Entrepreneurs and consumers have been holding their collective breath as California readies itself for retail cannabis sales, which that state’s voters approved in November 2016. California expects to have regulations and license programs in place for retail cannabis businesses by early next year, though the exact date that stores will open is still unknown.
Despite the lack of retail presence, California’s medical marijuana industry is spurring one of the largest legal pot markets in the country, medical or recreational. Several cannabis-industry studies have shown that California’s market is already larger than those of Colorado or Washington, which both opened retail pot businesses in 2014. And even though they’re in a medical-only market, California’s cannabis consumers already display strong similarities to their Colorado counterparts, according to data from BDS Analytics – but on the recreational side.
BDS spokesman Doug Brown says the firm has been putting together comprehensive data about California’s medical marijuana sales for more than year. “It’s the largest legal weed marketplace in the world, and until now nobody had real data,” he says. “Interesting how California resembles a recreational market much more than a medical market (despite California being, nominally, a medical market). Trends in California are reflected much more closely in Colorado’s [recreational] market than in the medical market.”
Using sales data in the two states from March to July of this year, BDS found that California and Colorado both preferred flower, as well as similar varieties and strains. According to BDS, 55 percent of California’s medical marijuana patients bought flower from dispensaries, while 47 percent of Colorado consumers did the same. However, hybrid strains cornered nearly a third of those sales in each state, and two strains – Blue Dream and Gorilla Glue – were among the four highest-selling strains in both markets. BDS also found similarities in California and Colorado’s feeling on pre-rolls (not much: they accounted for just 5 percent of sales in each) and edibles purchasing habits.
Concentrates were a different story. While the broad definitions of what each state’s consumers prefer match up, things start to differ with the specifics of those products. Coloradans like to dab, and the data shows it. Californians, on the other hand, prefer pre-filled cartridges of hash oil for vaping.
Concentrates for vaporizing accounted for 36 percent of concentrate sales in Colorado, good for the highest-selling extract – and still nowhere close to California, where the same category accounted for a whopping 61 percent. Here are the top three concentrates in each state:
credit:420intel.com