Now that 2023 has wrapped up we want to share our annual license round-up of which states issued the most dispensary/retailer licenses as well as trends that affect various parts of the value chain. In 2023 1,695 new dispensary and retailer licenses were issued and 4 states accounted for 60% of these licenses. This is well down from 2,750 in 2022 and 2,602 in 2021.

Key Findings

• Oklahoma accounted for 347 (20%) of the newly issued licenses – down from 32% last year.
• Michigan was second with 243 (14%) with New Jersey third with 224 (12%).
• 4 states issued 60% of the newly issued licenses.
• There were 11,375 stores holding 12,156 licenses at the end of 2023.  

The Cannabiz Media Intelligence Platform tracks facilities distinctly from licenses because some states may require a medical and an adult use license – even for the same store. This can lead to double counting. The graph below shows the relationship between these two measures in 2023. The flattening may be due to the elimination of 400 licenses in Oklahoma where each store has only one license – so the number of facilities would drop as well.

Leaderboard

In looking across the 1,695 new licenses, some well known companies added stores. Based on the Cannabiz Media Intelligence Platform, here are the 10 companies that added the most licenses. The companies denoted with an asterisk were on last year’s list as well.

Finally, the table below shows the final Cannabiz Media tally of dispensary/retail licenses for December 31, 2023:

Conclusion

Since January total dispensary and retail licenses increased from 11,449 to 12,156 – for a net new total of 707 (+6%).  In 2022, the growth rate was approximately 15%.

Cannabiz Media expects licenses to increase thanks to new and expanding markets. Oklahoma has extended their moratorium on licenses so they will not be in the hunt. However, New York is once again seen as the beast in the east with the promise of 1,500 licenses. We will continue to track the leaderboards to see how this develops – and watch to see if any of the NY MSO’s want to drop millions to open a few doors.

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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