Happy Friday.
Tune in to This Week in Cannabis LIVE at noon today. We’ll be joined by Marc Hauser of Cannabis Musings (who has a great piece on The Cannabist forbearance out this week), as well as the crew from High Spirits.
Watch it on our LinkedIn, YouTube, or Jeremy’s X page (and give us a follow while you are there).
-JB, JR, ZH
Today’s newsletter is 974 words or about a 7-minute read.
💡 What’s the big deal?
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
New York’s cannabis market continues to grow 📈
Driving the news: New York’s cannabis market closed out the year with its first half-billion dollar quarter. It’s on track for another one in 2026.
What they’re saying: "2025 really was a very busy year, and that's really reflected in our revenue numbers,” said Office of Cannabis Management COO Patrick McKeage during Thursday’s Cannabis Control Board meeting in Manhattan.
“By the end of the year, we had driven $1.7 billion in sales. We are nearly a $2 billion market in New York and growing fast.”
Sales in the first week of January hit $127.1 million, which is typically a down month. At that rate, total sales should surpass $500 million by the end of March.
"We've sold more cannabis in the first three weeks of 2026 than we sold in all of 2023. It's a reflection of the real momentum and drive in this program," said McKeage.
On the licenses: The Cannabis Control Board approved 36 licenses during the meeting:
Four Cultivation
17 Retail
13 Processor
Two Final Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensaries
Aspiring retailers from the December 2023 queue are still waiting for applications to be reviewed. Meanwhile, 215 applications from November 2023 remain pending. So far the CCB has approved final licenses for 762 retail shops from the November 2023 applicants, though many are still not open for business.
From the following month, 2,704 would-be retailers remain.
McKeage said 89% of the operators in the market have been properly credentialed for the state's seed-to-sale system, contracted to Metrc. Retailers had until Jan. 12 to enter their inventory into the system. The deadline for credentialing was supposed to be Dec. 12.
Watching the market: McKeage said that the Office of Cannabis Management is continuing to monitor the expansion of cultivation licenses in the hopes of preventing over-saturation.
"Part of why we are trying to be so deliberate and intentional about our approach to cultivation licensing, is because one common characteristics across the markets where you've seen the most significant compression is over-licensing of the supply side, which means cultivators in particular are fire-saling (sic) the product," he said.
-ZH
📣 Quotable
"We’re finding that data rarely drives VC decision-making. As cited in Forbes, even when pitch content is identical, investors were 60% more likely to favor male entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, women-led companies are heavily outperforming their counterparts, from significantly more revenue per dollar raised to over 15% less cash burned. The sheer irony of this isn’t lost on us: in a numbers-driven industry, the numbers are still being outright ignored due to unsubstantiated bias," wrote Mitchell Osak in his Cannabis Management Review Substack about how female CEOs are crushing it in our industry.
⏩ Quick hits
Washington's Senate Committee on Labor & Commerce approved a bill on Feb. 3 that would allow homegrowing in the state.
Members of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, which included neuroscience researchers, mental health professionals, psychedelic therapy leaders and drug policy advocates say they were all denied entry to Smart Approaches to Marijuana's "Good Drug Policy Summit," in Washington D.C.
The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled that Stiiizy is not allowed to import vape devices that infringe on patents held by rival Pax Labs.
The Texas Department of State Health Services proposed, on Jan. 9, increasing licensing fees for hemp retailers from $150 to $20,000 and for manufacturers from $250 to $25,000, but now advocates from the industry say it could cripple the market and drive users back to illicit sources.
The Cato Institute filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of preserving gun rights to cannabis users.
🧳 People moves
New Jersey Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin tapped Jacqueline Ferraro, the co-founder of the Cannabis Advisory Group and a longtime cannabis activist in New Jersey, to serve on the state’s five-member Cannabis Regulatory Commission, Politico reports.
🤝 Deals, launches, partnerships
Cannabis tech company Dutchie launched Round Up the Change, a new checkout feature that allows dispensary customers to round up their purchase total to support nonprofit organizations and industry associations advancing cannabis justice reform and legalization. Learn more.
True Terpenes rolled out Headstash, a new aroma product that the company says keeps cannabis flavor tasting “fresh-from-harvest” and consistent across the supply chain while staying under 0.3% THC.
The Prairie Island Indian Community’s cannabis company plans to open an Island Peži dispensary in Mankato, its first shop off tribal land, as it continues expanding supply to dozens of Minnesota retailers through its Tokáhe Distribution arm
👀 In case you missed it
If you couldn’t make it to The Highrise last week, you can watch the full program on our YouTube channel:
🔬 Science & research
A new study published in the journal of Internal Medicine found that over 80% of cannabis health claims in Swedish newspapers were unsupported by clinical evidence, with only 4.9% judged to be true and 8.6% partly true. Read more from Cannabis Health News about how to interpret evidence when it comes to cannabis research.
📰 What we’re reading
The Rescheduling of Marijuana is Not Happening Any Time Soon (Opinion) | Cannabis Business Times