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At midnight on Oct. 1, Oregon medical marijuana dispensaries started selling to anyone over 21 and boy did they. According to Casey Houlihan, executive director of the Oregon Retail Cannabis Association, roughly 250 retailers sold about $11 million in marijuana in the first seven days of legal sales.

Washington took nearly two full months (July and August) to accumulatively sell $11 million. It wasn’t until October that we had a full month of sales ($13 million) that topped Oregon’s first week.

Top all this off with prices in Washington starting out in the stratosphere, as high as $30 a gram, but ranging in Oregon from $5 to $15 bucks a gram. Note, too, though that Oregon taxes have not kicked in and Washington’s high taxes kicked in right off.

Also, of course, Washington’s recreational system started from scratch and Oregon and Colorado were able to begin sales through their regulated medical system. We still only have 182 stores reporting sales.

SEATTLE HEMPFEST, 2015
tems for sale are shown during Hempfest, the annual cannabis freedom festival at Myrtle Edwards Park on the Seattle waterfront. The three day festival is an annual Seattle tradition that started in 1991. Photographed on Sunday, August 16, 2015

Houlihan said no state agencies are keeping track of sales right now since the current sales are through licensed medical marijuana shops monitored by that state’s health department. After the first of the year, the state’s liquor board will take over. So, they’re in a limbo zone right now.

Houlihan’s org made a bunch of phone calls to come up with the sales number. So, it’s clearly an estimate.

But, hey, Wow.

Washington sales totaled nearly $260 million for sales for the first fiscal year: July 2014 to July 2015. So far this year, sales are averaging above $2 million a day with sales in September topping out at $73 million for the month.

Will Oregon’s market take customers from Washington? Seems like it, but Washington prices are stabilizing at decent levels (that $10 to $15 a gram level with some higher premium prices). But looking at the gallery below shows our border towns were definitely getting pot-buying traffic from Oregon. One would guess that will likely drop.