Utah officials have confirmed that the state reached a new milestone with its medical marijuana program, with more than 100,000 patients now registered.
It’s been about seven years since Utah voters approved a ballot initiative to legalize medical cannabis. And according to new data from the state Department of Health and Human Services’s Center for Medical Cannabis (CMC), the program continues to see growth.
As of April, there are 100,144 registered patients and 993 qualified medical providers, CMC’s report shows.
That’s up nearly 20,000 registrants since around this time last year, when the patient population totaled around 83,000. In 2025 alone, the number of patients rose by about 20 percent.
Via CMC.
“It’s a major milestone in the program that represents a lot of work that patients have done to find medications that work for them,” Rich Oborn, head of CMC, told Fox 13. “Medical cannabis is something that’s evaluated carefully with help from a physician.”
While there are more than 20 qualifying conditions that doctors can issue recommendations for medical cannabis, the overwhelming majority of patients (85,355) are using marijuana for pain, followed by post-traumatic stress disorder (6,573) and nausea (2,084).
As more patients have registered, sales have also steadily increased over the last five years, with monthly purchases reaching just over $15 million in recent months. Cumulative sales are nearing the $600 million since the program launched, according to the state report.
Via CMC.
Interestingly, while many states that have enacted legalization typically see cannabis flower as the most in-demand form of marijuana from dispensaries, patients spent more on vapes and cartridges ($6.9 million) than flower ($4.8 million) last month.
“Reaching 100,000 registered medical cannabis patients in Utah is an encouraging milestone. It shows that the program is working and that patients across the state are turning to plant medicine alternatives to manage chronic and debilitating conditions,” Desiree Hennessy, executive director of the Utah Patients Coalition, told Marijuana Moment on Monday.
“Wider acceptance from physicians, patient education, increasing destigmatization and improved access to plant medicine are all huge components of this milestone,” she said. “Every day we hear success stories from Utahns who have finally found relief from conditions that pharmaceuticals could not address.”
“While there’s a long way to go and we want to expand into pre-qualifying conditions, this represents how the concept of medical cannabis is being reevaluated and people are finally listening,” Hennessy said. “Just six years ago, this was a theoretical program on paper. Today, it’s a lifeline for one out of thirty-five Utahns.”
Meanwhile, in March, a poll found that a majority of Utah voters support legalizing adult-use marijuana in the state. The survey showed that 52 percent of registered Utah voters would support a ballot initiative to end cannabis prohibition, while 38 percent would oppose it.
The prospects of advancing such reform legislatively in the conservative state legislature are dubious, however.
Asked recently about the prospect of advancing adult-use legalization in Utah, House Speaker Mike Schultz (R) said he has a “huge problem with turning Utah into a recreational state,” and it’s “not going to happen.”
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The latest survey signals that support for legalization has increased somewhat among Utahans.
A poll from late last year that was also conducted by Noble Predictive Insights found that 50 percent of respondents favor the reform. An additional 38 percent said they back only medical cannabis recommended by a doctor. Only 9 percent said marijuana should continue to be entirely illegal.
State lawmakers have taken steps to build upon the state’s medical marijuana law in recent years.
Despite being known for its political conservatism, Utah’s legislature separately passed legislation last year authorizing a pilot program for hospitals to administer psilocybin and MDMA as an alternative treatment option. The governor let that law take effect without his signature last year.
Meanwhile, a federal judge in Utah recently ordered county law enforcement return psilocybin mushrooms that police seized from a Provo City-based religious group that uses the psychedelic fungi as sacrament.
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Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.
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