EDITOR’S NOTE: NJ Cannabis Insider is hosting an in-person business networking event July 14 at The Asbury in Asbury Park. Tickets are limited.
New Jersey legal weed sales topped $24 million in the first month of the roll out at a dozen locations, according to the state Cannabis Regulatory Commission.
Actual receipts reported to the CRC showed $24,201,875.38 million in recreational weed sales from April 21 to May 21.
By all accounts, the numbers are robust and show a lot of room for growth, Jeff Brown, the CRC’s executive director, said at Tuesday’s monthly board meeting.
“It’s certainly a substantial number, but it’s really only a beginning,” Brown said. “It shows that there’s a lot of growth left — there’s a lot of opportunity left in this market still.”
Brown’s remarks came before the panel listened to presentations from three medical dispensaries, also known as three alternative treatment centers, to add stores.
Five new locations to sell adult weed were approved by the CRC on Tuesday for Woodbridge, Eatontown and Union, all owned by AYR, which recently acquired Garden State Dispensary; for Lodi, owned by TerrAscend; and for Montclair, owned by Ascend. Curaleaf in Edgewater Park also opened on Wednesday after a month delay to expand its parking lot.
“While this $24 million number sounds big, it does underlie the fact that there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity still in this market for new businesses to come in and serve this market and be successful,” Brown said.
At just over $24 million for four and a half weeks, Brown said the market was averaging about $5 million per week in recreational weed sales in a state with 9.3 million residents. The sales came from 212,433 transactions.
“We anticipate this will ramp up, particularly as new dispensaries are approved and new cultivators are approved,” said Brown at Tuesday’s meeting. “And a lot of the conditional applicants that we have approved are able to come back and convert to annual licenses and actually begin operating in either cultivating, manufacturing or retailing recreational cannabis.”
The first month figure mirrors the robust numbers from Day 1 on April 21 when a dozen stores statewide launched recreational cannabis for those 21 and over and drew more than 12,000 customers and generated total gross sale receipts of nearly $1.9 million.
The dozen legal weed stores that have been operating for more than a month are in Bellmawr, Bloomfield, Paterson, Phillipsburg, Maplewood, Rochelle Park, Elizabeth, Lawrence, Williamstown, Egg Harbor, Vineland and Deptford.
The state gets its cut as recreational cannabis is subject to a 6.625% sales tax as well as additional local and excise taxes.
Gov. Phil Murphy, who championed legalizing adult weed and signed the new cannabis law on Feb. 22, 2021, revised budget numbers to anticipate $4 million in state taxes from adult weed sales for the fiscal year that ends June 30.
Murphy’s proposed $48.9 billion budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 — which is being currently reviewed by lawmakers — expects the state will take in $19.1 million from legal weed taxes. The $24 million in sales for the first month projects to that exact sales tax estimate — $19.1 million — over a full year.
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Suzette Parmley may be reached at sparmley@njadvancemedia.com or follow her on Twitter: @SuzParmley
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