Bronx Cannabis Advocates, Licensees Worried About Waiting For Legal Marijuana Dispensaries

New Yorkers excited about the recent openings of the city’s first legal marijuana dispensaries have not failed to notice that they are located in midtown Manhattan, blocks from each other. And it looks like Queens may be next.

Which leaves a burning question for people in the city’s northernmost borough: when will Bronxians get their own legal dispensaries?

“The Bronx is still left for last,” said Pilar DeJesus, a cannabis advocate. “People in the Bronx who want access to legal weed now have to go (to Manhattan), and I haven’t heard what places they were looking in the Bronx for some of these parol license holders to open. his business,” added DeJesus.

“For these legal dispensaries, it’s really sad that there isn’t even one in the Bronx yet, and that they’re being left that way.”

At least seven licensees are waiting in the wings, building business plans and waiting for leases to begin, with plans to place 20 dispensaries in the Bronx under its Conditional Adult Use Retail Dispensary, or CAURD, program. English. Last year, a temporary model shop open at 149th St. and Grand Concourse for a couple of days.

But some advocates worry that under the stress of complicated regulations, a lack of education and the huge presence of illegal tobacco shops, the burgeoning industry could stumble in its fight to stay on its feet. Some have noted that the early concentration of stores in Manhattan means that the neighborhoods in the outer boroughs hardest hit by the drug war are still waiting.

“It looks like the Bronx is probably the last to get going. I don’t know why… but we have to deal with it,” said Roger Thomas, co-founder and COO of Mello Tymes, a company that hopes to get licensed soon.

Thomas said he’s prepared to play the long game.

“We’re just going to have to do some unique marketing and just watch our bills, watch our income, and so on,” he said. “We know it’s not going to be a lot of money from day one. We will be here for the next five to 10 years and we know that we will be ready when the market is saturated.”

There are also concerns that success will be harder to achieve in the Bronx if dispensaries are not located near universities or tourist attractions like the Housing Works Cannabis Company, the city’s first legal store that opened in December in NoHo, a high traffic area full of tourists.

Carl Anderson III received a license for his dispensary, Mad City Canna, late last year. He is still waiting for a lease, which DASNY will secure somewhere in the Bronx. He is optimistic about the future of his business, but he said he looks forward to doing more community outreach and education as a small business in the Bronx.

“There’s not a lot of tourist activity,” Anderson said. “You don’t have people come in from other places just to explore and just come across your store… There’s a lot of traction that comes from that, but you can’t rely on that in different outer districts as much. There are certain things that store owners are going to have to become more of a community entity.”

The state legalized marijuana in March 2021, and the first store opened on December 29. So far more than 60 licenses have been issued, of 300 in total to come. To help licensees through the process, OCM is launching a 20-week online training program for licensees to learn more about building a successful business.

The CAURD program, run by the Office of Cannabis Management, aims for equity, allowing people who have been personally charged with a marijuana-related crime, or who have family members who have been, to have an advantage in the flourishing industry. There is also a $200 million New York Social Equity Cannabis Investment Fund to help build storefronts and provide loans to licensees.

Advocates, licensees and aspiring dispensary owners praised CMO approach — I like the first one the country, but you worry that it won’t be enough to really level the playing field.

“The people that are coming down the road, where are the general population applicants and how do we maintain social equity, that to me is where the rubber will meet the road,” said Desmon Lewis, co-founder of Bronx Community. Base. “I think there’s a bit of a barrier right now to allow this first group to move forward in a way that protects them.”

Businesses in the Bronx and other areas also face increased stigma associated with cannabis. After decades of strict cannabis policing and stop-and-frisk policies, many residents are skeptical and wary of the state-owned cannabis industry, according to Damian Fagon, director of equity at OCM.

This happened in Harlem when local businesses refused to open a dispensary on 125th St.

“We see it as a threat to the work we’ve done,” Barbara Askins, president and CEO of the local IDB, said in January. “People and companies are trying to hang in there, because they see the effort and they see the improvement, and we don’t need them to back down.”

For those in the cannabis industry, this makes education and outreach efforts even more important in areas like the South Bronx.

“It’s not as politically complicated in parts of lower Manhattan as it is in the South Bronx or East Brooklyn,” said OCM’s Fagon. “We just need to make space for that, for them to have that open dialogue with the local community that this is different, this is not what happened before. The state is trying to make amends for past misconduct and failure to truly put its communities and residents first.”

Kavita Pawria-Sanchez, executive director of Cannabronx, a cannabis advocacy organization, acknowledged the state’s push for equity, but said she is concerned that complicated cannabis regulations, combined with the usual challenges of small business ownership, they will eventually give the largest and richest participants in the market a better shot at long-term success.

Pawria-Sanchez is advocating for more education, monetary assistance, and technical assistance to help ensure that businesses affected by justice are not wiped out.

“When you think about a cannabis business, cannabis is incredibly regulated and the regulatory framework is so complicated that compliance will be an ongoing and costly challenge for businesses. So, in my opinion, the state is not doing enough to ensure success,” Pawria-Sanchez said.

OCM maintains that they are doing everything they can to support the new industry, but they acknowledge that they are tackling a problem on a large scale.

“We may never really be able to do enough,” Fagon said. “…This is an incredibly difficult business to start and operate profitably, as every other state has shown us. And so it’s fundamentally possible that the government can never really alleviate all of those barriers.”