Medical marijuana sales sizzle in Pennsylvania | News

“Let’s just say it was kind of bland and the spray was about the same,” he said. “It made me a lot nicer, smiled, joked, maybe even talked more than I usually do. It always lifted me up.”

It also relieved his hip pain, he said.

Thanks to consumers like Mr. Thomas and the prospect of legalized recreational marijuana in the state, Pennsylvania’s cannabis industry is on the rise. The market has totaled $ 3.4 billion in sales since 2018, according to the state’s Medical Marijuana Advisory Board. Pharmacies made $ 2 billion in those sales.

Since marijuana was legalized for the treatment of serious illnesses in Pennsylvania in 2016, 633,557 patients and caregivers have enrolled because a doctor’s prescription is required to purchase.

And if recreational marijuana is legalized in Pennsylvania, sales could quickly more than double if the Illinois experience is a benchmark.

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Pablo Zuanic doesn’t think this will happen until the first quarter of 2025 as the state’s Republican-controlled legislation hasn’t shown much interest. But legalizing recreational use in nearby states – New Jersey and possibly Maryland – could force the hand of lawmakers, Mr Zuanic wrote to investors.

The bad news is that there is no legal recreational use, the growing number of pharmacies in Pennsylvania – 131 are now open – will dampen overall sales, Mr Zuanic wrote. The silver lining for consumers to have more stores, however, is lower prices, said John Collins, director of the state’s medical marijuana agency.

“More outlets create more competition,” he said at the board meeting on Tuesday. “You would expect that to happen.”

For example, the retail price of a gram of medical marijuana fell to $ 14.53 in July, from $ 15.67 per gram in January 2020, due to the sales boom.

Consolidate cannabis companies

The Illinois experience can be a glimpse into the future of Pennsylvania. In Illinois, the total cannabis market more than doubled in the first month after recreational use was legalized in January 2020, said Mr. Zuanic of Cantor Fitzgerald. Factors that can tarnish predictions of sales for medical to recreational activities include product access, affordability and range, and availability in nearby states.

Governor Tom Wolf and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman endorsed recreational marijuana legalization, which may help explain Pennsylvania’s appeal to pot investors. This year has been particularly busy for mergers and acquisitions in the state.

Between March and April alone, there were half a dozen deals worth $ 438 million to acquire cultivation facilities and retail rights, with Chicago-based Verano Holdings Corp. and the Trulieve Cannabis Corp. according to Marijuana Business Daily, a trade publication that’s top players are based in Denver, Colorado.

Verano acquired three pharmacies in Cranberry Township, Washington and Monroeville for $ 110.3 million and then acquired Agri-Kind’s growing and processing facility in Chester, Pennsylvania. Verano also acquired Agronomed Biologics for $ 60 million, which included cultivation, processing, and retail rights.

Over the same three-month period, Trulieve, based in Tallahassee, Fla., Which operates Solevo pharmacies in Squirrel Hill, Washington and Zelienople, paid $ 60 million for a pharmacy license under Keystone Shops. Keystone has three locations in the Philadelphia area.

And in July, West Palm Beach, Florida-based Parallel opened its first pharmacy in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Friendship under the company’s Goodblend banner, with plans for another store in Erie. In parallel, a 124,000 square foot cultivation facility is also being developed on the North Side.

There’s no difference between marijuana used for medicinal or recreational purposes today, but that will change as the fledgling industry matures, said Nushin Rashidian, co-founder and publisher of Cannabis Wire, a news service with offices in Brooklyn, NY in Years Future there will be products that are tailored to therapeutic and recreational applications.

“There’s a lot of overlap right now,” she said, with the same regulators for both uses, the same marijuana supplier, “but that’s not permanent.”

“There will be a fork in 10, 20 years,” she said. “There will be much more sophisticated wording on both sides. It’s a huge, huge, huge field and I think we are at the very beginning.”