Cannacurio #60: Leaderboards for Mid-Year Growing

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We regularly review newly added licenses and total licenses by state. Derived from our Cannabiz Business Intelligence platform, these census snapshots show where new licenses are being created and where the balance of power is from market to market. Our customers use this information for go-to-market strategies as it can influence their sales territories, trade show planning and marketing spend. The table below is a snapshot of the new cultivation licenses added this year by month

Important Findings

1. California leads a close second with Oklahoma. However, the two-year license moratorium should drop Oklahoma to zero for the remainder of the year.
2. The “Beast in the East” is finally rumbling. New York and Vermont added 243 cultivation licenses, and 16 were announced in Connecticut this July. Up to this point last year, these three states had not issued any new cultivation licenses.
3. Six months into 2022, 3,190 licenses were added. In 2021 there were 4,150. This is about 25% fewer licenses issued than in the previous year.

And here are the top five states that added cultivation licenses in 2022:

Regulatory Changes

There are some regulatory guidelines that affect or will affect cultivation licenses:

• California: Effective January 1, 2023, the California Department of Cannabis Control may issue licenses for large indoor spaces and large outdoor spaces that are 22,000 square feet or more than 1 acre. Will we see some growers pooling licenses just to make compliance easier? Application fees for these licenses range from $1,555 to $8,655, with annual license fees ranging from $13,900 to $77,905. This will reduce the number of licenses, but probably not the canopy.
• Oklahoma: Beginning August 1, 2022 and through August 1, 2024, Oklahoma will no longer accept new grower, processing and dispensing licenses. Existing license holders in good standing can renew their licenses. The state has the option to shorten this window.
• Oregon: The state is still operating under a new licensing moratorium as of January 2022.

The table below is a snapshot of total cultivation licenses by state as of June 30, 2022. Six states account for nearly 90% of licenses: California, Oklahoma, Michigan, Oregon, Colorado, and Washington.

Conclusion

The license issuance rate is slowing, although 90% of licenses exist in six states. Reducing new licenses can help stem the cannabis glut and falling wholesale prices that growers are struggling with. You can read the report we worked on with Wells Fargo covering this phenomenon here.

As the Northeast grows and continues to add legitimate license holders, what happens to the oversupply in the West being shipped East? We will continue to follow these trends and keep you informed in future posts.

Cannabiz Media customers can stay up to date on these and other new licenses through our newsletter, notification and reporting modules. Subscribe to our newsletter to get these weekly reports in your inbox. Or you can schedule a demo to learn more about how to access the Cannabiz media license database yourself to dig deeper into this data.

About the author

Ed Keating is 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 on compliance issues. Ed has led product, marketing and sales while overseeing complex, multi-jurisdictional product lines in the securities, corporate, UCC, security, environmental and human resources markets.

At Cannabiz Media, Ed enjoys the challenge of working with regulatory bodies around the world as he and his team gather corporate, financial and licensing information to track the people, products and companies in the cannabis economy.

Ed graduated from Hamilton College and received his MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University.

Cannacurio is a weekly column from Cannabiz Media featuring insights from the most comprehensive licensing data platform. Check out Cannacurio’s posts and podcasts for the latest updates and information.