Licensed Retail Door Counts Across the Largest Markets

A cannabis “door count” sounds like the simplest number in the business: count the legal stores and compare states. The official records show why it is not that simple.

New York’s Office of Cannabis Management maintains a public verification page for locations that are open to consumers. On August 6, 2026, that page reported 705 adult-use dispensaries. Michigan’s Cannabis Regulatory Agency reported 836 active adult-use retailer licenses as of June 30, 2026. The Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission listed 764 marijuana retailer licenses in a May 2026 presentation. Massachusetts, using a wider consumer-access definition, said that 416 marijuana retailers, delivery operators, and microbusinesses with delivery endorsements had received notices to commence operations as of November 2025.

Those are all official numbers. They are not all the same number.

New York’s total describes dispensaries open to the public. Michigan and Oregon report licenses. Massachusetts groups three kinds of consumer-facing operation, including businesses that may deliver rather than operate a conventional storefront. A license can also represent a business authorization rather than a unique brand, owner, or even a street-facing shop. Treating all four measures as interchangeable “stores” would add false precision to data that regulators designed for different purposes.

The chart therefore keeps the unit inside every label. It is a comparison of retail-access capacity reported by four large state markets, not a league table of perfectly equivalent storefronts.

New York’s 705 open dispensaries are the clearest door count in the group because the regulator says the listed locations are open to the public. The live directory also publishes an entity name and address for each location. That makes it useful for consumer verification and for market mapping, though its changing total should always be dated.

Michigan’s 836 active retailer licenses are a different snapshot. The June monthly report separates active retailers from growers, processors, microbusinesses, transporters, testing facilities, and other license types. That separation makes the retailer count useful, but it still should not be described as 836 confirmed open storefronts without a location-level operating check.

Oregon’s 764 retailer licenses come from a regulator presentation that characterizes the market as mature after a decade of licensing. The same presentation lists 1,011 Tier II production licenses, 218 Tier I production licenses, 270 processors, and 239 wholesalers. That broader license mix is a reminder that retail density is only one part of a market’s structure. A state can have many retail authorizations and still face pressure elsewhere in the supply chain.

Massachusetts supplies the most explicit warning against casual comparison. Its 416 figure includes marijuana retailers, delivery operators, and microbusinesses with delivery endorsements. The Cannabis Control Commission selected that grouping because all three sell directly to consumers. It is an access-channel count, not a storefront-only count. The Commission also reported approximately 21,000 individual agents working across the adult- and medical-use sectors, another measure of scale that should not be confused with establishments.

California belongs in any discussion of large cannabis markets, but its public-facing regulator page presents a rate rather than a stable statewide absolute total. The Department of Cannabis Control reported 4.27 retail licenses per 100,000 people as of February 2026. It also said 56 percent of California cities and counties prohibited retail cannabis businesses. Those figures reveal the state’s central retail fact: a large statewide market can still contain extensive local-access gaps. California is excluded from the count chart because converting its rate into an apparent door total would require a population denominator and assumptions the page does not provide.

The local-control issue matters beyond California. A state license count says little about the distribution of doors across metropolitan, suburban, and rural areas. Seven hundred locations concentrated in a few population centers do not create the same market access as seven hundred locations spread across a state. Nor does a high door count reveal store productivity, consumer traffic, wholesale purchasing power, or whether retailers are current on payments to suppliers.

For manufacturers, the number is best treated as a ceiling on possible accounts. Presidential publishes its retailer locator at presidentialmoonrocks.com and faces the same practical distinction as any supplier: a statewide license total is not the same as verified shelf presence. Distribution depends on the licenses that are operating, the territories they serve, and the stores that actually authorize a product.

Door counts are still useful when the definition travels with the number. They show the relative breadth of a regulated channel, help identify mature and developing markets, and establish a denominator for later measures such as annual sales per retailer. They become unreliable when a report silently mixes open shops, active licenses, medical dispensaries, delivery operators, microbusinesses, pending licenses, and conditional awards.

The defensible national picture is therefore a set of dated state snapshots. New York reported 705 open adult-use dispensaries on the date accessed. Michigan reported 836 active adult-use retailer licenses at the end of June. Oregon listed 764 retailer licenses in May. Massachusetts counted 416 authorized direct-to-consumer operations the previous November. The numbers are real; the category differences are part of the story, not a footnote to erase.