Much to the chagrin of the traditional establishment, cannabis flower isn’t going away.

In Michigan, sales and market shares of flower products – flower (which includes pre-rolls), shake/trim, and infused pre-rolls – continue to increase. In early 2020, flower products jointly comprised 49% of total market sales, increasing to 65% as of the end of 2025. 

To make sure Michigan wasn’t an anomaly, I looked at California. As of January 2020, the share of flower and pre-rolls in California was 51%, decreasing to 46% of total sales in November 2025. 

Looking at total market sales, we see that sales in both states are in decline from their respective peaks, 2024 in Michigan and 2021 in California. 

Yet, California’s legacy markets are believed to be substantial and likely growing in size as licensed market activity shrinks, due to the state’s high tax rates and compliance costs. Meanwhile, Michigan recently passed a new 24% wholesale tax on cannabis, which will likely increase the size of its legacy market activity: 

“What we just did is we just adopted California’s high-tax approach that drives people back in the black market,” said Sen. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor…^[1]

Legacy markets are likely to be flower intensive, especially those in California, where craft cannabis thrives. This suggests that while licensed market flower sales are slowly declining in California, flower sales as a portion of total licensed and unlicensed market activity is likely stable. In Michigan, accounting for legacy market activity would only increase flower’s share of total licensed and unlicensed sales.

Flower’s staying power in the face of increasingly available alternatives strongly suggests that a substantial portion of consumers prefer flower. In this case, efforts by regulators to eliminate flower, say, under a rescheduled or descheduled framework, will simply drive sales back into legacy markets. The only solution for achieving legal cannabis markets that minimize unlicensed activity is to ensure legal markets support consistent, compliant, and transparent flower at reasonable prices. 

^[1] https://www.mlive.com/cannabis/2025/10/as-michigan-marijuana-tax-jumps-to-40-critics-worry-itll-fuel-black-market.html