COLUMBUS, Ohio (WSYX) — Since the sale of adult-use cannabis began back on August 6, Ohioans have spent roughly $10 million per week on the product.
According to the Department of Commerce Division of Cannabis Control, as of Nov. 30, adult-use sales have topped $191 million.
The team at Cresco Labs, a marijuana growing facility in Yellow Springs, Ohio, said it has been preparing for a spike in demand since before Issue 2 passed in November 2023.
“There’s been a lot of dramatic changes going on at this site,” Cresco Labs Facility Manager Joe Chek said. “There was construction happening every single day. We had new people every single Monday. We were ramping up as fast as we could.”
When ABC6 first visited Cresco Labs in December 2023, Chek showed us an empty greenhouse that he said would be ready for use once there was more demand.
That space is now completely filled with marijuana plants.
“In this room alone, we have been able to add 1,700 plants,” Chek said. “What that turns out to be is about 400,000 dry grams of product.”
Chek said they’ve nearly doubled their staff at the Yellow Springs facility and have been able to invest in new infrastructure and tools that allow them to generate more products.
We started investing in new things, we changed the infrastructure, we added space, not just in our cultivation area but in our front of house to hold more people. – Joe Chek
“We’ve added new LEDs which allow us to control the specific spectrum of light plants are exposed to and mimic the different seasons of the year so a plant knows when it’s supposed to grow a bud,” Chek said. “Prior to this, you might get 900 or 1,000 grams of product from a plant, but that has increased to 15-20% so far. Long story short, we can get more product off of a single plant just by changing the light they are exposed to.”
While Chek could not provide specifics on revenue at the growing facility, he did say they are sending out much more product than before the sale of recreational marijuana began.
“We are probably creating somewhere between 5,000 to 10,000 finished good units a day,” Chek said. “Overall, we are going through about three times as much as we were before adult-use taking effect.”
Non-medical cannabis sales are subject to state and local sales tax. In addition, the initiated statute includes a 10% excise tax on non-medical marijuana purchases.
H/T: www.myfox28columbus.com
