Cannacurio No. 100: Best list for pharmacies and retailers in the 2nd quarter of 2024

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Now that the second quarter is complete, we'd like to share our quarterly summary of which states issued the most dispensary/retailer licenses and give a sense of the number of stores in the U.S.

Key findings

• In the second quarter of 2024, 316 new store licenses were issued, compared to 333 in the first quarter.
• 63% of these licenses were in 5 states: New Mexico, Michigan, New Jersey, Florida and New York
• In the second quarter, Oklahoma lost 149 pharmacy licenses

Here are the five states that issued the most store licenses this quarter:

Over the past six months, the number of new licenses issued has ranged from 90 to 140. We all expect this number to increase as New York and other states ramp up their licensing efforts and expand their programs. The full list of issuing states can be found on our Cannabis Market Intelligence Platform www.cannabiz.media.

While there are a constant flow of new active store licenses, we see many pending licenses in the queue in states like New York and New Jersey. Here are the top six states and the number of pending stores/dispensaries we track:

In total, there are 1,907 retail/dispensary licenses pending nationwide, and 85% of those licenses are in the six states mentioned above. A year ago, we found 1,579 stores, and the largest increase came from New York. The full list of issuing states can be found on our Cannabis Market Intelligence Platform www.cannabiz.media.

According to our data, stores are still a growing category. The number of active stores nationwide increased by 3.2% when Oklahoma is included. If we exclude the Sooner State, store growth over the past 12 months is nearly 13%:

We will closely monitor the transition of these licenses from pending to active, as well as any new programs that come online or are expanded in the next quarter.

Cannabiz Media clients can stay up to date on these and other new licenses through our newsletters, alerts, and reporting modules. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive these weekly reports in your inbox. Or you can schedule a demo to get more information on how you can access the Cannabiz Media Market Intelligence Platform yourself to dive deeper into this data.

Ed Keating is a co-founder of Cannabiz Media and oversees the company's data research and government relations. He has spent his career working with and advising information companies on compliance. Ed has led product, marketing and sales while overseeing complex, multi-jurisdictional product lines in securities, corporate, UCC, security, environmental and human resources.

‍Cannacurio is a Cannabiz Media column featuring insights from the most comprehensive licensing data platform. Stay up to date with the latest updates and information through Cannacurio's posts and podcasts.