We published our end-of-year annual medical marijuana report this week. Dispensary marijuana sales were three times higher than in 2013. Dispensaries sold over 9 metric tons (about 10 US tons) of marijuana in 2014 for an estimated gross revenue of about $110M. There were 1,433,808 individual sales in ‘14 (among the 55,000 patients), with an average of 26 transactions/patient/year. The average patient bought 166 grams of marijuana in 2014. At 2 joints/gram, that’s an average of 1 joint per patient per day last year.
Transaction data is broken down by age group in the report. Patients in the 18-30 age range had more transactions and sales than any other age group, representing 26% of total sales. Fridays are the busiest day of the week at dispensaries, and New Year’s Eve was the busiest sales day in 2014.
The large increase in sales at dispensaries is probably because fewer patients were authorized to cultivate their own marijuana in 2014 (compared to 2013). The Arizona Medical Marijuana Act allows patients that live further than 25 miles from a dispensary to cultivate their own marijuana. Now that we have more than 85 dispensaries operating throughout the state, about 98% of patients live within 25 miles of a dispensary, and very few patients are now allowed to self-cultivate.
These are good indications indeed. Proves that more and more people have realized the benefits of using marijuana for medical purposes.
[…] and cities in 2014, as can be extrapolated from the Arizona Department of Health Service’s end-of-the-year statistics. And that was with an average of about 55,000 patients. As of this month, the number of qualified […]