The industry is a shadow of what it was in 2021, when more than $733 million-worth was sold to medical patients
A cratering medical marijuana industry and a softening recreational market dragged total marijuana sales in Arizona down nearly 10% in 2024, breaking a three-year streak of at least $1.4 billion in legal cannabis purchases and marking the second straight year of decline.
The $1.3 billion in combined medical and recreational sales represents a nearly 14% drop from 2022, when Arizona consumers spent a record $1.5 billion at marijuana dispensaries.
As the market has matured, and softened, the disparity between medical and adult-use cannabis sales continues to expand. In 2021, the year the recreational industry launched, sales were nearly evenly split, with 48% of purchases coming from medical marijuana cardholders.
But as the recreational market emerged from its infancy, its sales surged and quickly swamped the medical marijuana market. In 2022, adult use purchases skyrocketed to almost 66% of sales. They increased to 73% of sales in 2023 and grew again to 81% in 2024.
Medical sales now represent less than one-third of what they had been in 2021, when the first recreational dispensary opened.
For 2024, recreational sales totaled nearly $1.1 billion, almost $43 million less than in 2023. But medical marijuana purchases fell by $114 million, dropping almost 40% from the prior year. With just $243 million sold to medical marijuana cardholders in 2024, the industry is a shadow of what it was in 2021, when more than $733 million-worth was sold to medical patients.
The state collects a 16% excise tax on recreational sales in addition to the standard 5.6% sales tax; medical patients pay just the state sales tax. Local jurisdictions charge an additional 2% or so for all marijuana sales.
One-third of revenue raised by the excise tax is dedicated to community college and provisional community college districts; 31% to public safety, including police, fire departments, fire districts and first responders; 25% to the Arizona Highway User Revenue Fund; and 10% to the justice reinvestment fund, which is dedicated to providing public health services, counseling, job training and other social services for communities that have been adversely affected and disproportionately impacted by marijuana arrests and criminalization.
Overall cannabis tax collections in 2024 were almost $190 million; about $170 million came from the excise tax on adult-use sales, with a bit more than $20 million the result of medical marijuana purchases.
This article was republished from Arizona Mirror under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. You can read the original version here.
