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We are midway through February, and while the availability of raw flower in Connecticut’s dispensaries has improved slightly, it has also settled into a hit-or-miss proposition that seems to depend on where you live. It is rare these days to see a menu completely devoid of raw flower or prerolls, but it does still happen even though a store an hour away may have 15-20 or more flower SKUs for sale.
Cannabis Business Executive reported early on the flower shortage in Connecticut, a story that has been increasingly picked up by mainstream media, including local broadcast media that aired a very effective segment with an ailing veteran from the area who was having trouble getting his meds. It put a human face on a situation the state regulator all but dismissed when I interacted with them in mid-December and was a stark reminder that even those in charge can minimize the invaluable role cannabis plays in the lives of medical cannabis patients.
Yesterday, I took an online tour of a majority of menus for the 27 dispensaries that dot the state. Remember, these are all live menus now, so if a product is listed for sale on one, it is in stock, and if you order it online, the order will be delivered to the store, and they will set it aside for you. If you have ordered the last of a given product, no one else will be able to order it online or as a walk-in.
The ordering process has become easy and efficient, but it also means that products in a known limited supply can come and go in a split second, and the amount charged for them can also vary. As I toured the state, I saw one menu with only two SKUs of flower, and three SKUs of prerolls, but another store was flush with flower SKU’s for both medical and adult-use patients. I looked at just about every store in the state, including ones owned by the same MSO, and there was a great deal of variety amongst them all as far as the number of flower and preroll SKU’s available for sale, which is what I was mostly looking at.
That variance in supply is of course to be expected, but what surprised me – and what I have not seen in the past – was the wide gap between stores. Generally speaking, it is a feast or famine scenario. At any given time, you either have a relative abundance of choice, or little to no choice at all. Of course, there remains no differentiation of product from one dispensary to another as far as what is available to buy. That is because participating in a legal cannabis purchase in Connecticut is like passing through a portal into a totalitarian state where there are only four of anything. It’s as though North Korea was brought in to consult on how to meet the basic needs of a captive cannabis market, something right up its alley.
I wish I was exaggerating but go look for yourself at any menu of any dispensary in the state, and then go look at a menu from a dispensary in, say, Massachusetts. Night and day. As far as appearances go – and they can be deceiving – one state looks like a free market, the other like a state-controlled market.
Connecticut should soon be releasing sales data for January, something it does on or about the 10th of each month. It was expected yesterday but was not posted to the state website. We are keeping an eye out for it and will update this story when that data arrives. We are hoping it helps identify any trends that explain the flower shortage in the state, which has been roundly reported – and asserted by the state – as a normal supply-and-demand issue caused by an uptick in holiday sales that seems to be extending well beyond the holidays.
Indeed, the state’s own data shows a steady increase in adult-use flower sales over the year, not a dramatic rise in sales for the holidays, and a decrease in medical cannabis sales as 2023 wound down. Below are the amounts spent monthly on cannabis flower in 2023 per Connecticut’s seed-to-sale tracking system.
Adult-Use flower Medical flower
1/23 $2,819,151 $4,343,508
2/23 $3,765,552 $6,262,990
3/23 $4,992,829 $6,948,322
4/23 $5,292,409 $6,108,751
5/23 $5,942,191 $6,037,032
6/23 $6,284,585 $6,090,979
7/23 $6,503,033 $5,775,521
8/23 $7,070,953 $5,952,626
9/23 $7,243,023 $5,897,845
10/23 $7,290,720 $5,360,404
11/23 $7,457,707 $5,389,689
12/23 $7,549,978 $4,904,006
It’s Tuesday morning (2/13), and a winter storm is enveloping the state in up to a foot of snow, so expect few deliveries of product today and stores opening late or closing early.
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