Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.
American marijuana consumers have spent more than $4.1 billion on pre-rolled joints over the past year and a half, according to a new industry report, with the products now making up about 15.9 percent of the cannabis market.
Among the latest trends in the pre-roll market, it adds, is the continued growth of specialty infused pre-rolls, which are sold as a premium product and typically contain marijuana concentrate. Those products, which command higher price points than standard pre-rolls, accounted for almost half (44 percent) of the pre-roll market during the first half of 2024.
The findings were compiled by product manufacturer Custom Cones USA using data from the cannabis intelligence firm Headset, which collects point-of-sale data in a dozen U.S. states. It’s Custom Cones’s third year releasing a white paper on the current state of the pre-roll market.
“Every year we like to hunker down and look at the story the data is telling,” Harrison Bard, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said in a press release. “Thanks to the help of our partners at Headset, we can now see even more clearly that pre-rolls are continuing to dominate the market on an upward trajectory that confirms our belief that pre-rolls remain a potent and profitable symbol of the cannabis industry as a whole.”
The data put pre-rolls in third place in terms of product form factors at marijuana retailers, following raw flower and vape pens. The report notes that in June 2024, sales revenue from pre-rolls was almost 12 times that of infused beverages.
From January 2023 to June 2024, pre-rolls saw “a meteoric increase in market share,” Custom Cones said, rising from 13.2 percent to 15.9 percent over that time period.
“The rise of the pre roll market is even more impressive when looking back even further,” the company noted. “Pre roll market share has increased every year since 2020 – when it stood at just 9.8%. The increase in sales revenue in the last five years is nothing short of remarkable: annual pre roll sales revenue went from $469 million in 2019 to $2.7 billion in 2023. That’s nearly a sixfold increase in annual revenue.”
Prices on pre-rolls have also been falling, dropping from $7.80 per unit in January 2023 to $6.50 per unit in June 2024, a reduction of about 16.7 percent. But the overall size of the market is growing thanks to greater sales volume.
“Although average item price is on the decline, total pre roll items sold are skyrocketing – going from 15.9 million items sold in January 2023 to a record 26 million units sold in June 2024,” the report says.
Headset data from the report came from Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Oregon and Washington. That information was combined with other findings, such as a Custom Cones USA sample of about 1,000 pre-roll consumers.
Both consumers and businesses, the report says, choose pre-rolls predominantly based on price point and THC potency. Other factors include the strain of cannabis, paper type, packaging and brand loyalty.
The shift toward what Custom Cones calls the “connoisseur/infused” pre-roll segment has been happening for years, with producers marketing more high-end, indulgent products.
“Since 2019, the segment has maintained an average 34.4% share of the pre roll category across the 12 tracked markets,” says the company’s press release. “This share has recently experienced a rapid acceleration, reaching 41.5% in 2023 and climbing further to 44.4% in the first half of 2024. This trend suggests a growing consumer preference for these premium products (that also command premium prices).”
As part of its effort to monitoring the latest in the cannabis pre-roll market, Custom Cones USA and its DaySavers brand have also launched notable efforts to drive engagement with consumers. In June, it announced it would pay 200 volunteers $4.20 apiece to smoke two free pre-rolls and provide feedback for a so-called “Science of Smokeability” study—a collaboration with the Cannabis Research Coalition and the Network of Applied Pharmacognosy.
“This research not only has the potential to improve product quality and consistency, but also promote sustainability, profitability, and a deeper scientific understanding of cannabis as a medicinal and recreational product,” the company said at the time.
The study results are set to be shared with the standards organization ASTM International, which last year helped to add a pair of new marijuana items to a federal handbook that are meant to provide model standards for cannabis definitions, packaging and labeling requirements and best storage practices to control for moisture loss in marijuana flower.
DaySavers separately launched a campaign in March to hire for what it calls the “ultimate stoner dream job,” seeking a content creator to “get paid to smoke weed.” The full-time social media creator and event marketer job pays $70,420 with perks including cannabis product testing and all expenses paid travel to marijuana events.
The campaign is reminiscent of the time that cannabis icon Snoop Dogg disclosed in 2019 that he pays a person between $40,000-$50,000 per year to roll blunts for him.
Separate reporting from Headset, meanwhile, analyzed public comments related to the federal government’s planned rescheduling of marijuana. It found that approximately 35 percent of comments submitted to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agreed with the Biden administration plan, but most—57 percent—said cannabis should be entirely descheduled.
“These numbers paint a clear picture: over 9 out of 10 individuals who took the time to comment believe that cannabis should not remain a Schedule I substance,” Headset said at the time. “Moreover, the majority of commenters went beyond the proposed rescheduling to Schedule III, arguing for complete removal from the controlled substances list.”
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