The cannabis industry is on the verge of a major transformation. A new report from Arcview Market Research predicts that this year, more than 10% of Americans will use cannabis in some form, with medical marijuana accounting for over half of those users.
This week in cannabis, the this week in cannabis benzinga released a report that says medical cannabis consumers spend more.
Headset, a cannabis data and analytics firm, has recently published its newest study comparing the medicinal and recreational cannabis markets in the United States, with findings that show sales patterns and industry-wide trends. The results of the study are based on a three-step process in the growth of the cannabis industry, which includes prohibition, medicinal access, and adult-use legalization. Though there are exceptions to this trend, where markets skip medical use and move directly from prohibition to adult-use legalization, flagship states like California, which allowed medical use in 1996 but didn’t allow adult-use cannabis for another twenty years, follow a more regular pattern. California’s slower spread is compared to Illinois’ faster approach, which can be seen in the six-year gap between medical and recreational legalization.
Jump From Medical To Recreational
Industry experts are utilizing this market pattern’s time-tested predictability to make sense of the past, create a better picture of the present, and anticipate future sales trends in places like New York, New Jersey, and Montana, all of which will transition to recreational use this year. The study also looks at the cannabis markets in Illinois and Michigan, which just recently made the medical-to-recreational transition, as well as Colorado and Oregon, which were considerably earlier on the bandwagon. Overall, statistics indicate substantial growth when states initially transition to adult-use, as shown by Illinois’ 226 percent increase from the start of their recreational market in January 2020 to July 2021. Although Michigan’s recreational use program got off to a slower start, overall adult-use sales increased by 1077 percent during the same time period.
Adult-use legalization has a less predictable and more state-specific effect on the medicinal market. While medicinal use sales in Illinois remained stable after adult-use legalization, medical use sales in Michigan increased by 75% between January 2020 and July 2021. Still, since the recreational market opened, the percentage of total cannabis sales to medical patients in Michigan has gradually decreased, while in Illinois, the proportion of total cannabis sales to medical patients has consistently declined, reaching an all-time low of 20.9 percent in July 2021. However, Colorado and Oregon, two of the country’s most developed recreational markets, show that adult-use legalization isn’t always a death sentence for medicinal usage. Since the beginning of 2020, Oregon’s medical sales have been stable at 8-12 percent, with Colorado surpassing that at 18-20 percent over the preceding twelve months.
Patients with medical conditions spend more money.
Differences in purchasing behavior between recreational and medical users may also have an effect on the market. Medical consumers, according to headset data, tend to buy more product at once (a metric known as “basket size”) than recreational consumers, with Oregon serving as a shining example, where the pre-tax average basket size for medical patients over a 90-day period was a whopping 99 percent larger than that of recreational users. Consumer preferences were reflected in preferred consumables as well, with medicinal patients preferring concentrates over edibles and pre-rolls, while recreational users chose edibles and pre-rolls.
In the end, cheaper taxes, greater potency THC products, and more experienced staff and sales expertise offer the medicinal use industry enough of an advantage to keep it competitive, even with adult-use legalization on the horizon. However, given the explosive development of new adult-use markets, Headset’s newest results indicate that medical cannabis will be fortunate to keep its ten to twenty percent market share.
The green market near me is a new report that says medical cannabis consumers spend more than those who are not.
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