SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
There’s a new kind of celebration attached to the Thanksgiving holiday week, and it is centered around cannabis consumption.
Green Wednesday is the marijuana industry’s big sales day, like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Some Sacramento dispensaries are seeing a lot of green from the aptly named day.
Several people crowded around the counter at NUG Sacramento, waiting for their weed. The high demand at the downtown Sacramento dispensary is a result of Green Wednesday.
“It’s been busy all day, actually. It’s our marijuana industries, our Black Friday, per say,” NUG Sacramento general manager Jonathyn Newsom said.
Newsom said the Thanksgiving-adjacent sales day has been all the buzz for a couple years now. Compared to a normal day, it is bringing double the amount of cannabis customers into his shop.
“I want to say maybe this is the second year that I’ve seen it in effect. This year, more or less, being in full effect,” Newsom said.
With the menu full of discounted pot products, NUG “budtenders” were barely able to catch their breath Wednesday.
“It has been pretty crazy, nonstop,” Budtender Eric Comacho said.
Comacho says customers have been telling him and fellow budtenders why they are buying cannabis ahead of Thanksgiving. Many have said that they plan to treat the holiday madness with marijuana.
“A lot of people are coming just because they know they’re going home to visit their families, so that’s definitely the number one reason I’ve been hearing,” Comacho said.
From flowers to vapes to edibles, NUG said all of its products flew off the shelves Wednesday. But they are not the only dispensary in Sacramento that saw that happen.
A Therapeutic Alternative, another joint in town, saw about 50% more pot patrons on Green Wednesday this year.
“We had some doorbuster sales in the morning that were gone within an hour of opening,” A Therapeutic Alternative Director of Education Hezekiah Allen said.
Allen said for A Therapeutic Alternative, Green Wednesday is more than just items on a menu. It is a sign that the “cloud of smoke” around the cannabis industry is lifting.
“It’s been a long journey to get to legalization, to get to normalization, and to have this sort of attention and to have the sort of tradition focused on the holiday is really encouraging and empowering,” Allen said.
NUG agrees.
“It’s showing how far cannabis is coming and how it’s being normalized,” Newsom said.
Newsom says it is a step in the right direction – and a way to save green, on green, for Thanksgiving.
Some dispensaries tell KCRA 3 their deals will continue through Black Friday and even Cyber Monday.
