Colorado Cannabis Trends.
Colorado cannabis sales in October came in at ~$124M, a sequential decrease of 3.2% and down 15.8% YoY. Unit Volumes are down 10% YoY and down ).3% sequentially. What does that mean? It means pricing is down 6.5% YoY and 2.9% sequentially. The Colorado pricing chart looks horrendous. There were signs in September that this might be reverting, but the October data was a step back as we saw historically low prices in the state for October.
New York Cannabis.
We keep hearing that New York will open their adult-use cannabis market by year-end. I am not holding my breath on that notion, and if it does happen, the cannabis black market in New York is arguably the worse in the U.S., if not the world, so it will be tough to have a fair market there. New York has been trying to fight this problem, and we saw some of that yesterday. Authorities raided Big Chief on 3rd Avenue and 74th Street in Bay Ridge. The NYPD arrested two people while sheriff's deputies and Office of Cannabis Management enforcement agents seized boxes and bags of evidence. "Unfortunately, it's just very short-sighted. This industry is going towards legality, towards regulation," OCM chief equity officer Damian Fagon said. "And it will be a multibillion-dollar industry they will not be a part of because of the mistakes they're making right now." Who is to say that once these guys are released, they won't return to operating this business? We see it all the time in California. California has been a legal market since 1996 and has been legal recreationally since 2016, and they still have a substantial black market issue. New York does not seem to have the plan to make this an efficient market.
Psychedelics At the federal level.
Senator Booker (NJ) and Senator Paul (KY) filed a bill yesterday that would require the DEA to transfer breakthrough therapies like psilocybin and MDMA from Schedule I to II, while also removing research barriers for strictly controlled substances. This came on the same day the House of Representatives formed a congressional psychedelics caucus. The other critical components of the bill reused from provisions of previous standalone legislation meant to simplify and expedite research into Schedule I drugs, which would cover certain psychedelics, marijuana, and other controlled substances. "Recent studies suggest that some Schedule I substances such as MDMA and psilocybin could represent an enormous advancement for the treatment of severe post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and addiction," Booker said in a press release. "Unfortunately, regulatory red tape and a series of bureaucratic hurdles involved in studying Schedule I substances impede critical research on these and other promising Schedule I compounds." It is nice to see movement on this front, but they are moving to a tougher movement before getting anything done with cannabis on the federal level.
