Photo: Karsten Winegeart/Unsplash
The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA) published July 2022 tax collections, allowing Cannabis Benchmarks to extrapolate sales made in June 2022 in the state’s medical cannabis program. June 2022 sales, at $60.1 million, were down 11.2% from May 2022 sales of $67.7 million and down 25% from June 2021 sales of $80.1 million.
The average wholesale spot price of cannabis in June 2022 was 32.8% below the average wholesale per pound in June 2021, likely accounting in large part for June 2022’s significantly lower sales figures.
June 2022 saw 383,037 patients registered in Oklahoma’s medical cannabis program, down 0.8% from 385,985 registered patients in May 2022, but up 2.4% from the 373,943 registered patients in June 2021.
The number of licensed dispensaries in June 2022, stood at 2,286, up 20 from May 2022 and up by 12 from June 2021’s 2,274, reflecting a stable number of retail outlets over the year.
The number of licensed growers in June 2022 was 7,348, down 1.3%, from May 2022’s count of 7,444 growers and down 10.9% from June 2021’s grower count of 8,247. Oklahoma has more cultivation licenses than California and just one-tenth the population of California. For perspective, there is one cultivator for every 325 people over 21 years of age in Oklahoma.
OMMA has been trying to crack down on licenses obtained under false pretenses, including, but not limited to, those posing as straw owners. The cultivation license numbers – and wholesale prices – suggest the state has a long way to go to get the right balance of production and demand. The license moratorium on growers, dispensaries, and processors that commences on August 26, 2022, probably will not do much to reduce the current numbers, but will at least allow a baseline to measure against the effectiveness of regulation in the state by holding the number of licenses currently issued against those forfeited to regulation over the period of the moratorium.