Report: Clovis ranked sixth in recreational cannabis sales

Clovis ranked sixth among 40 New Mexico cities in recreational cannabis sales in New Mexico’s first month of legalized sales, records show.

A Cannabis Control Division chart shows Clovis’ adult-use sales totaled $801,826.60 for April. Medical cannabis sales totaled $477,867.83. The website weedmaps.com shows six cannabis dispensaries in Clovis.

Dispensaries in Portales, meanwhile, scored legal cannabis sales of $397,908.22, of which $229,022.56 were medical and only $168,896.66 were adult-use, the chart shows. Weedmaps.com shows three dispensaries in Portales.

Texico, the only other city the chart listed for Curry and Roosevelt counties, showed $15,584.41 in adult-use cannabis sales and $1,690.95 for medical cannabis sales. Weedmaps shows one dispensary in Texico.

Statewide, total cannabis sales revenue for April totaled $39.5 million of which $22.1 million, or 56.1%, was in adult-use sales and $17.4 million, or 43.9% was in medical cannabis sales.

“Cannabis sales statewide have exceeded expectations -- in large part because it’s hard to know what to expect when bringing an illicit market into the mainstream economy,” according to Heather Brewer, spokesperson for the CCD, writing in an email.

“The bottom line is that New Mexicans turned out in numbers to support local businesses and to buy high-quality New Mexico products,” she added.

The state is “on track” to meet projections of $300 million in annual sales for adult-use cannabis, she wrote, adding that the sales are expected to be accompanied by 11,000 jobs and $50 million in tax revenue to the state in the industry’s first year.

Evidence that communities close to Texas, where cannabis is still illegal, would benefit from border crossings to procure cannabis products is “anecdotal” for now, Brewer stated. “The sales numbers relative to local populations seem to support that.”

There is no data that separates sales to Texans from sales to New Mexicans, Brewer wrote.

Texico, whose eastern boundary is the Texas border, showed adult-use sales nine times higher than medical cannabis sales, which tend to be local.

In Clovis, adult-use sales were 67% higher than medical sales in April, the figures show. In Tucumcari, the first sizeable community Texans would encounter on Interstate 40, first-month adult-use sales reached $147,799.05, or 4.4 times the city’s sales of medical cannabis over the same period, which totaled $33,533.53.

Sunland Park, which ranked fifth among New Mexico cities in adult-use sales, recorded nearly $1.2 million in adult-use sales. Sunland Park borders Texas in the El Paso, Texas area, and its population is only about half that of Clovis.