The cannabis industry spent years predicting flower’s decline. Grown Rogue CEO and co-founder Obie Strickler argues that the prediction said more about industry executives than it did about consumers.

When we started Grown Rogue more than a decade ago, I kept hearing about how new form factors were going to make flower extinct. Edibles, concentrates, vapes, and capsules were all going to replace flower as the primary way people consumed cannabis.

That prediction came mostly from new professionals entering the industry, bringing experience in consumer packaged goods, real estate development, finance, and investing. They often believed a new, improved consumer was going to take over the market. Think affluent newcomers with disposable income who had never rolled a joint in their lives. Many of these “experts” were not regular cannabis consumers, and they completely missed the reality of who was actually buying.

I saw this play out in real time. In 2017, I took a family member to a dispensary for the first time. She was exactly the new consumer everyone was hunting for: disposable income, no prior history with cannabis, and curious about the whole thing. She spent the visit talking about how amazing the lamp near the entrance was while I was in the back inspecting the quality of the flower on the shelves.

When we left, I asked her what her preferred form factor was. Vapes, she said. Great, I said. How many vapes do you go through in a month? She laughed. Oh, maybe one or two a year.

That was the aha moment. Here was the consumer so many in the industry had bet on, and she was buying one or two vapes a year. The volume assumptions built around that new consumer were simply wrong. The people buying flower week in and week out, the ones actually driving category revenue, were the consumers everyone in the industry seemed to be writing off.

The Market Never Moved On From Flower

Flower and pre-rolls still command a huge share of the legal cannabis market, although the exact mix varies by state. Headset’s current industry data puts flower at $9.6 billion, or 39.4% of sales across 16 tracked state markets, for the 12 months ending June 2026. Pre-rolls accounted for another 15.8% and were the fastest-growing major category, increasing 10.1% year over year.

The 2026 State of the Pre-Roll Market Report, using Headset point-of-sale data from 15 states, found that pre-rolls generated nearly $3.6 billion in 2025. Infused products represented 47% of pre-roll revenue, leaving a little more than half of the category to non-infused formats. Headset has also observed that flower tends to begin with a higher market share in newer markets before declining as those markets mature and more product categories become available.

Concentrates and vapes have real audiences, and edibles have carved out their own category. None of that changes the fundamental reality that regular cannabis consumers keep coming back to flower.

A Flower-First Education

I grew up in Southern Oregon, born in a cabin with no electricity or indoor plumbing to parents who were true hippies. They had left the city to live something more humble and simple. The region sits at the northern edge of the Emerald Triangle, and, for good or bad, cannabis was as much a part of the fabric of those communities as anything else. People had relocated there in the 1960s and 1970s to live on their own terms, and growing became part of that history.

As I got older, I started “borrowing” flower from my big brother, who was probably “borrowing” it from my dad. Pretty quickly, that turned into growing my own once my habits outpaced anything that could go unnoticed.

That was when I started developing a real taste for quality flower, and that early curiosity turned into a genuine obsession with genetics. I wanted to know what had the best flavor, what produced the best experience, and why the same strain could taste completely different depending on how it was grown.

Sarah, my wife and co-founder, and I were both deep in this from a young age. We were growing our own flower in the hills, entering Oregon’s medical program to add a layer of safety and legitimacy, and spending a lot of time with friends who were just as serious about the plant as we were. We talked genetics, tried new strains, and kept working to get better. That history and commitment to flower are why we went all in when legalization created a path to build something real.

I never bought the predictions about flower’s decline because I knew what regular cannabis consumers looked like. I was, and still am, one of them. The people I grew up around did not switch to vape cartridges when concentrates hit the market. They were smokers who cared about the strain, the cure, and the way it burned. Those consumers did not disappear when dispensaries opened. They finally had somewhere legal to shop.

Sarah and I do not smoke like we used to. An eighth a day to myself was pretty much standard back in the day. That is not where we are anymore, but flower is still pretty much all that we smoke. Whether rolling our own or grabbing a pack of pre-rolls for convenience, it is what we keep coming back to. You cannot replicate the experience of high-quality flower, and we hear the same thing from most of our friends.

What Flower-First Means in Practice

There is a real and growing market for convenience products and new form factors. We are not ignoring them. But when operators build their entire strategy around the assumption that flower is fading, they risk underinvesting in cultivation quality, cutting corners on genetics, and alienating the regular customers who sustain the category.

To me, a flower-first business strategy means specific things in practice. It means putting serious money into your genetics program instead of licensing whatever strains are trending. It means treating post-harvest handling with the same discipline as the grow itself because a great plant can be ruined in the dry room.

It means being straight with retail partners about what your product actually delivers. It also means resisting the temptation to discount quality simply to chase volume.

None of that means ignoring other delivery systems. We look for ways to carry some of that genetic expression into vapes and concentrates through products such as live resin and rosin. But our legacy, our culture, and our focus have been, and will continue to be, putting great flower first.

That is still the bet we are making. The death of flower has been greatly exaggerated. It was never going anywhere. The people saying otherwise just were not the ones doing the consuming.

Images courtesy of Grown Rogue.

Content Disclaimer: Obie Strickler is CEO and co-founder of Grown Rogue, a multistate cannabis operator whose business includes flower and pre-roll products. This article reflects Strickler’s personal and professional perspective on the cannabis flower market and may align with the commercial interests of Grown Rogue. It was submitted as an unpaid contribution and does not represent independent reporting by High Times.

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The guidance reflects a broader shift towards tobacco harm reduction, recognising that while nicotine products may not be entirely risk-free, the overwhelming burden of disease comes from inhaling the toxic chemicals created by burning tobacco rather than from nicotine itself. In the United States alone, cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths each year, while globally tobacco use claims more than eight million lives annually, according to World Health Organization data.

Clinicians need practical guidance

Healthcare providers are rightly encouraged to discuss the full range of evidence-based options, including nicotine replacement therapies such as patches, gum, lozenges and inhalers, prescription medications including varenicline and bupropion, behavioural counselling and, where appropriate, nicotine-containing e-cigarettes. Importantly, the guidance stresses that these recommendations apply specifically to adults who currently smoke cigarettes and are not intended to encourage nicotine use among people who have never smoked or among young people.

Why do smokers find vaping effective?

Traditional cessation medications primarily address nicotine withdrawal, while vapes also replicate many of the behavioural aspects of smoking. For long-term smokers, the familiar hand-to-mouth movement, inhalation, visible aerosol and rapid nicotine delivery help satisfy both the physical dependence and the behavioural rituals associated with cigarette use. This combination may explain why many smokers who have been unable to quit using patches or gum successfully transition away from combustible cigarettes after switching to vaping.

Yet not all medical organisations share the same position. Some US health organisations continue recommending only FDA-approved cessation medications, citing concerns about the long-term effects of vaping and the presence of residual toxic compounds in aerosol.

Helping smokers make informed choices

Ultimately, the new recommendations do not position vaping as a universal solution or a replacement for established cessation therapies. Rather, they acknowledge that smokers differ, and that successful quitting often requires multiple approaches.

For clinicians, the message is straightforward: provide patients with accurate, balanced information about the benefits and risks of every evidence-based option.

The Cost of Bad Science: How Flawed Studies And Anti-Nicotine Bias Are Shaping European Tobacco Policy

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