On March 29th, 2024, PJ Vogt made public a burning question of his. On his podcast Search Engine, Vogt asked: “Why are there so many illegal weed stores in New York City?”
The inquiry joined the annals of hard-hitting questions that Vogt, a veteran podcaster, has asked for years. (Why are there so many chicken bones on the street? Am I the victim of an international sushi scam? What is jawmaxxing?) It also hit close to home: the first of two episodes on the subject opens with Vogt roaming New York’s Lower East Side, marveling at one cannabis retailer lined up after the other. Later, Vogt learned, a sweeping majority of these shops are illegal.
Vogt wasn’t the only one taking notice. Just one week before that Search Engine episode aired, The New York Times reported that some 85 licensed stores were vastly outnumbered by more than 2,000 unlicensed outfits. By July, New York state had shut down over 1,000 illegal cannabis shops across the state. In a press conference to announce the crackdown, Governor Kathy Hochul described that the effort was, in no small part, designed to protect kids: “I want parents to see this,” Hochul said, holding up a cannabis product packaged in a box mimicking a set of colored pencils, “this is intentionally designed to draw the eye and the interest of our children.”
Indeed, as cannabis has become widespread across the country—with 24 states legalizing non-medical use and 38 states legalizing medical use, as of December 2024—pediatricians have already begun to see the impact of the substance on children. In the past decade, emergency department visits due to cannabis intoxication among youth have leapt. In the years following the COVID pandemic, these rates have increased further still.
To date, few studies have evaluated the proliferation of unlicensed cannabis—or sought to better understand how these outfits are conducting their business, in ways that could implicate children. To that end, in an article being early released in Pediatrics, Dr. Timothy Becker and colleagues at Columbia University and Weill Cornell Medicine compared how licensed and unlicensed retailers market their cannabis products to children—and how regularly these shops verify customer age (10.1542/peds.2024-068669).
By evaluating 37 retailers via a “secret shopper” methodology, the team found that only 10% of unlicensed retailers required ID for entry, and only 48% checked ID at any point prior to purchase, compared to 100% of the licensed stores. They also found that unlicensed retailers were significantly more likely to use sales tactics appealing to youth, like cartoons and candy.
These tactics “might…expan[d] the cannabis market by bringing youth into contact with cannabis products and marketing materials, and normalizing its use,” the authors write.
Pediatricians interested in learning more about the evolving cannabis retail market—and how such commercial trends might shape children’s access to, and interest in, the products—would be well served to tune into this month’s edition of Pediatrics, as well as this article’s accompanying video abstract on the journal’s website.