As Colorado marijuana sales appear to be leveling off — four years after the state put rules in place legalizing the industry — Garfield County sales are trending in a similar direction, as 2018 sales will likely come in below the previous year.
While December 2018 sales have yet to be added to the Colorado Department of Revenue database, 2018 sales are a couple million dollars short of where they were through 11 months in 2017.
Year to date for 2018, Garfield County sales came in at $20,543,801, compared to $23,484,734 from January to November 2017.
Statewide, marijuana sales fell to $1.4 billion worth of medical and recreational marijuana sales from January to November 2018. That number was at $1.5 billion with one month to go in 2018.
Green Joint owner Dan Sullivan said he’s seeing a similar trend at his stores as marijuana sales have flattened across the state.
Heading into 2019, most of Garfield County’s towns are benefiting from retail marijuana, though New Castle’s ban on the industry is not looking likely to change anytime soon.
The city of Rifle lifted its ban on recreational marijuana sales before the end of 2018, limiting such businesses to locations south of Interstate 70 only. At least one of Rifle’s medical marijuana shops will be adding recreational marijuana in early 2019, with others likely following suit.
Parachute Town Manager Stuart McArthur said the town’s marijuana sales continued to grow in 2018 with a 8.14 percent increase from 2017. According to McArthur, marijuana accounted for nearly 32 percent of the town’s sales tax total in 2018.
He said he expects the town’s marijuana sales to level out as the market is done growing.
“Until there’s a ton more people moving to Colorado or more traffic coming from I-70 it will level out,” he added.
McArthur also expects Rifle to cut into the town’s sales. He added that when DeBeque and Palisade opened recreational marijuana shops, it impacted Parachute’s sales.
“Rifle will cut into our sales,” he admitted, though he added that he thinks Rifle will cut into Silt’s sales more.
With only a few retail marijuana shops in town, Silt could not disclose its marijuana sales for 2018.