Signaling a trend no market wants to see, Connecticut’s retail cannabis sales for both medical and adult-use fell by well over a million dollars between January and February. According to the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection (DCP), which regulates the cannabis industry, February’s combined sales were $23,677,000. For January, they were $24,990,207, a difference of $1,313,207. Sales of medical and adult-use cannabis saw significant individual declines, as well.
While February was the second month in a row to see fewer retail sales than the previous month, the loss was less than in January, when the state recorded $2,563,079 million less in combined retail cannabis sales than in December 2023. Before that, each subsequent month since adult-use sales commenced in January 2023 had experienced an increase in retail sales.
Of course, Connecticut still has only four licensed growers supplying the state, and the growers operate many of the stores, so the cannabis marketplace, if one can call it that, operates more like a company town store than a real market. To wit, the recent decline in retail sales came with a sharp decline in the amount of flower available for sale in the state and a corresponding rise in prices for the product most in demand in the state, which is, naturally, flower. Ironically, the drop in sales may also have led to an increase in flower SKUs available for sale. There seems to be more usable flower product available on menus over the last few weeks.
Usable flower prices are being gathered and released monthly by DCP as of this month, in fact. The new data set recording price per gram for “usable cannabis,” which is defined as “includes raw flower in whole, ground, or pre-rolled form, without additional extracted materials,” was announced this week.
“The dataset was added as part of the Department’s monthly data release, which to date has included total retail sales, number of products sold, average product price, and types of products sold,” stated the DCP. “The most recent data for each dataset have also been published in accordance with the Department’s monthly cannabis data schedule.”
The new dataset includes adult-use and medical usable cannabis sales since the market opened in January 2023. “In February,” noted DCP, “the average price per gram of usable cannabis was $12.28.” Interestingly, after ten months of declines, the price per gram has risen each month since November 2023, and is now only four cents cheaper than it was when adult-use sales began 13 months ago.
For the second month in a row, DCP has also declined to issue a press release announcing the state’s monthly sales data, something it had done religiously until February, when the drop in sales was significant enough that it could no longer be ignored, so they apparently decided not to address it at all.
All cannabis data released to the public by DCP can be found at ct.gov/cannabis.
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