September 8, 2026
Thirty-two Colorado dispensaries got a new owner in the first week of August. Vireo Growth closed its purchase of PharmaCann's 17 LivWell stores on August 7, and Verdant Capital Partners announced on August 4 that it had taken ownership of 15 Native Roots stores. The signs on the buildings did not change. The people signing purchase orders did.
The backdrop is a licensing pipeline that keeps thinning. CRB Monitor's second-quarter report, out September 1, counted 4,063 approved or pending licenses nationally, down 28% from the 2024 peak, with declines in 15 states. Sales, meanwhile, held up: July came in at $2.56 billion nationally, up 10% from a year earlier. Fewer licenses, more revenue, and a lot of it flowing through storefronts that changed hands. Here is what moved in the states we track.
The Vireo deal paid roughly $49 million in stock plus assumed liabilities and takes the company to 56 Colorado stores. The Verdant deal, effective July 31, keeps the Native Roots brand on 15 storefronts under new ownership. The old Native Roots, meanwhile, shut its Denver cultivation facility and laid off 141 people. Colorado's two largest retail chains a year ago are now owned by companies that did not operate in the state in 2024.
State revenue kept pace. June marijuana tax and fee collections were $18.9 million, and 2026 collections stand at $113.9 million through the first half.
The Cannabis Control Board approved 25 adult-use licenses on August 6: seven cultivators, ten processors, seven retail dispensaries, and one CAURD. The statewide total is 2,322 licenses, and 705 dispensaries are operating. The board also processed 78 adult-use renewals and two denials.
Ownership moved too. Grown Rogue closed the first stage of its acquisition of PharmaCann's New York assets on August 21, picking up the Hamptonburgh cultivation site and four Verilife dispensaries through a joint venture. On Long Island, Canna Planet acquired all three Beleaf dispensaries, with the transition set to finish this fall. Five new stores opened across Rochester, White Plains, Rome, Little Neck, and Brooklyn, per a regional roundup.
Higher Love closed five of its nine Upper Peninsula stores on August 9, in Crystal Falls, Escanaba, Houghton, Munising, and Ontonagon, and named the 24% wholesale tax as the reason. Four locations remain.
The regulator took a store off the map the same week. Unique Farms, operating as Zaza Recreational in Flushing, surrendered its retail license permanently on August 7 under a consent order that cited bulk sales straight from the vault and advertising for them. The Cannabis Regulatory Agency's July disciplinary report, released August 24, listed 75 enforcement actions and three license surrenders. July sales were $260.6 million.
One number cut the other way: CRB Monitor recorded Michigan adding 354 medical licenses in the second quarter, though 270 of them came from a single cultivator's expansion.
On August 27 the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation released the application that lets adult-use dispensaries add medical sales, with sales permitted from September 10 and a $5,000 nonrefundable fee. It implements the June law that also authorized drive-throughs and later hours. Every adult-use retailer in the state can now become a medical account, which is a new customer segment for pharmacy-adjacent vendors and a new compliance workload for the store.
The state's first-half sales release put adult-use at $684.3 million through June.
California's second-quarter cannabis tax haul was $261.7 million, flat against the same quarter last year. The Department of Cannabis Control published no August license-count update. Humboldt County settled the federal lawsuit over its abatement program on August 19, withdrawing notices and paying $350,000.
Massachusetts posted $149.3 million in adult-use sales for July, with the 2026 total past $1.11 billion. CRB Monitor flagged it as the state with the largest second-quarter drop in approved and pending licenses, down 25.
Vireo is the name that keeps appearing. Its second-quarter report put revenue at $209.3 million, and the company now runs about 170 stores in ten states. With the pending Cannabist, Planet 13, and other deals, it projects roughly 270 dispensaries across 15 states. That is a hundred storefronts whose purchasing will route through a corporate buyer that did not exist in this form 18 months ago.
Every ownership change above is a row that looks the same and behaves differently. Thirty-two Colorado stores, four Verilife locations in New York, and three on Long Island all kept their addresses and lost their old decision-makers in a single month. Michigan deleted six retail rows outright between Higher Love and Zaza. Illinois is about to add a medical flag to a few hundred existing accounts.
None of this arrives as a notification. It arrives as a bounced email, a buyer who stopped replying, or an order that went to whoever the new parent company already works with. The vendors who reached the new owners in August are the ones who knew the deal had closed.
Openings, closures, and ownership changes are only useful if your records reflect them. See verified, weekly-refreshed dispensary contacts across six states. Free preview here.
Holden Leads
Holden Leads tracks every licensed dispensary across California, Michigan, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Maine — 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.