Cannabis Surveillance Requirements
by State: 2026 Guide

Every legal cannabis state mandates video surveillance. The differences — retention periods ranging from 30 days to 4 years, resolution requirements from 720p to 1080p, and coverage mandates varying by license type — directly determine your NVRi storage sizing, backup strategy, network bandwidth needs, and infrastructure costs. Getting this wrong can cost you your license.

The storage math

A single 1080p camera recording continuously at 15fps generates approximately 18–22 GB per day. A typical dispensary with 16 cameras needs about 320 GB daily — or roughly 29 TB for a 90-day retention requirement. Add a 20% overhead for indexing and metadata, and you're looking at approximately 35 TB of usable NVR storage for a single location. MSOs with 10+ locations need a scalable off-site backup strategy, not just bigger hard drives.

Pennsylvania's 4-year retention mandate is the extreme case: the same 16-camera setup requires approximately 470 TB of storage — which is why most Pennsylvania operators use tiered storage with hot/warm/cold architecture and cloud-based archival.

Common compliance failures

The most frequent surveillance violations we see during assessments are insufficient camera coverage at entry/exit points and limited-access areas, NVR storage undersized for the retention period, no UPS backup for recording equipment (a power outage creates a gap in footage), NVR enclosures that aren't physically secured (states require tamper-proof housings), no off-site backup copy of footage, and inadequate nighttime illumination rendering footage unusable for identification.

What we recommend

Regardless of your state's minimum requirements, we recommend 1080p or higher resolution for all cameras, the state-mandated retention period plus a 30-day buffer, dual NVR configuration with on-site recording plus off-site cloud backup, dedicated surveillance POSi, cameras, and guest WiFi for security.">VLANi isolated from POS and business network traffic, UPS on all NVR equipment with minimum 4-hour battery runtime, and quarterly camera audits to verify coverage, focus, and nighttime visibility. For the full state-by-state breakdown, visit our Compliance Guide.