THC Gummies Are Boring. No Wonder They're So Popular.

Walk into a cannabis dispensary today, and the edibles section usually has a decent variety of candies, drinks and the occasional baked good. It might even have something exotic like THC-infused barbecue sauce or cocktail salts.

And all we're buying is gummies.

Gummies are cheap, easy to eat in public, and follow a path set decades ago by the vitamin and supplements industry. They're also boring and killing the fun of cannabis edibles.

Over the past three months, two major edibles companies founded in Colorado have left the state, citing poor market conditions and business sales. The first one, Coda Signature, began in 2015 as a deluxe infused-chocolate company. Although Coda's offerings eventually included fruit chews, the brand was always known for chocolate bars with rare flavor combinations such as coffee and doughnuts or maple and pecan, as well as THC and CBD bath bombs.

That good reputation wasn't enough to keep Coda around, though, with the company confirming its Colorado exit last December.

"Coda Signature has remained the number one-selling chocolate in Colorado for years," read a company statement sent to Westword. "However, Colorado’s cannabis market declines in recent years, combined with the significant oversupply has caused the company to make the difficult decision to close operations in Colorado."

Just over two months later, 1906, a national edibles brand founded in Boulder over seven years ago, announced it would also leave Colorado as it pursued other markets in the Midwest and on the East Coast. The company was known for infusing chocolates and capsules geared toward specific edibles effects, such as relaxation or arousal, by using THC, CBD and other herbal ingredients (some of which got 1906 in hot water with state officials).

"Whether it be the mountain foot traffic or the Denver foot traffic, fewer and fewer people are coming into stores, and those who are, they're more value-conscious. We all built a business on a different set of expectations," 1906 CEO Peter Basoom said in late January while announcing the move.

Both 1906 and Coda pointed to dwindling dispensary sales and tourism dollars for Colorado cannabis as reasons that they left the state. Given the lack of interstate commerce for state-legal pot businesses, it's a lot easier to pack up and move to newer states with more eager shoppers and lower tax rates. Even companies that make gummies are laying off staff and shutting down facilities in Colorado.

And all of it leads to more gummies and less variety.

Gummies accounted for more than 70 percent of the edibles sector in 2021 across California, Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, according to dispensary sales tracker Headset, and they kept that stranglehold in 2022. In 2023, data-gathering firm Statista announced that non-chocolate candies, such as gummies and hard candies, accounted for 74 percent of all cannabis edibles sales in the United States.

Take a look at dispensary shelves in Colorado right now, and it appears gummies have an even higher market share. Coupons and store promotions often involve gummies rather than other kinds of edibles, and gummies' small size and long preservation keep storage costs low for manufacturers and retailers. Visit a random Denver dispensary and you'll likely find a few gummies dosed with 100 milligrams of THC priced for less than $10.

"Gummies have a lot going for them," Ben Gaines, vice president of marketing for Wyld cannabis gummies, said in an interview with Westword last December. "They’re easy to portion for dosing, are effective at delivering cannabinoids into the bloodstream via digestion, and are super approachable for consumers as a format. I’m not saying all gummies are great, but it’s clear for many consumers that great gummies are the product of choice."

The push toward gummies could mean that Americans view cannabis as more of a health and wellness supplement than a treat meant to be savored. We don't see many companies promoting daily vitamin and mineral intake through deluxe chocolate bars and Dutch stroopwafels, as we do in pot shops. The underground psilocybin market is already experiencing a similar transition with mushroom extraction and product infusion improvement — thanks largely to industrial bumps in the road that cannabis edibles had to deal with.

When recreational dispensaries first opened in Colorado in 2014, infused chocolates and refrigerated baked goods were still the most popular edibles among shoppers. The infusion technique for gummies at the time involved spraying THC on the finished candies, which made it much harder to reach the homogenous potencies of chocolate bars and baked goods. However, gummies quickly became popular as extraction technology improved, and edibles makers started including CO2 hash oil or THC distillate in gummies recipes instead of spraying hash on post-production.

This eventually forced plenty of large edibles brands to pivot into the arena, despite founding their companies on other products, such as Binske (chocolates and olive oil), Dixie Elixirs (beverages), Incredibles (chocolate bars) and Ripple (flavorless mixing powder). And as resin and rosin edibles become more popular in dispensaries, hash makers are joining the gummy wars, too, with the likes of 710 Labs, Kush Masters, Lazercat, Natty Rems and Olio all releasing gummies over the past couple of years.

Maybe THC-infused beef jerky wasn't meant to last, but I love savory edibles and revisiting snacks from my youth at the dispensary. They all can't survive with so many consumer options, though, and when the dust finally settles after federal legalization, don't expect to see much in the edibles section outside of gummies.