New York’s legal cannabis market crossed two milestones at once on March 31, when the state Office of Cannabis Management said it would join Pure Blossoms Cannabis on the Upper West Side to celebrate the opening of New York’s 600th licensed adult-use dispensary, even as total retail sales surpassed $3 billion. The agency said the ribbon-cutting at 716 Amsterdam Ave. doubled as a fifth-anniversary marker for the Marihuana Regulation and Taxation Act, the 2021 law that legalized adult-use cannabis and built the framework for what the office describes as a safe, equitable and regulated market in New York State.

According to the Office of Cannabis Management’s advisory, the noon press conference and ribbon-cutting were set to feature Pure Blossoms owner Mike Rodriguez, the office’s acting executive director John Kagia, and local elected officials and community partners, with brief remarks preceding doors opening to the public. The agency framed the 600-store count and the $3 billion sales figure as evidence of a market that, in its words, is still growing. Both figures are the office’s own tallies; the agency offered them in a media advisory rather than a formal sales report, and the Governor’s office put total retail sales at $3.3 billion in marking the law’s fifth anniversary.