Now that Q3 has wrapped up we want to share our quarterly round-up of which states issued the most dispensary/retailer licenses and get a sense of the number of stores in the US.  As we saw in Q2, New York, Michigan, and New Jersey were the largest issuers.  In the third quarter they were joined by Ohio and Puerto Rico.

Key Findings

• 535 new store licenses were issued in Q3 compared to 456 in Q2
• 5 states accounted for 73% of these licenses: New York, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey and Puerto Rico.
• During the 3^rd Quarter Oklahoma shed 118 dispensary licenses

Here are the top 5 states that issued store licenses in the quarter:

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Licensing jumped up in August and September.  August represented the high point of the last twelve months with 242 new licenses issued.

Here is an even longer look back by quarter.  It is interesting to see the newly issued numbers moving up over the last year.

Conclusion

Stores continued to grow in the third quarter. Overall, the number of stores grew 3.7%. Once we exclude Oklahoma, total stores are up 12%.

We expect these numbers to climb – especially as Delaware, Kentucky and Minnesota move forward with their licensing plans.  

Cannabiz Media customers can stay up to date on these and other new licenses through our newsletters, alerts, and reports modules. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive these weekly reports delivered to your inbox. Or you can schedule a demo for more information on how to access the Cannabiz Media License Database yourself to dive further into this data.

Author

Ed Keating is a co-founder of Cannabiz Media and oversees the company’s data research and government relations efforts. He has spent his career working with and advising information companies in the compliance space. Ed has managed product, marketing, and sales while overseeing complex multi-jurisdictional product lines in the securities, corporate, UCC, safety, environmental, and human resource markets.  

‍Cannacurio is a column from Cannabiz Media featuring insights from the most comprehensive license data platform. Catch up on Cannacurio posts and podcasts for the latest updates and intel.