Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation on Thursday allowing licensed cannabis microbusinesses across New York to sell their products at approved community events and farmers markets without first partnering with outside cultivators or processors. The change removes a bureaucratic hurdle that had kept small, independent growers from setting up shop alongside the apples and heirloom tomatoes at local markets statewide.
The new law, Senate Bill S.10113 and its companion Assembly Bill A.11217, lets a single licensed microbusiness act as its own cultivator, processor, and retailer when applying for a Cannabis Showcase Event permit, according to the New York State Governor's Office. Previously, those businesses needed to form multi-party partnerships just to hold a pop-up sale, an added layer of paperwork and coordination that smaller operations often couldn't manage on their own. Hochul said opening legal cannabis sales at approved community events and farmers markets expands consumer access to regulated products and strengthens the state's cannabis industry, according to reporting from Gothamist.
Who Pushed the Bill and Why
The legislation was authored and championed by State Senator Michelle Hinchey and Assemblymember Donna Lupardo, who chair their respective legislative agriculture committees, according to Marijuana Moment. Their goal was to give small craft farms without major marketing budgets a direct route to consumers, since these growers have struggled to secure shelf space in traditional dispensaries. John Kagia, executive director of the state Office of Cannabis Management, said the new legislation secures a critical opportunity for cannabis businesses to showcase their products, per Gothamist's reporting.
New York now has hundreds of locations across the state where approved events can host legal cannabis sales, and the state has issued 2,259 adult-use cannabis licenses statewide as of May, per Gothamist. That expansion comes even as the market itself has struggled with profitability at the retail level: legal cannabis sellers reported that only 47 percent were profitable, according to a state Cannabis Control Board report cited in Gothamist's coverage. Legal cannabis merchants reported more than $400 million in sales through March, the same reporting shows.
Local Towns Still Hold Veto Power
The catch is that none of this happens without a municipality's blessing. Under Part 117 regulations finalized by the Office of Cannabis Management in May, any host retailer seeking a Cannabis Showcase Event permit must first obtain explicit written authorization from the municipality where the event will take place, according to Mandelbaum Barrett PC. That means state approval alone isn't enough — a town can simply say no.
Some already have. In July, the Town Board of Windsor in Broome County passed a resolution prohibiting all Cannabis Showcase Events within town limits, according to Town of Windsor records. New York law allows municipalities to opt out of hosting adult-use cannabis activities altogether, meaning the real-world reach of Thursday's law will hinge on how many towns choose to open their farmers markets to cannabis vendors versus how many follow Windsor's lead.
From Pandemic Surplus to Statewide Program
Temporary direct-to-consumer cannabis events in New York trace back to August 2023, when the state launched a pilot Cannabis Growers Showcase in Syracuse to help farmers offload severe crop surpluses caused by early retail licensing delays, per Marijuana Moment. That pilot sunset in early 2024 before lawmakers codified and expanded the concept by statute — a lineage that led directly to Thursday's signing.
New York's legal adult-use cannabis market has grown rapidly since those rocky early years, reaching $3.3 billion in cumulative retail sales by May and generating over $553 million in sales during the first four months of the year alone, according to the state Office of Cannabis Management. The state hit another milestone in April when its 600th licensed adult-use dispensary opened in Manhattan, a sharp jump from fewer than 100 open dispensaries two years earlier, per MJBizDaily.
Craft Growers Chase Shelf Space
As of March, state regulatory records show New York had approved 321 microbusinesses, 506 adult-use retail dispensaries, and 245 cultivators among its active cannabis business permits, per MJBizDaily's reporting. Fifty-six percent of all adult-use cannabis licenses statewide were held by Social and Economic Equity applicants, including 325 retail operations, reflecting the equity mandates written into New York's 2021 legalization law, the outlet reported.
Small independent cultivators have frequently been squeezed out by limited shelf space and slow retail rollouts even as the overall market has boomed, which is precisely the gap the new farmers-market pathway is meant to close. State and local authorities have also carried out more than 2,000 enforcement operations to protect licensed vendors from illicit competition, seizing nearly 3,800 pounds of unlicensed cannabis valued at over $20 million, according to Shanken News Daily. Unlicensed weed merchants selling cannabis products at farmers markets and other outdoor events without a permit remain part of the backdrop the new law is designed to help legal sellers compete against, per Gothamist.
New York legalized recreational marijuana in March 2021, and a 2025 state report found that a significant share of New York adults use cannabis for both medical and non-medical reasons, according to Gothamist. Whether Thursday's law meaningfully expands where and how craft growers can reach those consumers will now depend less on Albany and more on decisions made town by town.
