At a glance
Where the market is heading
Adult-use is sales to any adult 21+. Medical is sales to registry cardholders, who pay 4% tax instead of 20%. Adult-use retail opened in January 2022, the same month this series begins — so there is no pre-launch era on this chart, and no month where the adult-use line is a zero standing in for a channel that did not exist. DOR dates the opening to the month and no further: its Retail Price Study says only that “Adult Use sales began January of 2022”.
Monthly sales by channel
These are estimates, in DOR's own word. Montana dispensaries file and remit quarterly — returns are due 15 April, 15 July, 15 October and 15 January — so no monthly return exists to measure a month against until its quarter closes. DOR captions the running total of this table “Estimated Sales”, and published months are revised afterwards.
Medical sales have fallen steadily since adult-use opened, as cardholders let registrations lapse and buy on the adult-use side. That is the market working, not a collection fault, which is why the pipeline records it as a notice rather than an error.
Who is buying
Montana taxes medical sales at 4% and adult-use sales at 20%, so the channel is settled per sale by whether the buyer presents a registry card. It is not a licence attribute: DOR types 550 of its 558 dispensary locations “Adult Use”, and those same locations report both medical and adult-use dollars.
Retail dollars by channel
What is selling
Revenue by product category
What a gram cost
These are DOR's own published averages, measured from the state's seed-to-sale tracking system rather than worked out here — and they are before tax and after any discounts. Those words are the study's, but they are the previous edition's: the January 2022 to June 2024 report states its basis in full, and the current July 2024 to June 2025 edition — the one every figure on this chart comes from — states none at all.
Average retail price per gram
Why this line is short. Montana's price figures come from the Cannabis Retail Price Study, which DOR publishes once a year. The current edition covers July 2024 to June 2025 only. Months before that are not missing — the January 2022 to June 2024 edition covers them, but its monthly tables are images inside a PDF and have not been extracted. Months after it have not been published yet. The two gaps carry different reasons on purpose, and the line stops rather than being drawn across them.
Buds is whole bud. DOR defines the category as “the dried, trimmed, and manicured petal-less flowers of the cannabis plant”, and gives Pre-Rolls and Shake/Trim categories of their own — so this is the same basket as the District's Flower/Bud row, and a narrower one than a state that prices its whole flower type. That definition is the January 2022 to June 2024 edition's; the current edition lists the categories without defining them, so the definition is carried forward rather than restated.
Two categories are deliberately off this chart. DOR also prices concentrate, which ran $28.48 to $32.83 per gram over the same twelve months — about six times bud. On one linear axis it flattens both lines above into the bottom sixth of the panel and drags the scale down to zero, so it is stated here instead of drawn. Edibles are priced per item rather than per gram and can never share this axis at all.
What the state collects
Montana publishes no monthly tax figure. This line applies the state's own statutory rates — 20% on adult-use, 4% on medical — to the state's own monthly sales split. It is the same arithmetic behind DOR's published cumulative estimate, which it reproduces almost exactly; the comparability notes below state the measured precision.
Estimated cannabis tax by month
Derived, and labelled as such. It is an estimate of tax owed on each month's estimated sales, not tax received — dispensaries remit quarterly. It excludes the county local-option excise of up to 3%, exactly as DOR's own cumulative figure does. The pipeline re-reads both rates from DOR's published tables on every run and refuses to publish if either moves, so a rate change cannot go on being applied at the old divisor.
Where these figures come from
Sourcing, basis and comparabilityMontana runs a medical programme that predates this series and an adult-use market that opened in January 2022, sold through the same dispensaries. The state taxes medical sales at 4% and adult-use sales at 20%, and counties may add a local-option excise of up to 3%. Dispensaries file and remit QUARTERLY, within 15 days of quarter end, which is why the monthly figures DOR publishes are estimates: until a quarter closes there is no return to measure the months inside it against.
Basis — DOR estimated monthly retail sales
- Measurement
- estimated
- Money
- net_of_discounts
- Tax
- unstated
- Period
- calendar_month
- Scope
- retail_only
- Geography
- statewide
- Channels
- medical, adult_use
- Rounding
- Every cell is printed to the whole dollar. Medical plus adult-use misses the published monthly total by $1 in 15 of 55 rows, and the running cumulative drifts up to $2.
The regulator's own words: DOR captions this table's own cumulative roll-up 'January 2022 to July 2026 Estimated Sales' and heads every county column 'Estimated Total ... Sales'. The monthly table's caption reads only 'Monthly Cannabis Sales January 2022-to-Date' - it does not itself carry the word - but its final cumulative cell ($1,465,906,482) is bit-identical to the Total of the table DOR labels Estimated Sales, so they are the same figures and the word is DOR's own. The reason sits on DOR's Cannabis Tax page: returns are quarterly, due 15 April, 15 July, 15 October and 15 January, so no monthly return exists to measure against. Scope is retail because DOR's cumulative estimated tax is exactly 4% of cumulative medical and 20% of cumulative adult-use sales (implied rates 0.04000000 and 0.20000000 - see integrity check tax_table_identity), and those statutory rates fall on retail dispensary sales. MONEY BASIS IS STATED, on the sales-reports page itself, under the heading 'Regarding Estimated Sales Data': 'The reported monthly sales data shown in these tables may include discounted or reduced purchase prices paid by a purchaser. A discounted or reduced purchase price amount may not reflect the actual "Retail Price."' A table that can contain a post-discount amount is net of discounts - a gross table could not contain one - so `money` is net_of_discounts on DOR's own words about this table, not on inference from the price study. NOTE A GENUINE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN THE 2 DOR PAGES THAT STATE A BASE (sales-reports index, Cannabis Tax page), recorded rather than resolved: this same paragraph describes the statutory base as gross ('"Retail Price" is defined as the established price ... This established price would not include any discounts or reductions'), while the Cannabis Tax page says the opposite ('The tax applies to the net retail price, after any discounts'; 'The tax is on the net retail price, which is the established price for which a marijuana product is sold to a purchaser after any discount or reduction'). That disagreement is about the TAX BASE, not about these figures, and it does not move any published number.
Why an axis above reads unstated: `tax` only. Re-run 2026-08-16 against both the cached mirror and the live pages, which are text-identical: the sales-reports page, DOR's Cannabis Tax page, all 55 county pages and the current price study, for 'gross', 'net', 'discount', 'exclud', 'includ', 'before tax', 'methodolog' and 'defin'. THIS IS NOT A ZERO-HIT SEARCH and the earlier version of this field wrongly said it was. Counts, visible text: sales-reports page 3 'discount', 2 'includ', 1 'defin'; Cannabis Tax page 5 'net', 8 'discount', 9 'includ'; current price study 0 of all 8; 55 county pages 0 of all 8. Every one of those hits was read. They settle the DISCOUNT question - which is why `money` is now sourced as net_of_discounts rather than unstated - and none of them touches TAX INCLUSION: 'gross', 'exclud', 'before tax', 'methodolog' return zero everywhere, and neither page anywhere says whether the printed dollars are before or after the 20%/4% excise. That axis alone stays unstated. The price study's 'before tax and after any discounts' is still NOT transferred here: it is scoped in its own document to 'Product revenue totals included in the report'. Separate documents by one publisher are not one document. Open question mt_sales_tax_basis carries the quantitative evidence pointing at ex-tax without closing it. An undocumented basis is a gap to be labelled, never filled in with the most likely answer.
Basis — Metrc-measured retail prices and category revenue
- Measurement
- measured
- Money
- net_of_discounts
- Tax
- excl
- Period
- calendar_month
- Scope
- retail_only
- Geography
- statewide
- Channels
- medical, adult_use
- Rounding
- Prices to the cent, category revenue to the dollar.
The regulator's own words: READ THE EDITION LINE FIRST: every price and category-revenue value in this file comes from the CURRENT edition of DOR's Retail Price Study (2024-07 - 2025-06, HTML), and that edition states no basis at all. Searched 2026-08-16 against cache and live, which are text-identical: zero occurrences of 'discount', 'before tax', 'metrc', 'seed', 'net', 'gross', 'encompass', 'defin' or 'methodolog'. It carries 4 tables and bullet observations and nothing else. The basis quoted here is therefore CARRIED ACROSS EDITIONS, from page 3 (Report Introduction) of the ARCHIVED January 2022 - June 2024 PDF: 'Product revenue totals included in the report are based on Total Price amounts reported to the seed to sale tracking system from licensed dispensaries for product sold before tax and after any discounts', and 'Reported seed-to-sale tracking system product sales volume totals encompass both Adult Use and Medical sales'. Prices are '*In grams, except edibles per item'. That archived edition covers 30 months for which this file publishes NO price data, so `money`, `tax` and `channels_included` here rest on a document that does not cover the periods they describe. It is the same cross-document inference mt_sales_est refuses one block earlier, and the honest difference is only that this one is same-publisher, same-series, same-seed-to-sale-system and same category names - which is a reason to record it, not a reason to stop saying it. Open question mt_buds_category_current_edition carries it. This is measured Metrc data, not the estimate the sales table carries, which is why it is a separate basis block rather than a second reading of the same one.
Basis — State cannabis excise, derived from the published split
- Measurement
- tax_derived
- Money
- net_of_discounts
- Tax
- not_applicable
- Period
- calendar_month
- Scope
- retail_only
- Geography
- statewide
- Channels
- medical, adult_use
The regulator's own words: DOR's Cannabis Tax page states the rates verbatim: '20% tax on adult use marijuana and marijuana products sales' and '4% tax on medical marijuana and marijuana products sales', with local jurisdictions permitted up to an additional 3%. The same page states the base of this tax, one sentence after the rates: 'The tax applies to the net retail price, after any discounts', and again in its FAQ: 'The tax is on the net retail price, which is the established price for which a marijuana product is sold to a purchaser after any discount or reduction.' `money` is therefore net_of_discounts on independent footings - the base DOR states for this tax, and the money basis DOR states for the sales figures it is computed from (see mt_sales_est). It was `unstated` before QC round 1, on the reasoning that it inherited an unstated input; the input was never unstated on this axis and neither was the tax. What DOR does NOT state is whether the sales figures are before or after tax, and that cannot affect this block: `tax` here is not_applicable because the figure IS the tax.
Derivation. tax_est_medical = sales_medical x 0.04; tax_est_adult_use = sales_adult_use x 0.2; tax_est_total = tax_est_medical + tax_est_adult_use Error: Reproduces DOR's own arithmetic: dividing DOR's cumulative estimated tax by its cumulative sales gives 0.04000000093 and 0.19999999967. The figure inherits every error in the sales estimate it is computed from, and it EXCLUDES the county local-option excise of up to 3% - which DOR's own cumulative tax table also excludes, so both sit on one footing..
Sources 3
| Role | Source | Format | From | Last verified | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canonical | Montana DOR Cannabis Sales Reports - statewide monthly table Montana Department of Revenue, Cannabis Control Division | html | 2022-01 | 2026-08-16 | One unauthenticated, JS-free page carries the entire history, so a single GET rebuilds every month and backfill is the same request as the update. The table is printed newest-first and is not the only table on the page, so it is selected by header text (T2). |
| Cross-check | Estimated Cannabis Sales by County - monthly pages Montana Department of Revenue, Cannabis Control Division | html | 2022-01 | 2026-08-16 | Never averaged with the canonical figure. Measured across all 55 published county pages. No county was withheld before 2024-07; from 2024-07 onward 5-10 of the 56 counties are withheld each month, hiding 1.06%-4.08% of statewide dollars. IN THAT ERA - the 25 months from 2024-07 - county sums are therefore a 95.9%-98.9% floor, never a total, and the suppressed set changes month to month. THAT SCOPE IS LOAD-BEARING: across the 30 months with nothing withheld the county sum IS the statewide total 9 times and is ABOVE it 15 times, so 'never a total' is a statement about the suppression era and not about the series. The 1.06% figure quoted elsewhere is the single lightest month, not the typical one. |
| Cross-check | Montana Cannabis Retail Price Study Montana Department of Revenue, Cannabis Control Division | html | 2024-07 | 2026-08-16 | Never averaged with the canonical figure. The 4 categories cover 99.33%-99.67% of the statewide monthly total across the 12 months of the current edition. The residual is the categories the study omits (the earlier edition names Infused Non-Edibles and Shake/Trim, and excludes Kief, Plants and Seeds outright), not a discrepancy. |
Why each marker above says what it says
| Metric | Marker | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Retail sales | Partly comparable | Montana's monthly figures are DOR's own ESTIMATE, not a measured return: dispensaries file quarterly, so no monthly return exists until the quarter closes and published months are revised afterwards. They are net of discounts on DOR's own words - the sales-reports page says the reported monthly sales data 'may include discounted or reduced purchase prices paid by a purchaser' - so a comparison against a state publishing gross receipts is reading a slightly smaller number here. What DOR does NOT say is whether the figures are before or after the 20%/4% excise; that one flag stays unstated rather than assumed, the same posture as the District of Columbia. |
| Medical / adult-use split | Partly comparable | A genuine 2-channel split: Montana taxes medical sales at 4% and adult-use at 20%, so the channel is determined per sale by whether the buyer presents a registry card. It is demonstrably NOT a licence attribute - DOR's dispensary list types 550 of its 558 locations 'Adult Use', and those same locations produce both medical and adult-use dollars. DOR does not state the mechanism in so many words, which is what open question mt_split_mechanism records. Both channels are estimates and inherit that basis. |
| Price per gram | Partly comparable | Whole bud, on DOR's own definition: the Retail Price Study's 'Buds' category is 'the dried, trimmed, and manicured petal-less flowers of the cannabis plant', with Pre-Rolls and Shake/Trim as separate categories in the same taxonomy - so the basket matches the District of Columbia's Flower/Bud row rather than Maryland's wider flower type. The differences the reader is owed: this is DOR's published mean rather than a mean we derive from paired dollars and grams, and the study is ANNUAL, so the line covers only 2024-07 to 2025-06 while the sales series runs to 2026-07. Earlier months exist only as images in a PDF. |
| Per capita | Partly comparable | Per-capita inherits every flag on its numerator, and Montana's numerator is an estimate, net of discounts, on an unstated tax basis. Montana also has no published resident/visitor split, so unlike DC the inflation from out-of-state buyers cannot be quantified here - unmeasured, not absent. |
| Patient counts | Not like-for-like | Montana publishes no cardholder or patient count anywhere in DOR's cannabis section. Every link on the Cannabis & Alcohol Regulation Division's cannabis landing page was enumerated by hand on 2026-08-16 - sales reports, price studies, licence lists, recalls, rules, tax - and none carries a registry figure. This is a checked negative, not an unexplored one; the enumeration is manual and dated because the landing page is not mirrored, so nothing here recomputes it. |
| Licence counts | Not like-for-like | DOR publishes a current dispensary LIST, not a count series, so there is nothing to chart over time. The list is also not unambiguously countable: 558 rows resolve to 538 distinct locations because 14 licensee/city/location keys repeat, one of them 6 times, and DOR does not say whether those are separate licences at one address or the same row-duplication defect its county pages show. A count published without resolving that would be a number we cannot defend. |
| Tax revenue | Partly comparable | Montana publishes no monthly tax collections - returns are quarterly and DOR publishes only a cumulative estimate. This series applies DOR's own statutory rates (4% medical, 20% adult-use) to DOR's own monthly split, which is the same arithmetic behind DOR's published cumulative estimated-tax table and reconciles with it to 9 decimal places. It is therefore an estimate of LIABILITY on each month's estimated sales, not receipts, and it excludes the county local-option excise of up to 3%. It must not be set beside a state that publishes actual collections without that said. |
What is checked on every run 7
| Check | Kind | Last result |
|---|---|---|
| Medical plus adult-use equals the published monthly total, for all 55 months. | identity | PASS on 55 months at $1; 15 rows are exactly $1 out (2026-08-16) |
| The running sum of monthly totals equals DOR's own January-2022-to-date column at every month. | identity | PASS on 55 months at $2 (2026-08-16) |
| Summing each column of the monthly table reproduces DOR's separately published 'January 2022 to July 2026 Estimated Sales' table. This is an INDEPENDENT decomposition in the same document, which is what makes Montana's headline over-determined - most states have nothing to check their total against, and this file would say so if that were true here. | identity | PASS at $5; observed medical +$1, adult-use -$4, total -$1 (2026-08-16) |
| DOR's cumulative 'Estimated Taxes' table divided by its cumulative 'Estimated Sales' table returns the statutory rates this pipeline derives monthly tax with. This is the constants-from-source gate (B.2): the rate is re-read from the artifact every run rather than trusted from a literal. | identity | PASS; implied rates 0.04000000093 medical and 0.19999999967 adult-use (2026-08-16) |
| The disclosed county sum against the statewide monthly total. Measured over all 55 editions it falls short in 31, equals the statewide figure in 9 and exceeds it in 15; wherever counties are withheld the shortfall is the suppression, and an excess is read by magnitude rather than by sign. | cross source reconciliation | PASS on 55 months; disclosed sums differ from statewide by -0.09% to 4.08% of the total - the sum falls short in 31 of them, equals it to the dollar in 9, and EXCEEDS the statewide total in 15 - $21,369 / 0.093% in 2022-02, a revision the county page never received, and $1-$4 in the other 14, inside the $28.5 that summing 56 whole-dollar cells against a whole-dollar total can differ by on arithmetic alone (2026-08-16) |
| The Retail Price Study's 4 category revenues against the statewide monthly total - an independent CATEGORY decomposition to sit beside the county pages' geographic one. | cross source reconciliation | PASS on 12 months; ratio 0.9933-0.9967 (2026-08-16) |
| The price per gram itself has nothing to check against. DOR publishes the mean but not the paired dollars and grams behind it, so it cannot be re-derived, and no second Montana source publishes a price. | unchecked | Not cross-checked. The study's category REVENUE is cross-checked against the statewide total, but its price is a quotient whose denominator - grams sold - DOR does not publish in the current edition. The earlier PDF edition did publish monthly pounds, which is one reason OCR'ing it is worth doing. Until then the page is entitled to say the price level is uncorroborated, and it does. |
The regulator's own notes, and what is still open
The regulator's own notes
Buds contain the dried, trimmed, and manicured petal-less flowers of the cannabis plant and are also commonly referred to as flower or nugs.
— Montana DOR, Cannabis Retail Price Study, January 2022 - June 2024 edition, Product Category: BUDS
The Shake/Trim product category in the seed-to-sale tracking system designates dried Cannabis plant matter comprised of either Shake or Trim.
— Montana DOR, Cannabis Retail Price Study, January 2022 - June 2024 edition, Product Category: SHAKE/TRIM
Product revenue totals included in the report are based on Total Price amounts reported to the seed to sale tracking system from licensed dispensaries for product sold before tax and after any discounts.
— Montana DOR, Cannabis Retail Price Study, January 2022 - June 2024 edition, Report Introduction
20% tax on adult use marijuana and marijuana products sales; 4% tax on medical marijuana and marijuana products sales.
— Montana DOR, Cannabis Tax page
The Local Options Marijuana Excise tax is a tax on the retail value of all marijuana and marijuana products sold at an adult use dispensary or medical marijuana dispensary within a county. The rate may not exceed 3%.
— Montana DOR, Cannabis Sales Reports page, Local Option Tax
Cannabis tax returns are due 15 April, 15 July, 15 October and 15 January - one per quarter. This is why DOR's monthly sales figures are estimates. — Montana DOR, Cannabis Tax page, Cannabis Tax Return Due Dates
The reported monthly sales data shown in these tables may include discounted or reduced purchase prices paid by a purchaser.
— Montana DOR, Cannabis Sales Reports page, Regarding Estimated Sales Data
The tax applies to the net retail price, after any discounts
— Montana DOR, Cannabis Tax page, Fees for Cannabis Tax
The tax is on the net retail price, which is the established price for which a marijuana product is sold to a purchaser after any discount or reduction.
— Montana DOR, Cannabis Tax page, Frequently Asked Questions
DOR's 2 cannabis pages describe the statutory tax base differently. The sales-reports page says the defined Retail Price 'would not include any discounts or reductions'; the Cannabis Tax page says the tax is on 'the net retail price ... after any discount or reduction'. This file does not resolve that: it reports what each page says. It does not affect any published figure here, because the money basis of the SALES TABLE is stated directly and separately on the sales-reports page. — Montana DOR, Cannabis Sales Reports page and Cannabis Tax page, read 2026-08-16
Open questions on this data
Unresolved definitional questions that gate something. Listed because a question nobody can see is a question nobody closes.
- Do DOR's estimated monthly sales figures include the 20%/4% cannabis excise and the county local-option tax? The gross/net half of this question is CLOSED - see evidence_so_far - and only tax inclusion remains open. Closing it needs: Ask DOR's Cannabis Control Division directly, or find a methodology note outside the sales-reports page. Do not close it by reasoning from Montana tax law.
- What mechanism produces DOR's medical / adult-use split - a per-transaction customer-type flag in Metrc, the tax rate applied at the register, or separate programme reporting? Closing it needs: Ask DOR CCD. The answer changes split_source between transaction_attribute and separate_programme_reports; it cannot change it to licence_attribute, which is already disproved.
- The July 2024 - June 2025 edition states NO basis of any kind. Does it use the same 'Buds' definition, the same before-tax-and-after-discounts revenue basis, and the same both-channels scope as the January 2022 - June 2024 edition those claims are quoted from? Closing it needs: Read the next annual edition, or ask DOR whether the seed-to-sale category set or the reporting basis changed. The current edition shows only its top 4 categories, restates no definitions and states no basis.