Bronx Cannabis Scorecard: Five Years In, 23 Stores and the City's Biggest Access Gap
The Bronx leads New York City in equity-owned dispensaries and trails every borough in access. We ran the numbers.
Key takeaways
- The Bronx has 23 open licensed dispensaries; 17 are equity CAURD stores, a 74% share and the highest of any borough.
- That works out to about one store per 61,000 residents, versus about 29,400 citywide and 17,300 in Manhattan.
- Matching the citywide rate would take about 48 Bronx stores, roughly double today's count.
- No consumption lounges operate yet, a real gap for NYCHA residents, who can't smoke at home or near their buildings.
Five years after New York legalized adult-use cannabis, the Bronx has something it didn't have in 2021: a legal market with real storefronts, owned in large part by the very people the old laws targeted. What it doesn't have is enough of them.
We pulled the numbers — state license records, census estimates, enforcement tallies and state market data — to build a scorecard for the borough. The short version: the Bronx leads the city on equity and trails it badly on access.
The headline number: 23
State licensing records show 23 licensed adult-use dispensaries open in the Bronx. Seventeen hold Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary licenses, or CAURD, the equity license for people with past cannabis convictions or their families; six hold standard retail licenses.
That 74% CAURD share is the highest of any borough. It's the clearest win on the board, and it's visible on the street: Bronx Joint in Hunts Point, CONBUD's two Bronx stores, Hibernica in Pelham Bay and many more.
The borough's first legal store, Statis Cannabis Co. on East Tremont Avenue, opened July 6, 2023 — and has since closed and relocated to New Rochelle. The newest, Upscale Cannabis on Fenton Avenue in Pelham Gardens, opened Aug. 7, 2026.
| Year opened | Bronx stores still open | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 1 | Hush (Allerton) |
| 2024 | 11 | Bronx Joint, Two Buds, Hibernica, SESH, CONBUD Yankee Stadium |
| 2025 | 7 | Guardian Wellness, Stash House, Nube NYC, Buddiez Bronx Cannabis Dispensary, Say Less |
| 2026 (through Aug.) | 4 | Celestial Herbs, Victory, Weed Land, Upscale Cannabis |
The gap: the Bronx vs. the other boroughs
Per capita, the math is stark
Raw store counts only tell part of the story. So we divided each borough's open stores into its population, using the Census Bureau's July 2025 population estimates.
| Borough | Open stores | Population (2025 est.) | Residents per store | Stores per 100,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manhattan | 96 | 1,664,862 | ~17,300 | 5.8 |
| Brooklyn | 82 | 2,653,963 | ~32,400 | 3.1 |
| Queens | 76 | 2,358,182 | ~31,000 | 3.2 |
| Staten Island | 15 | 501,290 | ~33,400 | 3.0 |
| Bronx | 23 | 1,406,332 | ~61,100 | 1.6 |
| NYC total | 292 | 8,584,629 | ~29,400 | 3.4 |
The Bronx is home to about 1.4 million people, roughly 16% of the city, but has under 8% of its licensed dispensaries. Each Bronx store serves about twice as many residents as the city average and more than three times as many as in Manhattan.
Put another way: for the Bronx to match the citywide rate, it would need about 48 stores, roughly double what it has today. Even Staten Island, with about a third of the Bronx's population, is within eight stores of it.
The Bronx leads the city on equity and trails it badly on access.
Where the stores are, and aren't
Sorting the 23 addresses by area gives a rough map of Bronx access:
- South Bronx (5): CONBUD Bronx in Mott Haven, Buddiez in Melrose, CONBUD Yankee Stadium in Concourse, Bronx Joint in Hunts Point and Garden Bliss in Longwood.
- Central and West (6): Bleu Leaf in Morris Heights, Herbwell on Fordham Road, Freshly Baked and Guardian Wellness on Arthur Avenue, Stash House in Kingsbridge Heights and My Bud 420 in Van Nest.
- North (5): SESH in Woodlawn Heights, Two Buds in Wakefield, Frass Box in Kingsbridge, Nube NYC in Baychester and Celestial Herbs in Olinville.
- East (7): Hush and Smoking Scholars in Allerton, Hibernica in Pelham Bay, Say Less and Victory in Throggs Neck, Weed Land in Castle Hill and Upscale in Pelham Gardens.
The East Bronx has added the most stores lately, but the growth is lumpy: two of them sit one block apart on East Tremont Avenue, as we reported in our Throggs Neck story. Meanwhile, big residential areas such as Soundview, Parkchester and Co-op City have no open licensed store inside their borders, though some sit nearby. Licensed-but-not-yet-open projects like Monarch NYC on West 235th Street, Green Heights on East Gun Hill Road and Thurston Hall on the Grand Concourse could fill some gaps. See every location on our Bronx dispensary map.
The enforcement ledger
Padlock by the numbers
For much of the legal market's early years, unlicensed shops far outnumbered licensed ones in the Bronx. After the city launched Operation Padlock to Protect on May 7, 2024, the Bronx accounted for 160 of 715 closures citywide by Aug. 12, 2024 — about 22%. By the next day the Bronx count had reached 199, a sign of how fast the numbers moved and why tallies from that summer differ.
By May 2025, City Hall said about 1,400 shops had been closed citywide and more than $95 million in product seized. The state Office of Cannabis Management reports about 500 sealing orders, 2,000 inspections and $125 million seized statewide.
2026: the repeat offenders
The ledger isn't closed. This year a Mott Haven smoke shop was raided for a third time, a padlocked Pelham Gardens shop allegedly cut its lock, and the mayor replaced the sheriff who led Padlock. Our coverage of the new sheriff tracks what comes next.
The market around us
Statewide, the Office of Cannabis Management's July data counted 683 adult-use dispensaries as of June, with $895.4 million in sales through the first half of 2026 and a full-year forecast of $2.5 billion to $3 billion. Per-unit prices fell about 7% from January to June, and the median store brings in about $2.6 million a year.
That's good news for shoppers and hard news for owners. The city's February budget notes that sales per store have been falling quarter over quarter since late 2025, and operators at the state's August Cannabis Control Board meeting described sharply falling sales. For a borough whose stores are mostly equity-owned, that squeeze matters. More on prices in our August market report.
What the Bronx still needs
- More stores, spread out. Doubling to around 48 would put the borough at the city average. Placement matters as much as the count: neighborhoods without a store shouldn't have to settle for the corner smoke shop.
- Somewhere legal to consume. State law authorizes consumption lounges, but OCM still lists on-site licenses as a future window. For NYCHA residents, whose smoke-free rules bar smoking inside apartments and within 25 feet of buildings, a lounge wouldn't be a luxury. It would be a legal, indoor place to consume close to home.
- Staying power for equity owners. The CAURD share is only a win if those stores survive falling prices.
- Reinvestment that reaches the borough. The state's second round of community reinvestment grants totals $15 million, triple the first. We'll be counting how much lands in the Bronx; read how the first dollars reached South Bronx youth in our tax-dollars report.
The pipeline is still moving: the Cannabis Control Board keeps approving new licenses at its monthly meetings, and several Bronx projects already hold licenses but have yet to open. For shoppers in the meantime, the South Bronx dispensaries near The Hub and Yankee Stadium, including Buddiez on Third Avenue, a sponsor of the Free Press, are among the options closest to the 2, 4 and 5 trains.
Five years in, the Bronx built something real. Now it needs more of it, in more places.
Frequently asked questions
How many licensed dispensaries are in the Bronx?
Twenty-three adult-use dispensaries are open in the Bronx, according to state licensing records. Seventeen hold equity CAURD licenses and six hold standard retail licenses.
How does the Bronx compare to other boroughs?
Manhattan has 96 open stores, Brooklyn 82, Queens 76, the Bronx 23 and Staten Island 15. Adjusted for population, the Bronx has about 1.6 stores per 100,000 residents, the lowest in the city.
What was the Bronx's first legal dispensary?
Statis Cannabis Co. on East Tremont Avenue opened July 6, 2023. It has since closed and relocated to New Rochelle; Hush in Allerton is now the Bronx's longest-running open store.
Are there cannabis lounges in the Bronx?
No. State law authorizes on-site consumption, but OCM still lists those licenses as a future window and none are operating.
Nadia Rahman
Nadia turns state sales reports, license counts and budget documents into plain-English numbers for Bronx shoppers — what things cost, where the stores are, and where the tax money goes.
