Oregon Marijuana Market Hits $265 Million in 2015

Even though the state of Oregon only allowed sales of marijuana for recreational use beginning in October of last year, the total legal market in the state, including medical sales, totaled $264.8 million. Recreational sales began in more than three-quarters of medical dispensaries at that time, well ahead of the official opening of retail outlets, helped boost the industry’s revenue.

By the end of this year, Oregon’s legal sales of marijuana are expected to total $481.7 million, according to the fourth edition of the “State of Legal Marijuana Markets” report compiled by New Frontier and ArcView Market Research. The legal market in 2015 in the United States totaled $5.7 billion, up from $4.6 billion in 2014, an increase of 24%.

Giadha DeCarcer, founder and CEO of New Frontier, said:

Oregon is on the frontier of the cannabis legalization movement. It was the first to decriminalize small amounts of cannabis, one of the first to legalize medical marijuana, and it was third to allow adult use sales. It will be quite interesting to see how they do in 2016, their first full year of recreational use.

The state’s decision to allow limited adult use sales through existing dispensaries in advance of recreational sales, which are scheduled to begin in the fall of 2016, have helped boost revenues for 85% of dispensaries that opted into the program and provided an early indication of the demand expected when the full adult use market activates.

According to the report there are a number of factors that make Oregon’s marijuana market attractive to businesses:

• Low license application fees
• No restrictions on the number of producer, processor or retailer licenses
• Lowest retail cannabis tax rates in the United States
• Sixth-highest rate of adult use in the country
• Sixteen years of experience with medical marijuana