The State of Colorado: Medical Marijuana Cardholders Increase Monthly Spending In Q2

By GreenWave Advisors' Matt Karnes.

This week, the State of Colorado released its Medical Marijuana cardholder statistics for May and June. The average number of cardholders declined from ~86K in H1:19 to ~82K in H1:20 while the average patient $ spend/month increased to $400 from $313 with a notable uptick in April just as the COVID-19 pandemic began its assault.

Source: State of Colorado, GWA estimates

The state’s medical marijuana program peaked at ~117K cardholders just before the state implemented its recreational use market (January 2014). The inaugural GreenWave Report, published in 2014, indicates the state’s medical marijuana addressable market at ~ 375K (based upon publicly available data for each qualifying condition, i.e. number of residents with cancer, glaucoma etc.).

As we have noted in the past, the full potential of the medical market has not been realized evidenced by the lackluster patient participation thus far. Consequently, medical only dispensaries continue to experience top line pressure (revenues are about half that of recreational use) and are further burdened with the added costs of prohibition (280E the most significant).

The preceding article is from one of our external contributors. It does not represent the opinion of Benzinga and has not been edited.