The Hochul administration recently touted a major milestone in cannabis sales, trumpeting $1 billion in total revenue from nearly 300 adult-use dispensaries since the recreational market launched in 2022.

This was good news, and long overdue. Yet the administration’s victory lap is cold comfort to the state’s struggling medical cannabis industry, which is slowly withering due to a pattern of disinvestment and ongoing bad policy decisions.

The incredible untapped potential of New York’s adult-use market has gone unrealized due to multiple missteps by the early leadership of the Office of Cannabis Management, or OCM, that slowed legal sales and allowed the illicit market to thrive. There is ample evidence that careless adult-use implementation can reduce patient access to affordable medical cannabis. That has certainly been the case in New York.

There are just more than 100,200 patients registered in New York’s medical program today — down from 120,423 in December 2023 — in spite of a six-figure ad campaign

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