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This story was republished with permission from Crain’s Detroit and written by Dustin Walsh.
The unofficial 4/20 holiday proved fruitful for Michigan’s marijuana industry.
Operators in the state reported more than $28.5 million in weed sales last Saturday, up 32% from last year’s total of $21.6 million on the day, according to data from the Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency.
Sales on April 20 represented about 10% of the total sales in the record-breaking month of March.
The day was marked by sales specials, deals and events at dispensaries across the state. For instance, Breeze in Hazel Park held a “Carnival Sesh” party that featured food, drinks, games and entertainment.
The cannabis culture holiday’s origin stems from a group of high school students in San Rafael, Calif., in 1971. The folklore is the students would meet at 4:20 p.m. on the high school grounds to search for an alleged cannabis crop marked on a treasure map they had found.
The concept of 4/20 found its way into the cultural lexicon years later and is often used to refer to the time to consume marijuana, at 4:20 p.m., or what has become an international cannabis celebration on April 20 annually.
The moniker dictates such power among users that the Colorado Department of Transportation had to switch out mile marker 420 on I-70 east of Denver in the past decade to a marker reading 419.99 because the sign was stolen so often.
In Michigan, the holiday has become the presumptive largest marijuana sales day since the market became legal with the first dispensary openings in late 2019. The CRA doesn’t track sales for any other individual days.
April, in general, is a big sales month for marijuana in Michigan, as the first weekend in April also marks the 52-year old Hash Bash event in Ann Arbor.
Hash Bash started on April 1, 1972, weeks after the Michigan Supreme Court overturned the conviction of the late John Sinclair for possession of two marijuana joints. Sinclair, the famed activist who not only managed the early punk band MC5 but also was the founding member of the White Panther Party, was universally targeted by law enforcement.
The Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the laws used to convict Sinclair were unconstitutional. The first Hash Bash celebrated that victory, and John Lennon even attended with a song dedicated to Sinclair as a counterculture icon. Sinclair died of heart failure at the age of 82 at Detroit Receiving Hospital on April 2 this year.
At this year’s Hash Bash on April 6, Leni Sinclair, ex-wife of the late Sinclair spoke to the thousands of attendees.
In many ways, Michigan led marijuana’s rise to cultural relevance through those events and is now among the largest legal markets in the country.
Just last month, the state set a new sales record with sales reaching $288.8 million, up 11% from the month prior.
Michigan’s marijuana industry is on pace to best last year’s total $3.05 billion in sales. Given the current pace, the industry would surpass $3.17 billion in sales this year.
Michigan’s marijuana industry continues to rise as other established markets are experiencing slowing sales. Colorado, the first state to legalize marijuana sales, has seen sales decline over the past two years, down to $1.53 billion in 2023 from a peak of $2.23 billion in 2021. Marijuana sales in Washington state last year declined to $1.4 billion from $1.5 billion the year prior.
