Jacqueline Collins
Audio By Carbonatix
Have you noticed more affordable flower prices at your local dispensary lately? According to the Colorado Department of Revenue, you should.
The DOR’s latest average market rate (AMR) for wholesale marijuana prices, a statistic updated about every three months through the state’s marijuana inventory tracking system, shows that marijuana flower has dropped 24 percent per pound since the end of 2020, to $1,308. The decrease comes after almost a year of rising retail prices during the COVID-19 pandemic, with wholesale costs reaching figures that hadn’t been seen in four years.
Pot was going for $1,721 per pound by November 2020, according to the DOR; that was the highest point marijuana flower had hit since 2016. Not surprisingly, the record prices came during the highest-earning year ever for Colorado dispensaries, which pulled in nearly $2.2 billion across the state in 2020.
Winter typically puts a chill on dispensary traffic, with sales rising again in the spring. But these times are anything but typical, and stores are already off to a very hot start in 2021. Still, cultivators are finally catching up with demand, and during December through February – months used by the DOR to measure the latest AMR – not only did the price per pound for flower fall, but marijuana trim also fell in price by almost 12 percent, to $354 per pound.
While the DOR may have documented falling flower prices, extractors have yet to pass along discounts to customers. That’s because the price of flower and whole plants allocated for extraction actually increased, while the price of trim allocated for extraction decreased less than 5 percent.
Have you seen deals and price reductions at local dispensaries? Let us know at marijuana@westword.com.
