Amount of medical marijuana sold in Ohio in the first year may surprise you

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - The Ohio Medical Marijuana Control Program reports 46 opened dispensaries sold $56 million in product through Dec. 31, 2019.

It was in early January 2019 when the first medical marijuana dispensaries had final inspections and were allowed to open for business in Ohio.

Those sales include 6,713 lbs. of plant material and 287,149 units of manufactured product like tinctures, oils and edibles.

“$56 million in sales was lower than most analysts were projecting for the first year of sales in Ohio,” according to Thomas Rosenberger with Ohio Medical Cannabis Industry Association.

“This was a good, but challenging year for Buckeye Relief,” Scott Halloran said, Buckeye Relief COO, a cultivator and processor in Eastlake. “We are encouraged by the activity in Q4 2019.”

In Ohio, at the end of November there were 74,768 patients approved to buy medical marijuana, although only 51,237 have actually purchased weed from a licensed facility.

“That number is only slightly lower than we had projected,” Halloran said. “We anticipated 150-200,000 patients by the end of 2020, so we believe that the program is on the right track.”

With $56 million in sales, the average registered person has spent about $1,093 on legal weed or product in the first year.

The state even tracks the number of receipts, or number of individual sales, of which were $433,998.

The average single sale at a dispensary was $129.

“I think the root cause of that was likely the slow rollout of dispensaries leading to access issues for many of the state’s patients,” Rosenberger said. “Southwest Ohio for instance didn’t get its first dispensary until May, 4 months after sales began. Montgomery County didn’t have its first dispensary open until July, 6 months after sales began. Hamilton County had to wait until September before their first dispensary opened, 8 months after sales began.”

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