According to the DOR’s latest monthly sales figures, Colorado dispensaries sold about $147.8 million in May, a 4.5 percent drop from April and a 24 percent decline from May of last year, when dispensaries sold over $194 million.
Through the first five months of the year, dispensaries are on pace to sell just over $1.8 billion in 2022, the lowest total for the first five months of the calendar year since 2019. Both medical and recreational marijuana sales have continued falling in 2022, DOR data shows, but medical marijuana sales have fallen particularly hard, collecting the lowest total through the first five months of the year since the department began tracking sales figures in 2014.
A new law limiting medical marijuana concentrate sales and a sharp drop in wholesale marijuana prices have been linked to the downturn; marijuana business owners put most of the blame on the cliff jump by wholesale prices. From January 2021 through the end of June 2022, the average wholesale price per pound of marijuana flower dropped nearly 59 percent, according to the DOR, although growers and dispensary owners say the decrease has been even more significant than those numbers suggest.
After record-breaking sales in 2020 and 2021, a hefty chunk of Colorado’s marijuana businesses either expanded or sold…
