Photo: TheCannabist.co
The 2016 election didn’t just dumb us down with a Donald Trump victory. It got us higher, as eight states passed some form of pot legislation—from furthering medical marijuana laws in places like North Dakota, to opening the recreational gates in California. And now, as the legalization movement matures, cannabis data trackers like Headset have considerable info on the industry, giving us a read on just who is enjoying the herb (and how much annual revenue states are enjoying where it’s been legal for several years now). According to Headset, the company is plugged into “a massive dataset of cannabis retailer transaction data, and thanks to customer loyalty programs, information about customers’ age and gender.”
It probably won’t surprise you that men are still the number one consumer of marijuana. Men make up nearly 70 percent of the current legal consumer market.
All graphs from Headset.
So how old is the marijuana consumer? That one might surprise you. Yes, the 20-something set still makes up the bulk of the buying market but the average customer is just under 40 years old. Which, as Headset points out, is a lot higher than one might expect given stereotypes (the average male customer is 37.6 years old while the average female is 38.2).
Meanwhile, one thing jumps out about spending style in the weed market: it doesn’t seem like people spend a whole lot individually, which might point that there are a whole lot more consumers than we might think (that data was not included). The median spend, according to Headset, is $33 with 37.4 percent of customers dropping less than $10 on average per visit to a dispensary. Only about 8.2 percent ever spend more than $100 on any given visit.
Finally, the annual spend, which is actually fairly modest considering Colorado, a place where marijuana has been legal since 2012 (officially implemented in 2014), sold a billion dollars in legal pot in 2016. The average pot buyer spends around $645 per year. Over half spend at least $500 and less then 10 percent fork over at least $2,500.
For more revelations from this study visit Headset.
