Tens of thousands of people lined up outside eight dispensaries in Chicago to buy recreational marijuana during the first week of legal sales, but in the ninth store that sold the new legal drug, there were no queues.
Instead of forcing people to wait in the cold for hours, Dispensary 33 asked anxious customers to share their cell phone number, "like when you go to a crowded restaurant and when the table is ready, they send you a message of text, "Bryan Zises, co-owner of the cannabis store on the north side of Chicago, told The Washington Post .
The dispensary sent text messages to dozens of people every hour during the first three days of recreational sales, channeling them to the store from the opening at 9 am to the closing at 9 pm But on the fourth day, Zises was forced to refuse to recreational customers because their cannabis supply had run out and a new shipment had not yet arrived to replenish their store shelves. The same thing is likely to happen again. "We have been trying to obtain a sustainable approach in a very unknown market," Zises said.
His clinic stopped selling recreational weed on Saturdays and Sundays. Sales resumed on Monday morning, but supplies ran out in three hours. "We are still waiting for growers deliveries, but we will serve all the customers we can every day until further notice!", The clinic tweeted Monday night.
https://twitter.com/Dispensary33/status/1214352959401873409
Lining up for hours with cold temperatures, tens of thousands have gone to the nine dispensaries that sell recreational cannabis in Chicago after the newly legalized cannabis sales in Illinois began New Year's Day.
The figures have been staggering: 55 dispensaries in the state sold more than three million dollars in THC products on the first day, matching the Oregon record opening for recreational sales in 2015. By Sunday, Illinois cannabis users had bought almost 11 million dollars worth of recreational marijuana in the first five days, making more than 271,000 purchases.
But the avalanche of anxious buyers strained the state's supply of marijuana, which led many dispensaries in Chicago to reject customers before the first week of sales ended. Meanwhile, given the strict licensing rules of the territory, some large growers now rush to keep up with recreational demand in a market previously designed to serve a much smaller number of medical cannabis patients.
Illinois passed a law in June to legalize the sale and possession of recreational cannabis by January 2020, giving existing producers, who treated some 87,000 medical marijuana patients before the change, less than six months to expand their operations to meet the Greater demand. The Chicago Tribune reported last year that the state, which was the first to legalize recreational marijuana through legislation instead of a vote, estimated that it could have more than 900,000 marijuana consumers.
Although the 11 states to legalize recreational marijuana sales have had trouble adopting regulations, the first week of Illinois sales has been particularly difficult for dispensaries. Colorado and the State of Washington, the first to allow recreational sales, had much smaller opening weeks in 2012. Oregon and Washington have since struggled with a different supply problem, after hundreds of growers cultivated much more cannabis. of what consumers could buy and consume.
In other industries, if a state produced too much of a commodity, the extra would probably flow to places that face shortages. Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, so it cannot be sold across state borders. As a result, states that have too much cannabis, such as Oregon, cannot sell their surplus inventory to those, such as Illinois, that have too little.
Supply problems
The demand of recreational users often exceeds the consumption of medical marijuana by up to ten times, economist Beau Whitney told the Chicago Sun-Times . It will probably be months before existing growers can grow enough cannabis to quench consumers, even though virtually all cannabis flower grown in the State is grown indoors or in greenhouses and can be harvested throughout the year as that matures, regardless of the season.
Unlike some of the independent retailers that have run out of marijuana and have been waiting for vendor deliveries, some larger companies that grow and sell marijuana still have products on the shelves of their stores.
"Everyone knew there would be supply problems at the beginning, and that was before we saw the crowds," said Jason Erkes, spokesman for the Cresco Labs cannabis growing company and its Illinois-based dispensary chain, Sunnyside. "It will take a little while for everyone to increase as they expand their cultivation facilities," he added.
Sunnyside dispensaries closed Monday of this week, but Erkes said the closures were not due to a shortage of marijuana. Instead, he told the Sun-Times that there was "a shortage of state-authorized employees" to deal with the influx of recreational consumers. Sunnyside stores reopened on Tuesday after giving employees the day off.
Illinois has set strict limits on the number of licenses for cannabis growers and dispensaries. Existing growers were allowed to expand under the new law and already opened medical clinics were the first stores authorized to make recreational sales. But the market will continue to improve when the state finally adds licenses for 100 small producers and 185 new dispensaries in two rounds later this year. Until then, existing medical producers must expand their operations to meet the demands of the new recreational market.
The chaotic first week of recreational sales has put pressure on dispensaries in other ways. The thieves stole the modern cannabis dispensary MOCA on the northwest side of the city around 3 am Monday and stole cash from the store. Because federal law prohibits the sale of marijuana, banking options are limited for dispensaries and cannabis growers. Most people in the industry do business in cash, which makes them a magnet for theft.
MOCA also suspended recreational marijuana sales on Sunday due to limited supply, but the store owner said it will start again on Tuesday, according to the Sun-Times . "Many things happen at once in the first few days," said Danny Marks, owner of MOCA.
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