To get a picture of where Northeastern state medical programs stand, we had to scrape old regulator websites, rummage through archived PowerPoints, and recruit friendly state communications staff to help us find data.
The New Jersey CRC approved its first annual licenses and a massive batch of 296 applications for provisional licenses. The approvals include a mix of proposed cultivators, manufacturers, and retailers.
As the first deadline in New Jersey for final license awards looms, the holders of over 300 conditional cannabis licenses are still scrambling for capital and real estate.
Despite confusion among applicants, New Jersey’s top regulator, Jeff Brown, wants everyone to know: No matter the circumstances social equity or “conditional” licenses will be considered first.
It appears the state is on pace for an average of about $35.3 million of adult use sales per month.
The three-phase elimination of the sales tax was delineated in the Jake Honig Compassionate Use Medical Cannabis Act signed into law by Governor Murphy in 2019.
Since New Jersey’s cannabis industry is not vertically integrated, applicants looking to break into the market will have to decide if they want to pursue growing and processing or distribution, delivery, and wholesale.
Industry experts like CannaBizIL executive director Pamela Althoff says May’s slight sales decrease isn’t a sign of bad things to come, but likely because workers returning to the office are consuming less cannabis than they would in the privacy of their own homes.
“Most of the cultivators have dispensaries. What value proposition do I have for them?” said one dispensary license owner.
The CRC awarded conditional licenses to the first 11 new retailers, 22 new cultivators, 13 new manufacturers, and awarded annual licenses to 4 testing laboratories.
