Dear Stoner: Did dispensaries make a bunch of money before the March 14 snowstorm in Colorado? After seeing grocery stores cleaned out, I assume weed was the next stop.
Tochi
Dear Tochi: We’ve seen lines at dispensaries during times of distress before. When the COVID-19 pandemic was hitting last March, new social distancing rules and fear of impending closures caused lines and bulk buying at dispensaries across Denver. This hit a tipping point on March 23, 2020, when Mayor Michael Hancock's administration announced that recreational dispensaries and liquor stores would be among the businesses with mandatory closings the next day for at least two weeks. The city reversed that decision within hours, but it was too late to stop Denver dispensary sales from almost quadrupling the average afternoon sales rate for a Monday in 2020.
Pot shops didn’t appear to get the same action before the snow started on March 13. According to cannabis sales tracker Headset, Denver dispensary sales from March 11 to 14 (the days leading up to and during the storm) were 11 percent lower than those of the previous weekend, and 38 percent shorter than the weekend after. Looks like two or three days without weed is easier to weather than two weeks...or a year. Denver has seen even more snow since then, however, so it'll be interesting to see how the entire month plays out.
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