John Schroyer
The U.S. marijuana wholesale market has apparently reached a bit of stabilization this year, after a precipitous drop in 2022, and has even rebounded somewhat since last year, according to a recent report from Cannabis Benchmarks.
For the week that ended July 14, wholesale prices decreased by 3.1% to $1,020, according to the report, but that’s still an increase from December, when wholesale prices had dropped to $955, Benchmarks reported at the time.
The spot index report found that wholesale prices have gone down “in four of the last five weeks after staging a successful rally from March until the first week in June.”
“The rally fizzled as legacy states – specifically California, Oregon, and Colorado – started selling off in early to mid-June. Of the legacy states, only Washington State’s spot price is trading sideways as opposed to lower,” Benchmarks reported.
For indoor-grown flower, wholesale prices averaged $1,327 per pound; for greenhouse-grown cannabis, it was $718, and for outdoor-grown marijuana it was $479.
Looking forward, Benchmarks expects a wholesale price surge in August, with average pounds of flower shooting up to $1,075, a 5.4% increase, before slowly decreasing the rest of the year back to about $1,010 at the start of 2024.
The most expensive wholesale cannabis as of July can be found in Washington, D.C., where “there are only a handful of licensed producers, and where commercial adult use cannabis activity is still illegal,” according to the report. The least expensive is in Oregon, where the oversupplied market is reportedly a “wreck” and “in crisis.”
Falling wholesale prices are likely to only continue as a trend for the industry, Jonathan Rubin, the CEO of New Leaf Data Services, told Green Market Report in December. That’s because federal U.S. marijuana legalization – which could happen within the year, depending on how fast the Biden administration finishes its rescheduling review – will create a truly national marketplace which will depress prices even further. Then, prices will plummet again once a truly global cannabis trade comes online, said Rubin, who oversees the Cannabis Benchmarks report.
