Ore. wholesale outdoor-grown marijuana cheapest in U.S.

The cost of Oregon’s wholesale outdoor-grown marijuana is now the lowest in the country.

Last October, wholesale marijuana in the state sold for about $700 a pound. Now, it’s just $398 per pound.

That’s likely due to excess product and not enough people consuming it.

According to Deschutes County, far fewer marijuana processing applications are being received now than even a few months ago.

For marijuana consumers, it’s good news, because it means higher quality and less expensive products.

It’s also good news for some retail marijuana shop owners, like Jeremy Kwit, owner of Substance Cannabis Market in northeast Bend.

“I consider what we do to be very similar to traditional retail, so our margins are lower and our inventory returns are greater,” Kwit said Wednesday. “So in the past,someone might visit our stores a couple times a month. Now they might visit us a couple times a week.”

But for cannabis farms, some changes may be required.

“I think a lot of the operators through the supply chain have had to learn how to run a business and pay attention to all their costs, and there’s a lot of costs entering into the cannabis marketplace,” Kwit said.

All of this could end up changing the industry as a whole, according to Ross Lipson, CEO of Dutchie, an online marijuana retail platform.

“I don’t think it will be a problem,” Lipson said. “I think the space will have to adapt to it, so you’ll see a lot of consolidation.”

“I think a lot of people were excited to jump into the ‘green rush,’ when cannabis became legal, and were leading their decision based on excitement,” Lipson added.

Last year, Oregonians consumed more than 300,000 pounds of cannabis, but according to state officials more than 1.1 million pounds of cannabis were farmed in the state.