Cy Scott

Relatively recent Pacific NW transplant by way of Southern California. Cofounder of Headset & Leafly. Changing perceptions of cannabis one strain at a time.

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

@thsottiaux Maybe not a papercut, but with 5.5 high on fast mode its thinking a long time and would be nice to know what its working on, where the bottlenecks are so I can make improvements (ie. running some slow script, etc.)

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

Cannabis just became harder to ignore https://t.co/qGspHtezOp

[Axios @axios]

SCOOP: The Trump administration is expected to reclassify marijuana as soon as today https://t.co/i83PW0B0pz

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

@DenisRudev It's been a busy sales weekend already! You can see live sales on our dashboard here: https://t.co/EdiBO7xyGM

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

Welcome to our live show! https://t.co/vJUk0xtWKr

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

Follow along all weekend! https://t.co/EdiBO7xyGM

#420 #cannabis

[Emily Paxhia @empax1]

@cyscott and I have been bringing the #highrise back. Come on by for some news and 420 products / activations we are digging...
Hint, Queen Cola is not a drink ;-)
@GTIGrows @headset_io
https://t.co/57v585CL9A

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

@jfberke @Chase Welcome to the party! It’s the worst hopefully you have better luck/have an alternative. Between Leafly and Headset it’s happened a number of times.

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

It's tax season (ugh!), it's also the one-year anniversary of "Liberation Day" tariffs.

If you're a cannabis operator, those two things are hitting at the exact same time.

$9.5B in cannabis sales depend on tariff-exposed imports (trailing 12 months - 15 markets Headset tracks). Vape hardware from China (54% tariff). Pre-roll cones from India (50%). A year in, the inventory buffers are gone. Everyone's buying at the new rates.

And cannabis can't do what normal industries do when costs spike:
- Can't raise prices (illicit market sets the ceiling)
- Can't deduct costs (280E, happy tax season!)
- Can't get a loan (banks won't touch you)
- Margins already collapsed from 52.6% to 42.7%

Name another legal industry carrying tariffs + 280E + state excise + banking surcharges + compliance costs + illicit market competition. All at once.

I would guess the operators who survive in this world would outperform in any other category out there.

Full breakdown in my newsletter this week: https://t.co/IKQl7i5z6J

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

For context: in legal cannabis dispensaries, CBD products sell at a 31% premium over THC-only products ($45.74 vs $34.82 avg item price in CA, per Headset data).

Tested, labeled, regulated. The kind of product you'd want your grandparents using.

I've been in this industry 15 years. It never stops surprising me.

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

On April 1, the federal government quietly started covering CBD for Medicare patients.

Not through dispensaries. Not through pharmacies. Doctors hand it to you directly in their office.

Here's what's going on. A thread:

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

So to recap the current state of federal cannabis policy:

- Cannabis is Schedule I
- Dispensaries selling tested, regulated product are federally illegal
- But doctors can now hand CBD to Medicare patients
- SAM is in court trying to stop seniors from getting it

The named defendants? CMS Administrator Dr. Oz and HHS Secretary RFK Jr.

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

@sama Best tech show out there for sure

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

Yeah it definitely varies by state. Some markets we have really strong coverage, others less so. We think a lot about sampling bias and try to make sure our retailer mix represents the market, not just one type of operator. It's not perfect but we've been refining it for 11 years. Always happy to nerd out on methodology if you want to DM.

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

New York just hit 600 cannabis dispensaries, five years after legalization. We tracked $1.68B in sales there in 2025, up 86.5% YoY. Meanwhile 9 of the 15 states we track at Headset are down. NY is the market to watch in 2026, but the real test is whether it avoids the oversaturation trap that hit every mature market before it.

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

Here is our Q1 25 vs. 26 in NY, this will settle down as we finalize March numbers but trajectory looking good:

Here's the Q1 comparison for New York:

Key Highlights:

Sales Growth: +23.6% YoY ($335.2M → $414.3M)
Units Growth: +40.8% YoY (9.5M → 13.4M units)
Average Item Price: -12.2% YoY ($35.33 → $31.02)
New York's Q1 2026 performance shows strong volume growth with 40.8% more units sold, though this was driven partly by a 12.2% decrease in average item price. Total discounting also increased significantly from $6.4M to $28.6M, suggesting more promotional activity in Q1 2026.

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

We also publish our Analytical Methods available for subscribers, here is an example of a post from us on NY 2025:

New York Cannabis Sales Total Updates December 2025
The forecasting process of Headset Insights starts with the total sales values for each market, sourced from state or provincial regulatory agencies. If data is not yet available for certain time periods, our analytics team creates forecasts for top-line sales. These topline forecasts are used to generate daily, product-level forecasts displayed in the app.

When government-sourced data becomes available for any previous time period, Insights totals are revised to match, which may trigger restatements. Within each affected month, total sales values for all individual products are revised equally.

New York’s Office of Cannabis Management released new sales data this month - including significant revisions to previously-published values - and we are revising many months’ sales totals accordingly.

[Cy Scott @cyscott]

This is the tension playing out everywhere. Cannabis beverages are one of the few categories actually growing right now, up 9.3% YoY in our Headset data while most of the market is flat or declining. And states are actively trying to shut them down. Ohio is up 20% YoY overall so killing a growth category there seems counterproductive. We talked about this on the latest High Rise episode actually.