Photograph by David Ryder/Getty Images
The Top Shelf Cannabis store in Bellingham, Washington, on July 8
Five weeks have passed since the state of Washington’s first legal marijuana sales, and all told people have bought more than $4.3 million in pot.
About a quarter of that revenue measured by the Washington’s Liquor Control Board—$1.1 million—goes to state the form of excise taxes, although the amount of tax paid on any given sale depends greatly on whether it’s for medical or recreational use. As in Colorado, the early sales have trailed earlier estimates.
The state’s data track sales by day, and at first glimpse there are two noticeable peaks in demand: Tuesdays and Fridays. Perhaps the people of Washington are remarkably diligent at preparing for Hump Day and the weekend.
The sample of just five weeks is small, so the data could be easily skewed by an aberrational Tuesdays. Dispensaries first opened their doors on a Tuesday, for instance, and promptly sold almost a quarter million dollars worth of pot amid early troubles managing inventory.
If you take the first week out of the data, the past four weeks shows that people are far more predictable. More than 60 percent of all sales come on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, with a full quarter of all sales on Fridays alone. To explain the obvious mechanics behind that retail phenomenon, we can only offer a dated reference to R. Kelly:
