“Medical” Marijuana was the grease behind legalization.
Stoners came out in droves to vote for unrelated Socialist causes—which I repeatedly documented on these pages.
With medical, at least you needed to see a doctor every 6 or 12 months (up to the doctor) to get the prescription renewal. There was, of course, almost no quality assurance. There were a few dispensaries that did very good due diligence in sourcing supplies and consistency of product who focused on people with cancer, glaucoma etc - but most of them were as you implied a money grab used as a backdoor to legalization. Eventually, you could get a scrip for almost any reason by doctors of dubious repute. Most doctors wanted nothing to do with it mostly because they feared losing their license or their job.
Today the dispensaries look like Apple stores. Back in the MMJ days, other than the few top notch places they were practically crack houses with cement walls and heavily armed security guards with giant safes to store the cash because they couldn’t deposit it in a bank...
New York apparently tried to do the whole DEI thing in giving out selling permits... so they legalized it, but the licensing was a mess and basically all kinds of shops ended up sell it basically black market (without an official license, but there is almost no enforcement). So instead of licensed weed dispensaries in NY you can get weed, a box of donuts, a cup of coffee, a fried egg sandwich and a lotto ticket all at the same place.