More Than $3.1 Million Of Marijuana Purchased On First Day Of Illinois Legal Sales
Published 26 mins ago on January 2, 2020 By Kyle Jaeger
Illinois saw more than $3.1 million in marijuana sales on the first day that adult-use shops opened their doors on Wednesday.
The state’s cannabis czar, Toi Hutchinson, announced the figures during a press conference on Thursday, where she also said that there were more than 77,000 individual transactions at dispensaries across the Prairie State.
One of those transactions involved Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton (D), who was among the first customers to purchase marijuana products from an adult-use shop, paying cash for clementine-flavored gummy cannabis edibles.
By comparison, Michigan had about $221,000 in marijuana sales on its first day of recreational implementation on December 1, with roughly 2,200 transactions.
As the sixth largest state in U.S. by population, Illinois stands to become one of the largest marijuana markets in the country, and enthusiasm about the launch of its recreational system was evident across social media, where users shared videos from a variety of cities with hundreds lined up outside of cannabis businesses.