October 8, 2026
Shoppers from outside Illinois spent $24.35 million at the state's adult-use dispensaries in August, out of $122.75 million in total sales. That is 19.8%. Through the first eight months of 2026, nonresidents accounted for $183.9 million, or 19.7% of the $933 million total.
A fifth of the market is a lot of revenue, and almost none of it is under Illinois' control. It depends on what Wisconsin, Indiana, and Iowa lawmakers decide. Illinois cannabis out-of-state sales have already shrunk once, when Missouri legalized, and the data shows what that looked like.
The Department of Financial and Professional Regulation splits monthly sales by buyer residency in its cumulative sales table. Our calculations from that table:
| Period | Out-of-state share of adult-use sales |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 31.6% |
| 2022 | 30.9% |
| 2023 | 25.0% |
| 2024 | 22.4% |
| 2025 (Jan–May) | 20.7% |
| 2026 (Jan–Aug) | 19.7% |
Source: IDFPR monthly sales figures, share calculated by HoldenLeads. The state did not report residency from June through November 2025 while it switched to the Metrc tracking system.
In 2022, nonresidents spent $479 million in Illinois. The share has stayed between about 19% and 21% in every month reported since January 2025. The decline has stalled, but the share hasn't recovered.
Missouri started adult-use sales on February 3, 2023. Illinois' out-of-state dollars in February 2023 were 10.2% below February 2022, and March came in nearly 17% below March 2022, per Green Market Report. The out-of-state share dropped six points in one year.
The towns across the river from St. Louis felt it first. Collinsville's cannabis tax revenue fell from $1.2 million in 2022 to $774,000 in 2023, St. Louis Public Radio reported. Sauget went from more than $55,000 a month to about $23,000. "There were folks that were obviously traveling across the river to come to us. We knew that our volume would likely go down," Collinsville City Manager Derek Jackson said. Not every town lost that much. Fairview Heights Mayor Mark Kupsky said, "To be honest, we've seen little or no impact."
Missouri sold $1.52 billion in 2025, $1.34 billion of it adult-use. Its adult-use tax is 6%, plus up to 3% local. Illinois charges a 10% to 25% purchaser excise tax on top of sales and local taxes.
The remaining nonresident demand comes mainly from states with no adult-use market.
Wisconsin. A Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo, reported in April 2026, found that the five Illinois counties along the Wisconsin line with dispensaries generated $319.4 million in sales, and 41.5% of it came from out-of-state residents. The bureau's earlier memo, on 2022 sales, put that share at 50.6%. Wisconsin Democrats introduced a legalization bill in February, and Republican leaders who control the Legislature signaled it would not move.
Indiana. A decriminalization bill and a reclassification bill were filed in January. The decriminalization bill, HB 1191, never got past its first committee referral before the session ended. Illinois stores near the line have long seen Indiana customers. "There is no doubt that we see a lot of Indiana driver's licenses when people check in and a lot of Indiana license plates in the parking lot," Jason Erkes of Sunnyside's Danville store told the Tribune-Star in 2024. Thrive's Tim Rasmussen said Terre Haute is "the No. 1 zip code in Indiana that visits our Casey store."
Iowa. Governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill in June that doubles the state's CBD dispensaries from five to ten, still capped at 4.5 grams of THC every 90 days. Little Village reported that Iowa Republicans killed another legalization bill this year.
Illinois law caps a nonresident at 15 grams of flower, 2.5 grams of concentrate, and 250 milligrams of THC in infused products, half the resident limits, and the limits are cumulative. A Wisconsin or Indiana shopper can't buy a full ounce at an Illinois counter. The ounce is the cheapest flower per gram, so a border store's out-of-state customers top out at the half ounce and pay more per gram.
Illinois' switch to Metrc changed what the sales figures measure. The system captures "all discounts and promotions at checkout," and IDFPR says earlier months "collected some pre-discount prices." Dollar figures from before mid-2025 are inflated by an amount nobody has published, so raw year-over-year declines look worse than they were.
Comparing the two groups over the same months avoids that problem. From January to May 2026, out-of-state dollars were down 26.1% from a year earlier and in-state dollars were down 19.4%. Both figures carry the same distortion. The gap between them is the useful number: nonresident spending is still falling about seven points faster than resident spending.
Two things could change the out-of-state share.
The first is the federal hemp deadline. The restrictions on hemp THC products now take effect December 11, after Congress delayed them a month. In neighboring states without legal cannabis, hemp THC sold in gas stations and smoke shops has been the legal alternative to a drive into Illinois. If that alternative goes away, some of those shoppers may start making the drive. That is a possibility to watch in the January and February numbers, not a forecast.
The second is legalization next door. If Wisconsin or Indiana legalizes, stores near that border would probably lose customers the way the Metro East did after Missouri. Neither state legalized in 2026, so that risk is at least a legislative session away.
The out-of-state fifth is regional. It is concentrated in the counties along the Wisconsin, Indiana, and Iowa lines, where nonresidents were 41.5% of sales on the Wisconsin border alone. A store in Lake or Winnebago County has a different customer base than one in Springfield, and its forecast depends on another state's legislature.
Border stores buy for a capped basket. Nonresidents can't buy ounces or more than 250 mg of edibles. Brands and distributors pitching those stores should lead with formats that fit under the cap: half ounces and smaller, and edible packs of 250 mg or less.
The risk is political. A vendor with a large share of revenue in Wisconsin-border stores is exposed to a Wisconsin legalization vote, the same way Metro East vendors were exposed to Missouri's. It is worth knowing which of your Illinois accounts sit on a border before planning next year's numbers.
How much of Illinois cannabis sales come from out of state? About 19.7% of adult-use dollars from January through August 2026, or $183.9 million, according to IDFPR's monthly figures. In August, it was $24.35 million of $122.75 million.
How much can a non-Illinois resident buy? 15 grams of flower, 2.5 grams of concentrate, and 250 milligrams of THC in infused products, half the resident limits. The limits are cumulative.
Did Missouri legalization hurt Illinois dispensaries? Out-of-state sales fell sharply after Missouri began adult-use sales in February 2023, and towns near St. Louis saw cannabis tax revenue fall by a third or more, according to St. Louis Public Radio. The statewide out-of-state share dropped from 30.9% in 2022 to 25.0% in 2023.
Is out-of-state demand still falling? Slowly. The share has held around 19% to 21% since early 2025, but on matched months, nonresident dollars are still falling faster than resident dollars.
Out-of-state demand is concentrated in the Illinois counties along the Wisconsin, Indiana, and Iowa borders. See verified, owner-level dispensary contacts for Illinois, refreshed weekly. Free preview at holdenleads.com.
Holden Leads
Dispensaries, cultivators, manufacturers, distributors and testing labs, cross-referenced weekly against official state regulatory databases and enriched with phone numbers, emails, websites, and social profiles. Stop manually hunting for contact info. Get the full list today.