts; 31 % to public security—police, hearth departments, hearth districts, first responders—25 % to the Arizona Freeway Person Income Fund, and 10 % to the justice reinvestment fund, devoted to offering public well being companies, counseling, job coaching and different social companies for communities which have been adversely affected and disproportionately impacted by marijuana arrests and criminalization.
The medical market has continued to bleed each gross sales and contributors, following a development in some states which have legalized adult-use hashish years after establishing medical hashish markets.
The Arizona Division of Well being Providers, which oversees hashish regulation within the state, releases month-to-month stories on the medical program which can be typically a month forward of the ADOR stories.
The whole variety of cardholders as of November 2022 was 156,647. Cardholders within the state are damaged into 5 classes: certified sufferers; designated caregivers; dispensary brokers; facility brokers, and lab brokers.
In keeping with ADHS, Proposition 207, the adult-use initiative that legalized leisure use within the state, created the ability brokers designation in order that trade staff might work in dispensaries, medical marijuana retailers, services or adult-use retailers. Retailers that may promote each medical and leisure are known as “twin licensed” areas, and laws in 2021 allowed staff to work in a number of retailers with out the added expense of acquiring a number of licenses.
“Since facility agent playing cards are cheaper and can be utilized extra flexibly, we’ve seen a big improve within the variety of facility agent playing cards and a lower within the variety of dispensary agent playing cards,” ADHS spokesman Tom Herrmann instructed the Arizona Mirror through e mail.
Of the 156,647 medical playing cards, 130,696 are certified sufferers, whereas dispensary and facility brokers complete 24,785.
These numbers stand in stark distinction to the state of medical marijuana on the starting of 2021 when leisure gross sales started.
In January 2021, ADHS reported a complete of 309,479 medical cardholders. At the moment, there have been 299,054 certified sufferers and 9,489 dispensary brokers—previous to the ability agent designation.
Whereas the variety of certified sufferers has dropped by greater than 166,000, as a result of change in construction, there are actually extra licenses to trade staff.
As to the quantity of medical marijuana offered, in November customers bought 5,606 kilos of hashish, 4,814 in “flower” and the rest in edibles or different types. In January 2021, Arizona medical hashish customers bought 18,708 kilos of product.
Arizona is just not the one state with an ailing medical marijuana program. Michigan has seen an identical collapse of its medical market within the wake of grownup leisure legalization in 2019.
On the finish of November 2022, Michigan’s medical hashish program had a complete of 184,564 qualifying sufferers and 19,916 major caregivers, a big drop from roughly 284,100 sufferers and 40,200 caregivers in early 2019, previous to the beginning of leisure gross sales in that state. The Michigan medical hashish market has proven regular declines within the ensuing years, shedding practically one quarter of its qualifying sufferers in 2022.
Michigan’s adult-use market elevated from practically 25,000 kilos of flower offered in January to just about 59,000 kilos in November.
The crash has been blamed on a flourishing black market—sometimes called a “legacy” market—in addition to a glut of hashish within the market that has seen costs drop within the industrial market.
Michigan hashish gross sales are anticipated to surpass $2 billion in 2023.