By Jeff Smith | Marijuana Business Daily
Arizona’s medical marijuana market is one of the largest in the nation as well as one of the hottest, with costs to break into the market skyrocketing and investors scouring the state for potential opportunities.
Prices have increased because investors see a market where:
- The amount of medical marijuana sold has more than doubled from 5,012 pounds in August 2016 to 10,826 pounds in August 2018, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. The patient count during that period has surged from 105,076 to 178,257.
- Arizona has issued all its available marijuana business licenses.
- Recreational cannabis could be on the horizon. A campaign to put an adult-use initiative on the ballot in Arizona failed this year, but industry experts expect the issue to be voted on in 2020.
Those kinds of potentials have out-of-state investors eyeing Arizona’s market despite high entry costs and a recent state Court of Appeals decision that cannabis extracts are illegal.
Investors, for example, are putting their dollars into management companies that oversee existing medical cannabis businesses as well as lending MMJ companies money.
“I haven’t seen things slow down at all – it’s extremely active,” said Laura Bianchi, director of Rose Law Group’s medical marijuana practice group in Scottsdale.
