John SchroyerWith less than 12 hours to spare before the clock switched over to 2025, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that the state’s legal cannabis inudstry surpassed the $1 billion sales mark since its launch just over two years ago, driven by 275 operational adult-use dispensaries.
Not only that, but the number of legal marijuana shops is poised to more than double this year, a key cannabis regulator told the New York Post, forecasting that the number of dispensaries will hit 625, still short of the 2,000 cannabis stores the state is expected to eventually host.
Hochul hailed the sales figures as “a testament to the hard work of those who helped build the strongest cannabis industry in the nation,” and said that a statewide crackdown on over a thousand unlicensed cannabis shops last year was also a big help in pushing sales to their current levels.
According to an annual report released this week by the state Office of Cannabis Management, New York regulators have thus far approved more than 5,250 total adult-use cannabis business permits, of which 54% are for social equity licensees harmed by the war on drugs.
The current supply chain, Hochul’s office said in a press release, is comprised of more than 275 operational dispensaries and more than 500 companies upstream on the production and distribution side.
Sales for the coming year could surpass $1.5 billion, OCM Policy Director John Kagia told the New York Post, in part because the market continues to launch on a rolling basis. Kagia predicted that “over 350 dispensaries” will open in 2025, bringing the total to at least 625, the Post calculated.
The OCM is also expecting to add “hundreds” more of other business license types as well, Kagia indicated, which is in keeping with how the OCM has approached permitting for months.
Still, the overall number of cannabis companies that will be allowed in New York remains a moving target, given that there are no hard and fast state caps on how many licenses are available.
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