U.S. Cannabis Market Tallies $234.3 Million In Sales During Memorial Day Weekend

As cannabis legalization reaches more states across the U.S., people are consuming the plant in record numbers. New figures from a publicly traded marijuana tech firm, released over the weekend, found tallies for the Memorial Day holiday weekend reached record highs.

The four-day weekend from May 28 to 31 saw licensed cannabis companies across the country sell over $234 million in legal marijuana. That’s according to Nasdaq-listed Akerna, a Denver-based tech firm that produces a seed-to-sale tracking system called MJ Platform. Using the platform, the company analyzed data from clients in 23 U.S. states and projected its findings to adjust for the rest of the country, a researcher said.

“Holidays continue to be big days for cannabis sales, demonstrating that Americans are turning to the plants’ benefits in times of socialization and celebration,” said James Ahrendt, a business intelligence architect at Akerna.

The sales tallies for individual days during Memorial Day weekend ranked among the most popular sales days in 2021, according to the report. With nearly $87 million in sales, Friday, May 28 trailed only April 20, which brought in $111 million, and March 17, which collected $89 million. Research shows that April 20 is regularly the most popular day of the year for cannabis buyers to shop at dispensaries. March 17 fell on St. Patrick’s Day in 2021 and took place just after the U.S. federal government issued $1,400 stimulus checks to over 125 million Americans.

Akerna’s report showed flower accounted for nearly half of all product sales during Memorial Day weekend, followed by vape cartridges and pens – which reached nearly a third of all purchases. Concentrates came in just a shade over 10 percent while edibles tallied 7 percent. Nearly two-thirds of buyers were male and 60 percent were between the ages of 18 and 40. The average order total was $117.

That data seems to follow longer-standing U.S. industry figures from other firms and reports, in which dried bud still makes up 49 to 50 percent of all cannabis sales and about two-thirds of buyers are male. Edible sales provided the greatest disparity between the Akerna report and traditional studies, the latter which say between 13 and 14 percent of all product sales are for edibles.