BDSA: Colorado pot sales may have plateaued 

LOUISVILLE — While the United States’ legal cannabis markets continues to grow — unsurprising, given that new markets are coming online every year as states legalize the marijuana business — BDS Analytics Inc., a local cannabis market intelligence and research company, expects Colorado’s pot industry, one of the nation’s most mature and most competitive from a pricing standpoint, to contract slightly in 2023 and continue rather flatly into the near-term future. 

“BDSA forecasts that legal sales in the Colorado market will total $1.6 billion in 2023, with $1.4 billion coming from the adult-use channel and $186 million coming from the medical channel. This represents a decline from the $1.7 billion in legal sales total from 2022,” the analytics firm told BizWest. “BDSA bases this decline in 2023 on sales trends from the first quarter of 2023, in which total dollar and unit sales fell from the previous quarter.”

Pot sales in Colorado, and many other markets, spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic and have gradually come back to Earth during the recovery period. 

The national market “is expected to grow 12% by the end of 2023, reaching $29.6 billion,” according to BDSA. 

Gobally, pot sales could near $37 billion by the end of the year, with about 80% of those revenues coming from the United States.

By 2027, American spending on legal marijuana could reach about $45 billion, BDSA predicts. 

“Over the next five years, the biggest drivers of cannabis industry growth in the U.S. will be the thriving Midwest and East Coast markets,” BDSA CEO Roy Bingham said in a prepared statement. “New markets, especially adult-use markets like Missouri, New Jersey and New York, will lead growth. Although mature Western markets such as Colorado and California have experienced sales stagnation or decline due to price compression, they will continue to account for a substantial portion of legal sales through 2027.”