With Q2 2023 in the books we want to share our quarterly round-up of states that issued dispensary/retailer licenses. We ended 2022 with 2,750 licenses, with Q1 2023 adding 699. Q2 saw the addition of 587 – 16% fewer than the preceding quarter.  

In Q2, 4 states accounted for 66% of these licenses: New York, California, Michigan and Florida. This is the first time in years where Oklahoma was not at or near the top of the list.

Key Findings

• 4 states accounted for 66% of these Q2 licenses: New York, California, Michigan, and Florida
• Oklahoma issued only 11 store licenses in Q2 versus 332 in Q1
• New York minted almost 33% of Q2’s new licenses

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Every quarter we spend some time opining on Oklahoma. This time the asymptote tells the story as the number of licenses issued approaches zero:

Leaderboard

In looking across the 699 new licenses, it is illuminating to see which companies added stores. Based on the Cannabiz Media License Database, here are the 6 companies that added 7 or more licenses YTD 2023:

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Finally, the table below shows the final Cannabiz Media tally of dispensary/retail licenses for June, 2023. The net change since Q1 is +360:

Conclusion

At the end of Q1, total store/dispensary licenses were up 4.9% from year end 2022. Counts are up 3% over Q1 2023. We will no doubt see more stores in states like California, Michigan, Florida and New York which approved 200 more this week. It is likely that Oklahoma will retain its lead as the market with the most stores for some time, unless there is a mass extinction event as they still have more than twice as many as California.

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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.  

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‍Cannacurio is a weekly 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.