It was universally accepted and widely reported that Oregon dispensaries generated $11mm sales in the first week of legal recreational sales, but it turns out that this was an estimate that was based on a sampling and that hasn’t been verified. A Portland newspaper digs in:
A week into Oregon’s historic, and largely problem-free, experiment in recreational pot sales, there were whispers—then shouts—that dispensaries had moved an eye-popping $11 million in product.
It was a number with the potential to satisfy lingering doubts about legal pot. After all, $11 million in weekly sales would shatter officials’ best guesses at how much Oregon’s new industry will bring in for schools, drug treatment, and police.
More than any other state that’s ended prohibition, the figure that rocketed around social media and over the Associated Press wire seemed to suggest Oregon was more than ready for on-the-level weed.
Here’s the problem: The $11 million itself may be a false claim. Oregon almost certainly didn’t sell that much recreational pot the first week of October. We’ll probably never know what it sold.
Read Dirk VanderHart’s “Oregon’s Been Celebrating Pot Sales That May Well Be Fiction”: http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/oregons-been-celebrating-pot-sales-that-may-well-be-fiction/Content?oid=16742824
