CHICAGO _ Customers spent almost $3.2 million on legal weed in Illinois on Wednesday, the state's first day of recreational marijuana sales.
The state said more than 77,000 customers bought products at dispensaries. Marijuana shops around the state were again greeted with long lines of people eager to buy legal weed Thursday.
The lines are expected to persist well through the weekend. Most marijuana stores have implemented buying limits due to a statewide shortage of flower, or the dried buds that can be smoked. More product shipments will continue to come into the shops, but the pickings might remain slim at some dispensaries.
"I can't imagine they (the lines) are ever going to be as long as they were yesterday," said Kris Krane, president and co-founder of 4Front Ventures, which owns Mission South Shore dispensary in the South Chicago neighborhood. "But I do imagine we're going to have lines just for the foreseeable future."
Before Mission opened Thursday, the line stretched down the side of the building. Other Chicago dispensaries had lines that snaked down blocks and around corners, and downstate, lines reached through parking lots and into fields.
Thirty-seven dispensaries are selling recreational weed in Illinois, including nine in Chicago.
Hundreds of people flocked to Cresco Lab's Sunnyside Lakeview dispensary Thursday morning, said spokesman Jason Erkes.
"Our lines at 10 a.m. this morning rivaled exactly what we saw yesterday, and we're ramped up for day two," he said.
.
