Cresco Labs (CRLBF +0.17%) isn't wasting any time taking advantage of Arizona's freshly sanctioned recreational marijuana market. The company announced on Monday that it has won approval from the state's Department of Health to sell this version of the product at its Sunnyside dispensary in Phoenix.
Arizona was part of the "green wave" that saw the citizenry of five U.S. states vote in favor of various forms of marijuana legalization last Election Day. Arizona had already legalized the consumption and sale of medical cannabis; the vote flipped the switch on recreational weed, too. The latter legalization took effect on Jan. 22.
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Sunnyside, Cresco's dispensary brand, has a light presence in Arizona. In fact, the Phoenix dispensary is the only Sunnyside store in the entire state. Until now it has sold only medical marijuana, in line with existing law.
"With the same playbook deployed in other states, we have invested in infrastructure, we are executing in cultivation, and we are accelerating the wholesale distribution of our branded products," Cresco CEO Charlie Bachtell said of its operations in the state.
In addition to the dispensary, Cresco has a cultivation and processing facility located with the store. The company also runs a cultivation facility in the smaller Arizona municipality of Vicksburg.
Although it is considered to be one of the more prominent multistate operators on the marijuana scene, Sunnyside doesn't yet have an immense footprint. There are no Sunnyside stores in any of the four other states that approved pro-marijuana initiatives last year: New Jersey, Mississippi, Montana, and South Dakota. So at least for now, Arizona aside, Cresco probably won't reap a lot of benefit from the green wave.
