It’s been a couple of weeks since a handful of Illinois medical marijuana dispensaries started making legal sales to patients. It was a long, bumpy road for Illinois’ medical marijuana program up until that point. Despite having one of the most strict medical marijuana programs in the country, it still took considerable time and effort to get Illinois’ medical marijuana program to the point of providing legal, safe access to medical marijuana patients.
After the first week of sales, the numbers were released in regards to the amount of marijuana sold, the amount of money exchanged, and the average price of medical marijuana in Illinois. Per Fox 2 News:
Illinois’ new medical marijuana shops sold nearly $211,000 worth of cannabis in the first week, with less than a quarter of eligible patients buying so far.
Program director Joseph Wright said Friday the dispensaries served 806 customers. They purchased about 460 ounces of marijuana, or about a half an ounce per person, on average.
A statewide digital tracking system is in place to monitor sales. The first week dispensary sales figures indicate that the price per ounce on average was roughly $450, or about $16 per gram.
As a lifelong Oregonian, $450 per ounce sounds outrageous to me. I can walk into almost any dispensary in Oregon as a medical marijuana patient and pay as low as a third of that price for top shelf Oregon grown medical marijuana. Probably even cheaper since it’s harvest season. However, I recognize that Oregonians are spoiled, and so comparing price and quality to Oregon is not always a fair comparison.
If you live in Illinois, how do you feel about that price? Also, I haven’t heard what the quality is like. If you have seen some, or even better yet purchased some, I’d love to hear from you. There are currently about 3,300 medical marijuana patients in Illinois.