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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Spokane County marijuana sales slide in April, despite strong 4/20

Harvested marijuana plants, called Blackberry, grow outside the greenhouses at a pot farm near Spangle, Washington, in October 2016. (Dan Pelle / The Spokesman-Review)

A third straight year of strong statewide sales on April 20, the unofficial marijuana holiday, couldn’t prevent Spokane County’s legal pot industry from lesser earnings last month.

Washington’s legal pot sellers sold $6.5 million on that date, up from $4.8 million in 2016 and $1.5 million in 2015, the first year of legal recreational sales under state law. April 20 has typically been one of the busiest for marijuana stores in Washington, and the same was true last month, with the industry posting its largest daily sum of sales for all of April.

In Spokane County, however, the industry as a whole posted a 6 percent decline in revenue from the previous month’s total, according to tallies posted by the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board this week. The county’s 180 pot businesses, including 30 retail outlets, posted a sales figure of $14.2 million for April, down from March’s total of $15.1 million. The number marked a departure from last year’s trend, which showed a 6 percent increase in industry earnings between March and April 2016.

The county’s retail stores posted a total of $7.9 million in sales, off 5 percent from the previous month’s tally. Taxed at 37 percent, the county’s retailers returned $2.9 million to the state in revenue last month. Local shops do not report daily sales earnings to the Liquor and Cannabis Board.

For the first time since opening in December 2015, Trent Avenue shop Treehouse Club posted the largest earnings of any of the county’s retailers, with revenues of $570,961. Grow Op Farms paced the county’s marijuana processors with earnings of $1.8 million, while Green Source posted the largest earnings of any producer, with $123,699.