LANSING, Mich. (MIRS News) – The price of Michigan marijuana continued descending in January as the Cannabis Regulatory Agency today predicted nearly $3 billion for sales in 2023.

The average price of recreational marijuana flower, known as bud, fell to $80.16 per ounce, as of Feb. 1. The price was at an all-time low in November at $95.12 per ounce, which prompted industry concerns.

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Even though the price was dropping, the number of pounds of bud sold in the recreational space was up 54%, but the amount from medical was down 58%. The year-over-year amount of flower sold recreationally was up 294%.

Bud continued to be the bulk of recreational sales with 48%, pastes and concentrates made up 26% of sales and infused products made up 12% of the quarterly breakdown.

The recreational and medical final sales numbers for 2022 came in $200 million below what was projected. The projection was for $2.3 billion and the final numbers for 2022 were $2.1 billion.

The CRA projected $2.84 billion in recreational sales in 2023 and $131 million in medical sales over the same period.

CRA Director Brian Hanna said the agency isn’t slowing down on enforcement and said the agency was just getting started.

“Our priority is to evaluate our standard operating procedures and with the resources we have and the new staff we have coming aboard, identifying areas we need to look into,” Hanna said.

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He said some of those areas are unannounced inspections, talking with people, evaluating the after-action reviews after significant enforcement and gathering human intelligence data.

Hanna said the department had received over 500 complaints in February that they would be looking to investigate.

There were 17 fines levied against 13 companies in February, along with one company with two license suspensions (See “CRA Suspends Lansing Processor’s Licenses,” 2/21/23).

Hanna said the agency would be opening up the rules to get feedback on what needs to be done, in terms of regulations.

He said they had taken the first steps by combining all the rules into one document available on the CRA website.

“If we’re able to get it done by the beginning of next year, that’d be great. I’m in this as-soon-as-possible kind of mindset, but also, we’re listening to feedback from our stakeholders,” Hanna said.

He said the process would be “a little bit different,” and it would be done in a board-style forum to write stakeholder responses up before the agency heads to public comments.

For the feedback, he said they would be utilizing virtual platforms to hold stakeholder meetings and outreach.

“We’re always working on current operations and future operations at the same exact time,” Hanna said.