As cannabis products become more widely available in retail settings across the United States, communities are increasingly committed to ensuring that public health is not compromised by commercial interests.

The retail environment shapes how cannabis products are marketed, who is exposed to them, what products are easiest to access, and ultimately how communities experience the impacts of cannabis commercialization.

For public health practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and community advocates, understanding cannabis sales at the point of sale is critical for developing effective, evidence-based policies that protect public health while responding to a rapidly changing marketplace.

That is why Counter Tools developed the resource Cannabis at the Point of Sale: Products, Policies, and the Retail Environment — a one-pager designed to help communities begin to understand, assess, and respond to the evolving cannabis retail landscape.

What Does “Point of Sale” Mean for Cannabis Products?

The “point of sale” refers to the places where cannabis products are sold and promoted. This includes licensed cannabis dispensaries – but also includes the many all-age stores that sell cannabis-derived (hemp) intoxicating products, such as convenience stores, gas stations, smoke and vape shops, and grocery stores.

Just as tobacco and alcohol research has shown that retail environments influence public health outcomes, cannabis retail environments can also affect initiation, patterns of use, social perception, and health risks.

Why Cannabis Retail Environments Matter

Cannabis products today are very different from those available decades ago. Retail markets now include high-potency concentrates, flavored vape products, infused beverages, gummies, candies, snacks, and products designed with branding and packaging that can strongly appeal to youth.

Communities often focus on legalization policies themselves, but retail conditions are equally important because they determine how cannabis products are introduced into everyday environments.

The point of sale matters because it influences:

• Youth exposure and appeal
• Product accessibility
• Consumer understanding of risks
• Use patterns and dependence
• Community density of retailers
• Perceptions of safety and normalization

Understanding these factors allows communities to identify gaps in regulation and opportunities for prevention.

One of the biggest public health concerns related to cannabis retail environments is youth exposure. Research has shown that colorful packaging, candy-like products, sweet flavors, cartoon imagery, and food-based branding can increase youth appeal. Cannabis gummies, chocolates, beverages, and snacks are often packaged in ways that resemble conventional consumer products familiar to children and adolescents.

What Can Communities Do?

Local governments, coalitions, researchers, and advocates can take meaningful action by gathering local data. Conducting retail assessments provides valuable information to best inform policy decisions. 

Communities can visit local retailers and systematically document:

• Product types
• Product potency
• Packaging features
• Advertising and promotions
• Pricing practices
• Product placement
• Exterior and interior signage
• Health warnings and labeling
• Store location, proximity, and density
• Other micro and macro-level factors

Many cannabis policies evolve rapidly, and local assessments help determine whether regulations are keeping pace with the marketplace, and whether there is compliance with the regulations. 

Point-of-sale assessments transform abstract policy conversations into concrete evidence about what is happening on the ground. Furthermore, local data is often more compelling than national statistics because it reflects conditions residents can directly observe in their own neighborhoods. 

Looking Ahead

Cannabis markets continue to evolve rapidly. New products, new marketing strategies, and new retail models are constantly emerging. At the same time, states and localities are still determining how best to regulate. The point of sale will remain one of the most important places where these tensions play out.

By paying attention to the retail environment, communities can move beyond broad debates about legalization and focus on practical, evidence-informed strategies that protect public health and reduce harm.

Collecting local data, evaluating retail conditions, and developing evidence-based policies can help communities better respond to emerging cannabis-related challenges while supporting informed decision-making for residents and policymakers alike.

A Georgia-based non-profit health coalition, Let’s Be Clear Georgia, and Counter Tools partnered together to lead a project focused on studying the landscape of intoxicating consumable hemp products and other intoxicating products in Georgia’s retail stores. During September and October 2025, community health staff and partners conducted retail store assessments at retailers within six different Georgia counties. This provided beneficial geographic diversity covering urban, suburban, and more rural areas across northern, central, and southern Georgia. There was also diverse representation in terms of the type of stores assessed, which included convenience stores, tobacco and vape shops, liquor/package stores, grocery stores, and drug stores. At these retail establishments, store assessors examined the types and forms of products sold, product promotion and advertisements, product accessibility within the store, products attractive to children, product constituents, product potency, and required store signage.

“A legislative study committee was formed to learn more about hemp consumables in Georgia. Recognizing that Georgia had no data on these products, our organization contacted Counter Tools to discuss conducting a retail assessment to be used to inform the public and policymakers about what is available in our state. The data confirmed what we had heard and seen. Stores were not abiding by the law, putting Georgia’s youth at risk,” said Charlotte Spell, Executive Director of Let’s Be Clear Georgia.

These retail store assessments revealed extensive non-compliance with Georgia law and widespread availability of highly potent intoxicating hemp products and other intoxicating products posing significant public health risks.

Findings showed:

1. Widespread non-compliance

More than half of all assessed stores sold prohibited hemp product types, including smokable flower and hemp-infused foods. Nearly one-third failed to post the required 21+ age-of-sale signage.

A hazelnut “crispy blunts” (wafer candy) containing consumable hemp found in a Georgia retailer. This is in violation of state law, which prohibits hemp-adulterated or hemp-infused food products.

2. Youth exposure and appeal

Nearly 70% of stores sold hemp-derived cannabis products that are attractive to children, including items using candy imagery, copycat branding, cartoon characters, and kid-focused flavors.

3. Potency loopholes

While Georgia state law limits Delta-9 THC potency for gummies and beverages, manufacturers circumvent these rules by using other intoxicating cannabinoids such as Delta-8, Delta-10, HHC, and THC-P. As a result, 55% of stores selling gummies offered products exceeding 300 mg THC/HHC per package, and 61% sold single gummies exceeding 10 mg per piece.

1,500mg per gummy; 120,000 mg per jar. Containing a mixture of semi-synthetic and chemically synthesized cannabinoids and advertised with cartoon rocket ships. With a psychotropic effect typically starting at around 5 mg of THC consumption, this is 300 times that amount per gummy.

4. Unregulated potency in inhalable products

Vape cartridges and inhalable forms—which accounted for the majority of products found in stores—have no potency limits under current state law, despite containing highly concentrated intoxicating cannabinoids.

5. Public health risks increasing

Georgia poison control calls involving cannabis ingestion rose 66% from 2018 to 2021, with more hemp edible-related calls in the first 8 months of 2025 than in all of 2024.

1,000 mg per gummy “Delta-9 THC mix blend” found at a Georgia retailer. With the state’s legal limit set at 10 mg of Delta-9 THC per gummy, this is 100 times higher than the state’s legal limit. Advertised in youth-appealing “watermelon OG” and “strawberry smash” flavors.

Kratom products containing highly concentrated levels of added 7-OH, which leads to a potent opioid-like effect that the FDA has issued warning letters about due to physical and behavioral health and safety concerns.

Counter Tools synthesized the store assessment findings and coupled this with research conducted on both federal and Georgia state laws regarding consumable hemp products. Along with descriptive statistical support from the University of North Texas School of Public Health, Counter Tools composed a final report that included a quick-reference executive summary and infographic. Let’s Be Clear will be providing these materials to the Georgia state legislature’s blue ribbon committee, which is currently meeting to review policy approaches.

“Working with the Counter Tools team was like working with old friends. They provided excellent customer service (project management) by guiding the process while assuring that our specific needs were met. The result has provided our state with valuable products that will contribute to conversations with parents, administrators, youth, and policymakers. This valuable data will also be highlighted at Let’s Be Clear Georgia’s upcoming Marijuana Prevention Summit in 2026,” said Charlotte Spell, Executive Director of Let’s Be Clear Georgia.

Counter Tools looks forward to working with more states and local communities to collect store assessment data to support their policy, systems, and environmental change goals.

This presentation explored the commercial determinants of health (CDoH) as they relate to the cannabis industries sector, examining how product availability and design, placement, pricing, promotion, lobbying, and cross-industry partnerships may influence community health.

Recognizing that cannabis commercialization is relatively young compared to other consumer product industries, and, given the distinct social and legal backdrop of cannabis, there remains diverse viewpoints around both profit-driven motives and public health responsibilities – even from within the industry. With the significant harms faced by many U.S. communities of color due to mass incarceration, institutionalized racism, and disproportionately applied enforcement practices, cannabis-related criminalization of communities deepened cycles of poverty. Cannabis occupies a unique regulatory and historical space. It is simultaneously: 1) A product with reported therapeutic benefit for those suffering from certain medical conditions; 2) A substance historically used to justify disproportionate criminal punishment; 3) Operating only in state-based marketplaces, and 4) A rapidly expanding commercial sector attracting global corporate interest.

The expansion of cannabis commercialization has resulted in massive growth of public relations and policy strategies. Globally, the cannabis market is estimated at $50 billion today, with projections reaching $250-$400 billion by 2030. Apart from cannabis producers, processors, retailers, and interest groups working at the state level, this presentation focused more broadly on the cross-sector, multi-national corporate involvement in cannabis. At the corporate level, there are patterns that can be seen in the approaches taken by cannabis sector actors to influence public policy in ways that reflect strategies used by other sectors, such as tobacco and alcohol companies.

Internal documents from major tobacco companies — published in the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library at UCSF — show that the industry’s interest in cannabis dates back at least to the 1970s. A paper published in 2014, which combed through the tobacco industry documents and the companies’ stated interest in cannabis as both a potential and a rival product, has seemed to be quite predictive, at least based on the tobacco industry’s current and growing interest and investment in cannabis. Altria Group invested $1.8 billion in the Canadian company Cronos Group (45% ownership), which Altria calls an “emerging global cannabinoid company.” On their own website, Altria states that they hold “diversified positions across tobacco and cannabis.” British American Tobacco invested $86.8 million in Organigram (Canada) in 2025, plus ~$70 million in CBD and hemp companies. These investments remain small relative to tobacco’s global footprint in tobacco, nicotine, food, and beverage products — but the trendline is unmistakable. Given cannabis remains Schedule 1 under the United States Uniform Controlled Substances Act, multinational companies are “learning the industry” abroad, gaining operational experience before expanding into the U.S. once legal or regulatory hurdles shift.

Falling cigarette sales in many so-called developed nations in combination with an easing of cannabis restrictions have been clear drivers prompting this shift of their portfolio and positioning. This shift to invest more in cannabis-related products comes with the ability to leverage the tobacco industry’s manufacturing and distribution networks and technological capital and devices; they already have significant experience in inhalation and oral delivery systems, through their growth in vaping devices, new heated tobacco products, and oral nicotine pouch products. There is also a continuing trend of executives from alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical industries moving in roles within cannabis industries.

As cannabis becomes more profitable and corporatized – potentially both within and across state borders – we may expect certain behaviors to emerge or intensify. It is important to be vigilant and prepared for the ostensible commercial actions that will attempt to maximize profits and minimize costs, as that is an inherent goal to the business model. These patterns are already recognizable from other industries:

Pushing for regulations that disadvantage smaller operators

Efforts that quietly promote monopolization, reduce competition, and crowd out smaller businesses.

Funding research designed to produce favorable outcomes

Or suppressing findings that threaten profits.

Exploiting labor and growers

Both domestically and internationally, especially in regions lacking strong labor protections.

Prioritizing high-profit products at the expense of quality and safety

Particularly harmful for vulnerable populations of consumers.

Undermining education and social-equity aims

Including reducing cannabis taxes that fund health education and reinvestment in communities harmed by the War on Drugs.

Lobbying against evidence-supported public-health regulations

Even when such policies are designed to prevent consumer harm.

Using state-level preemption to block local protections

A well-documented tactic to weaken or delay stronger health regulations.

For policymakers, health leaders, consumers, and communities, it is important to be aware of these potential actions. Similar players that reshaped alcohol, pharmaceutical, food, and tobacco markets are already mapping out and leveraging strategies for cannabis. Understanding strategies that may threaten health – as well as anticipating commercial tactics – are both critical to supporting public health, equity, and safety.

References:

Barry RA, Hiilamo H, Glantz SA. Waiting for the opportune moment: the tobacco industry and marijuana legalization. Milbank Q. 2014 Jun;92(2):207-42. doi: 10.1111/1468-0009.12055. PMID: 24890245; PMCID: PMC4089369.

Ongenaert M, Decorte T. Like birds of a feather? A multi-case study on the connections between cannabis, tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical companies in legalized cannabis markets. Int J Drug Policy. 2025 Sep;143:104863. doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2025.104863. Epub 2025 Jun 5. PMID: 40479916.

University of Bath, Tobacco Tactics, Cannabis. 31 March 2023. https://www.tobaccotactics.org/article/cannabis/

Altria, About Altria, Corporate Factsheet. https://www.altria.com/about-altria/At_A_Glance/corporate-fact-sheet

Research by Dr. Matthew Rossheim, which was considered during this policy discussion, found that some of the biggest retail stores in Texas are selling dangerous and often illegal cannabis products. These include items that break state and federal laws or have been deemed unsafe by the FDA, such as certain THC edibles and vapes that are too strong, imported edibles with banned ingredients, and unapproved drugs like tianeptine and kratom extracts. Some retailers are using risky sales tactics like giving out free samples, not checking IDs, and selling near schools—methods that increase the chances of young people using these products.

CBD and CBG products would remain legal under the bill, but would no longer be legal to be sold within 1000 feet of a school.

The bill also introduces new criminal penalties for possessing as well as selling intoxicating hemp products, which unfortunately could contribute to additional incarceration related to hemp as well as marijuana. Public health laws can support social justice, but they can also contribute to inequities. It is imperative for public health professionals and decision makers to consider the role of structural racism and discrimination in policy work and enforcement and to continually take meaningful steps toward equitable cannabis policy change.

Intoxicating “hemp” and THC products, sometimes referred to as derived psychoactive cannabis products (DPCPs), are currently available in nearly every state, including those states that have banned certain DPCPs like Delta-8 THC. This is due to a loophole created by the 2018 Farm Bill which allows for the continuous development and sale of new types of DPCPs. The Texas bill has the potential to significantly reduce the availability of harmful cannabis products for Texans, particularly youth.

This month, Dr. Matthew Rossheim presented information on recent shifts in the U.S. cannabis markets and their implications, the harms from using derived psychoactive cannabis products, and regulations effective in mitigating these harms. Access the recording of Dr. Rossheim’s presentation and a link to his slides here.

In a recently published study, researchers examined the DPCP types, brands, and intoxicating compounds sold by the three top-trafficked U.S.-based DPCP retail websites. Researchers identified over 800 DPCPs from 118 brands, primarily available in the form of disposable vapes or edibles. Among these products, there were 26 distinct intoxicating compounds, with over half of the products including two or more intoxicating compounds. Some of the most prevalent intoxicating products identified included Delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), THC-P, Delta-9 THC, HHC, THC-A, and Delta-10 THC. This study highlights the expansive nature of this rapidly evolving market. Researchers point to the availability of at least 26 distinct intoxicating compounds as evidence of the industry’s adaptability, including their ability to quickly shift focus or find legal loopholes as regulatory challenges arise. 

DPCPs are often available in locations selling tobacco, such as gas stations or convenience stores. For decades, public health professionals have been engaged in surveillance efforts examining the availability of different types of tobacco products and how they are priced and promoted within the retail environment. These data have been key to making progress towards evidence-based policies that limit the availability and marketing of tobacco products at the point-of-sale. The referenced study offers a foundational understanding of the current online retail market for DPCPs. There is still much to be learned about the availability, marketing and promotion of these types of products at brick-and-mortar establishments to inform public health practice and policy efforts. 

Counter Tools can help with monitoring and tracking the sale of DPCPs in the retail environment. Contact us at hello@countertools.org to learn more. 

Learn more about DPCPs on our upcoming Healthy Point-of-Sale Webinar featuring Dr. Matt Rossheim from the University of North Texas. Register here to attend this webinar on April 3 from 12-1 PM ET.

1. Set prices high. According to the Surgeon General, raising the price of tobacco products is one of the most effective strategies for reducing initiation, decreasing consumption, and increasing cessation. Strategies to increase prices include setting minimum price floors or prohibiting coupons and discounts. High cannabis pricing has the potential to similarly decrease initiation, especially among price-sensitive populations, like youth.
2. Reduce availability of flavors. Research shows that youth and young adults associate flavored tobacco products with less perceived harm and have greater interest in experimentation with flavored tobacco. It is reasonable to anticipate similar findings for cannabis-infused foods and beverages or other flavored cannabis products. The tobacco industry has a long history of marketing flavored products to youth. Along with being sold in candy flavors, many flavored tobacco products are packaged similarly to popular candy products. Cannabis products are increasingly available in a wide variety of flavors and flavor-sounding names, with significant marketing and promotion. Restrictions on flavored tobacco products have been successful in decreasing the probability that youth start smoking.
3. Limit retailer density and proximity. Similar to the strong evidence around the impact of tobacco retailer density, researchers have identified an association between higher retail outlet availability and increased cannabis use, including a higher likelihood of experimentation among youth. Analysis also points to a higher concentration of cannabis retailers in already disadvantaged neighborhoods. Several policy strategies that have proven successful for limiting tobacco retailer density could similarly be applied to cannabis retailers, such as capping the number of retailers  based on population size or restricting permits for retailers within a certain distance of schools. These density restrictions are generally implemented through licensing or zoning ordinances.

Now is the time to consider these lessons as states continue to make regulatory decisions around their cannabis marketplace.

Interested in discussing concepts like this with peers across the country? Join our Cannabis Learning Collaborative! Our Cannabis Collaborative features quarterly presentations and resources, while saving space for states with recently adopted or pending adult use cannabis legislation to ask questions, share lessons learned, and prepare for the potential impact on public health issues, especially tobacco prevention and control efforts. Our next meeting is scheduled for August 3rd, 2022 at 2 PM EST. For more information, contact elizabeth@countertools.org. 

New research from University of Texas at Dallas researchers finds that when recreational marijuana is legalized, cigarette sales rise.

To put this in perspective, the majority of Americans live in a state where cannabis is legal. Recreational marijuana is now legal in 18 states, 2 territories, and the District of Columbia. The majority of US states have also decriminalized marijuana and legalized medical marijuana.

Amidst all this policy change, there has been little focus spent on protecting youth, made-vulnerable populations, and public health overall. Nearly 30 years of battling the “war in the store” has left tobacco prevention and control advocates with no shortage of lessons learned in dismantling the tobacco industry’s playbook that apply painfully well to cannabis policy.

Three of the many lessons we can learn from past tobacco control challenges and successes to build a more equitable, health-focused cannabis policy landscape are:

• Cannabis policy should be established with protections for children and youth, including eliminating flavored products. There’s a reason the tobacco industry has offered tobacco products that are colorful and close to candy — youth are an important target of the tobacco industry.
• Cannabis policy should prioritize racial equity. Purchase, use and possession laws in tobacco control have taught us the important need for equitable enforcement of commercial tobacco use.
• Cannabis policy should protect and promote public health. One of the many ways this can be addressed is by establishing minimum price floors and restricting discounts of cannabis products just as we’ve learned in tobacco control.

Not only must decision makers apply these lessons as we build systems for cannabis regulation, but tobacco control advocates must remain vigilant about the potential for cannabis regulation to erode the successes of tobacco policy change, both at the point of sale and smokefree air.

For model policy language and more suggestions for equitable cannabis policy, see Getting it Right from the Start.