Rhode Island officials quietly updated the marijuana sales figures going back to December 2022 when the adult-use market was launched in the state. This corrected discrepancies that could sometimes amount to tens or thousands of dollars.
This adjustment was made in response to Marijuana Moment’s request for clarification after the Department of Business Regulation of Washington State published its monthly sales figures from September. Initial, the retail sales totals published by the state did not match the combined medical and recreational sales.
The differences in some months were very small – September’s discrepancy only amounted to $0.04 – but the errors in others ranged from $70,000 over the expected total up to $124,000 under.
| Month | RECREATIONAL | Medical | TOTAL | TOTAL (reported). | DIFFERENCE |
| 12/22 | $3,408,464.84 | $3,987,523.93 | $7,395,988.77 | $7,395,989.02 | $0.25 |
| 1/23 | $3,505,853.08 | $3,881,843.92 | $7,387,697.00 | $7,384,697.00 | -$3,000.00 |
| 2/23 | $4,257,394.41 | $3,185,842.26 | $7,443,236.67 | $7,443,218.55 | -$18.12 |
| 3/23 | $5,381,556.56 | $3,359,873.02 | $8,741,429.58 | $8,741,428.95 | -$0.63 |
| 4/23 | $5,392,693.68 | $2,959,442.26 | $8,352,135.94 | $8,421,924.28 | $69,788.34 |
| 5/23 | $6,037,183.97 | $2,979,828.99 | $9,017,012.96 | $8,892,593.99 | -$124,418.97 |
| 6/23 | $6,401,678.67 | $2,768,940.24 | $9,170,618.91 | $9,170,619.08 | $0.17 |
| 7/23 | $6,753,464.17 | $2,713,023.61 | $9,466,487.78 | $9,465,617.47 | -$870.31 |
| 8/23 | $7,033,576.59 | $2,637,216.55 | $9,670,793.14 | $9,672,793.26 | $2,000.12 |
| 9/23 | $7,116,727.00 | $2,516,624.54 | $9,633,351.54 | $9,633,351.50 | -$0.04 |
Officials updated the adult-use cannabis and medical marijuana sales figures for the last 10 months on Tuesday to correct what an auditor called data entry mistakes.
Cindy Miller, a Department of Business Regulation investigative auditor, wrote to Marijuana Moment via email: “The large monetary differences were caused by human error.” “I transposed some incorrect numbers.”
Miller stated that the error likely occurred when compiling the monthly reports provided by Metrc – the third-party software for tracking and tracing the state.
“We pull several reports from Metrc and try to consolidate/summarize those reports,” she explained. “I am not the only one working on industry reporting and we have now put in place a process to catch these mistakes sooner.”
Even after the updates, state numbers show that Rhode Island’s licensed marijuana retailers sold more adult-use cannabis than ever in September–$7,116,727 in total receipts. The total retail sales of $9.63 million, which include adult-use marijuana ($7.03million) and medical cannabis ($2.52million), were just shy of the $9.67million monthly record that was set in August.
In Rhode Island, in August, the Governor and the leaders of the House & Senate announced their appointment to the state’s Cannabis Advisory Board. The Cannabis Control Commission and the 19-member panel work together to make recommendations.
On a tour of the state in that month, regulators heard from activists who called for equity as well as other adjustments to industry rules.
Some workers in the marijuana sector have also been pushing for to be unionized.
This year, sales in many state markets that are relatively new have reached record highs.
Illinois officials recently touted the “unprecedented” growth of the marijuana industry in fiscal year 2023. Regulated stores sold more than $1.5 Billion in marijuana products. In September, the state stores sold more cannabis products individually than any previous month.
Connecticut has surpassed ‘s previous record of $25 million sales for September.
In Maryland, licensed retailers sold a -record amount of cannabis products for adult use in September, despite a decline in medical marijuana sales.
In New Mexico, sales for the month of September barely missed the sales record for August. The state also crossed the $500 million mark in adult-use sales.
In Rhode Island, also had a record month, selling the most cannabis for a fourth consecutive month. The state’s monthly sales totaled $9.7.
State officials in Montana reported that purchases of adult use cannabis also reached a new record in August ($23.7million), despite the fact that medical marijuana sales (at $5 million) were at their lowest level since the recreational market opened in early 2017.
According to data released by the Office of Cannabis Policy in Maine, marijuana purchases reached a new high of nearly $22,000,000 during August.
Massachusetts officials announced in early August that since the launch of the adult-use market five year ago, retailers had sold over $5 billion worth of marijuana. The sales reached $139.3 in August, and the total year-to date is $1.05 billion by the end of the first eight months.
Michigan marijuana sales also reached another record in July with nearly $277 millions worth of cannabis being sold.
Since the adult-use marijuana market was opened in Missouri in February, the state has seen an average of $4 million worth per day in sales. The state also saw a record amount of $121.2 million spent on cannabis in June.
Colorado’s mature marijuana market has seen sales of retail and medical marijuana decline in recent years. This is despite the fact that regulators announced last week that the state had passed the benchmark of over $15 billion in legal cannabis sales ever since the adult market was launched. The annual sales peaked at $2.2 billion in 2021. Since then, they have declined and mostly leveled off in the last two years.
The U.S. Census Bureau released a map earlier this month that showed the percentage of total state revenue that comes from marijuana activities . Cannabis has contributed $1 of every $20 tax revenue received by some states. Oregon is one example. In Rhode Island however, the most recent data available is from 2022. At that time, cannabis revenue accounted for just 0.13 percent.
The bureau released a report late last month showing that states with legal cannabis had collected over $5.7 billion in marijuana taxes during an 18-month period. It plans to continue updating this figure quarterly. Recently, the agency updated its survey private business to better capture marijuana related economic activity.
The new tracking and reporting initiatives, which come almost a decade after state-legalized sales of cannabis for adult use in the United States, indicate that the federal government is increasingly willing to acknowledge the billions dollars of revenue flowing into the state coffers each year as a result of marijuana legalization at the state level, despite the fact that the substance remains illegal federally.
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Photo by Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.
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