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Is New York Selling Too Much Weed?
Legal weed sales hit a new record high this summer in New York, but supply may not be able to keep up with the rotation for much longer
After a slow, troubled start and despite some confusing current guidance for NYC dispensaries, the New York State cannabis market is flying high. And it’s putting up record numbers.
Between the state’s 497 licensed dispensaries (150+ of which operate within the five boroughs), legal weed sales totaled $214.4 million in sales during August 2025, over twice the amount sold in August 2024, according to Crain’s. That performance followed an equally impressive June and July, during which $153.2 million and $161.6 million of cannabis sales were recorded, respectively, bringing sales to $2.3 billion since the program launched in December 2022, roughly half of which ($1.26 billion) arrived in 2025 alone, now a landmark year for legal weed in New York.
This is all good news for regular and circumstantial stoners, who now have access to a more robust and regulated retail cannabis market than anyone could have possibly hoped for, but New York’s green rush does appear to have caught regulators and the state’s 516 licensed growers by surprise. Kevin Brennan, the deputy director of analytics for the Office of Cannabis Management, claims crops aren’t keeping up with statewide demand, a perfect storm for a supply shortage, and, for consumers, higher prices. “We have licensed 51% more than we need for 2026, and about what we need for 2027. However, given how little of that is currently online, we project an almost 40% potential shortfall for next year,” Brennan said at an OCM meeting on Monday.
Brennan doesn’t seem too worried, though, pointing to surveys of licensed growers both already and soon-to-be operational, indicating they intend to plant more in the coming months to meet the projected demand for 2026. But for growers, who have harvested roughly 474,000 of the 1.19 million pounds of cannabis biomass authorized by the state for this year, that’s a whole lot of seeds to sow in a pretty narrow timeframe. Here’s hoping they hit their mark before the cost of an eighth moonshots to a mutiny-level event.
