Gen Z’s Weed Habits Are Flipping California’s Cannabis Industry
- Gen Z has shifted the cannabis industry's long-standing preference, making vape products more popular than traditional cannabis flower in California for the first time.
- In June, cannabis vapes surpassed flower in sales, with California shoppers spending over 10% more on vapes than flower and 170% more than on edibles.
- Gen Z overwhelmingly prefers vape pens, spending 38% of their cannabis budget on vapes compared to 32.5% on flower, contrasting with millennials who favor flower over vapes.
- This vaping preference is influencing market trends and also reflected among underage users, with fewer high school students using cannabis overall but a majority of those users opting for vapes.
Gen Z has shredded a long-held dynamic in the cannabis industry.
For centuries, cannabis flower has been the king of marijuana. And since legalization, flower has always been the most popular product at legal pot shops in California. But that dominance is now all over, largely thanks to Gen Z. Cannabis vapes surpassed flower in June and are consistently the top-selling product category in California, according to state data.
California shoppers spent over 10% more on cannabis vapes than flower last month, and more than 170% more on vapes compared to edibles, according to state data.
This growth is being driven primarily by Gen Z, who have an overwhelming preference for the handheld vapes and are the first generation to prefer vape pens over any other type of cannabis product, according to data shared with SFGATE by cannabis analytics company Headset. Over the past 12 months of national pot sales, Gen Z spent 38% of their money on vapor pens, and only 32.5% on flower, the next most popular category. That’s the opposite of millennials, who spent 40.1% of their money on flower and only 25.7% on vapes.
“Gen Z is becoming a larger part of the market by the day so eventually their love for this category is going to affect the category assortment of the overall market,” Laferla said in an email.
Gen Z is defined as people ages 14 to 29, so the majority of the generation are adults who can purchase cannabis legally at California’s cannabis stores. But the preference for vaping also appears to be affecting underage people. Fewer high school students report using cannabis these days compared with six years ago, but the students using it are overwhelmingly using vapes, according to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal.
Read the full article at SFGATE