Cannabis in The Bronx

Last verified: April 2026

The Underserved Borough

The Bronx, with roughly 1.4 million residents, has fewer than ten operational licensed dispensaries as of April 2026 — the lowest count per capita of any borough except Staten Island. The combination of pre-MRTA cannabis-arrest concentration (the Bronx had some of the highest racially-disparate arrest rates in NYC under stop-and-frisk) and post-MRTA real-estate, capital, and licensing barriers has produced a market that lags badly behind the equity goals the MRTA was designed to achieve.

The Defining Bronx Sites

Mott Haven & the South Bronx

CONBUD Bronx (Summit Canna) at 2412 Third Avenue is the borough’s anchor location, operated under the same justice-impacted-staff model as CONBUD Manhattan (Coss Marte). Mott Haven’s industrial-loft-and-rezoning trajectory has made several CAURD-eligible properties available; expect more openings here through 2026.

Belmont (Little Italy of the Bronx)

Freshly Baked NYC 2 at 2375 Arthur Avenue, in the heart of Belmont’s Italian commercial corridor, is one of the more visually distinctive Bronx licensed dispensaries.

Throgs Neck

Green Sun (dba Hibernica) at 3220 Westchester Avenue serves the eastern Bronx’s Throgs Neck and Country Club neighborhoods, where the residential-only character makes commercial cannabis a smaller niche than in Mott Haven or Belmont.

Fordham Road

PharmaCann of New York, LLC at 25-27 West Fordham Road is a medical-only dispensary, serving the medical-cannabis patient base concentrated around the major Bronx hospitals (Montefiore, NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi, BronxCare). Adult-use Bronx options remain underdeveloped here.

East Tremont & Yankee Stadium Area

A handful of dispensaries are in late-stage build-out near Yankee Stadium and along East Tremont. The borough’s cluster is scheduled to grow notably through 2026 as the Mayor’s FY27 budget projection of 50 additional NYC dispensaries in OCM’s queue plays out.

Riverdale

Affluent, suburban-feeling; lower dispensary density, higher medical-card adoption. Riverdale’s Westchester-adjacent character produces a different cannabis-retail profile than the rest of the borough.

The South Bronx and the Birth of Hip-Hop

The South Bronx is the literal birthplace of hip-hop. On August 11, 1973, in the rec room of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue (Morris Heights), 18-year-old Clive Campbell — DJ Kool Herc — played his sister Cindy’s back-to-school party. Herc’s “Merry-Go-Round” technique of looping break-beats from two copies of the same record laid down the foundation of the genre. The block was officially co-named “Hip-Hop Boulevard” in 2016. Cannabis is part of that neighborhood’s musical DNA from the start, threaded through Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, KRS-One, and a thousand block parties. See DJ Kool Herc & the South Bronx.

Bronx DA — Darcel Clark

Bronx DA Darcel Clark generally follows MRTA boundaries and prosecutes large-quantity cases, similar to the Queens DA posture. Personal possession is reliably declined. The pattern of disparate cannabis enforcement that ACLU and NYCLU have documented for two decades has not vanished with legalization but has migrated into open-consumption summonses and Sheriff’s Office actions.

Vanessa Gibson — Bronx Borough President

Vanessa Gibson, the Bronx Borough President, has been a consistent supporter of cannabis-equity licensing and of expanding the legal-cannabis footprint in the borough. Her office has provided technical assistance to Bronx CAURD applicants and has publicly noted the under-representation of the borough in the operational-dispensary count.

Hip-Hop 50 Anniversary

The city held part of its hip-hop 50th anniversary celebrations at Yankee Stadium in 2023. The convergence of the genre’s 50th anniversary with the legal-cannabis era’s third year was not coincidence; the cultural-political throughline from cannabis enforcement targeting Black and Latino communities to the equity-licensing program is, in the Bronx more than anywhere else in NYC, the primary historical lens.