Illinois sold over $ 100 million worth of legal weed last month, breaking all previous records

The adult cannabis industry in Illinois sold over $ 100 million worth of weed last month, shattering every previous monthly sales record.

In March, cannabis enthusiasts spent $ 109,149,356 buying 2,317,315 adult weed products from state-licensed retailers. Illinois residents accounted for $ 75.7 million in sales, while residents of nearby Iowa, Indiana, and other Prohibited States obtained additional legal pots worth $ 33.4 million. That impressive total averages around $ 3.5 million sold every day of the month.

These sales don’t even take into account the state’s thriving medical cannabis industry. Health officials haven’t released data for medical marijuana sales in March, but medical marijuana sales in January were over $ 33 million and similar results are projected in March. So what we’re really seeing is $ 140 million to $ 150 million worth of legal cannabis being sold in just one month.

This is the first time Illinois monthly adult sales top $ 100 million, but it probably won’t be the last. Although the state’s legal weed industry didn’t open until January 2020, it has broken new sales records almost every month. Last April, during the first wave of the pandemic, the state’s legal pot shops were still generating record sales of $ 37.26 million.

Sales continued to grow month by month as 2020 dragged on. This has been used as concrete evidence by the state’s leading regulators that the legal cannabis industry is both “recession-proof” and “pandemic-proof”. By the end of the year, Illinois had combined sales of over $ 1 billion in recreational and medicinal cannabis.

These sales numbers are good news not only for legal weed entrepreneurs, but for the state as a whole. Illinois raised a quarter of a million dollars in cannabis tax revenue last year, making it the fourth largest weed tax earner in the entire United States. And instead of keeping all that money to themselves, state officials channel some of that funding to help communities hit by the marijuana ban.

In June of last year alone, the state invested $ 31.5 million in grants to fund economic development in underserved and marginalized neighborhoods. Some of that tax burden is also used to fund nonprofit legal aid programs that help former cannabis offenders clear their criminal records.

In 2021, when the state’s market matures, things will look even better. That January, the state set a new adult sales record of $ 88.8 million, and although sales fell back to $ 80.8 million in February, they topped that $ 100 million mark in March . If sales continue to grow at this rate, it looks like Illinois will have over $ 1 billion in adult sales this year, and medical marijuana sales will grow that number even further.

This year, the Prairie State could potentially have a chance to beat Oregon, which sold over $ 1 billion in legal weed in 2020. The Illinois legal weed market might even rival Colorado’s top pot market, which now earns over $ 2 billion in annual sales.