Growing pains for the Marijuana industry

After years of slow and steady growth, the legal marijuana industry is grappling with a downturn amid surging levels of inflation and the potential for a recession.

A number of plant-handling businesses, dispensaries and the tech companies serving them are retrenching as a result of a more challenging and increasingly competitive operating environment where consumers' discretionary income is shrinking — inflation has risen by 8% in the past 12 months, while groceries are up by roughly 13%.

Spending on legal marijuana has curtailed along with that.

According to New Frontier Data, customer spend per dispensary transaction dropped by 7% on average across all U.S. markets between the first two quarters of this year.