This coalition of legacy operators is united and ready to thrive in New York’s legal market.

It’s been almost four years since cannabis was legalized for all adults in New York—and two years since the state’s first adult-use store opened. But many of New York’s first licensed dispensary owners are still fighting for a fair shake on the legal market.

To balance the odds, Flower City Dispensary owners Britni and Jayson Tantalo unified the New York Retail Cannabis Association (NYCRA). The NYCRA comprises hundreds of dispensary owners determined to make the most of New York’s historic licensing program. In 2021, the state’s MRTA law put those most impacted by cannabis prohibition first in line for dispensary licenses. But the road to opening has been full of unforeseen challenges.

NYCRA co-founder and president Britni Tantalo told Leafly that “stringent marketing and packaging regulations, limited indoor cultivation and canopy capacity, and the early entry of large out of state companies to the market put a burden on local operators.” NYCRA leaders believe the current regulations are stopping locally-owned dispensaries from growing into sustainable businesses.

This year, NYCRA and Leafly partnered to help New York dispensaries navigate the many challenges facing the new legal market. Keep reading to see how we’re helping New York dispensaries bounce back, and reach out to NYCRA to learn more about joining their community of cannabis operators.

The challenges of opening New York’s first adult-use dispensaries

Of the 463 licenses granted in the first round so far, only 227 are open for business. Another 1,400 or so license applicants are waiting for the state’s approval to open—but it could take until 2026 for all of them to be reviewed.

Many applicants had to secure and pay for their store’s property before receiving their license. That means some have been paying rent on commercial spaces for months without any assurances on when they’d be approved to open, if at all.

The Tantalos waited two years for approval to open Flower City before getting the green light. To make matters worse, they watched unlicensed shops spread like wildfire while they paid rent for a legal shop they couldn’t operate.

“We had to borrow against our homes, borrow from family and friends and/or downsize operations [just] to open a location. It placed everyone in a position of financial constraint and therefore mental and emotional instability.”

Britni Tantalo, Flower City Dispensary

To weather the storm, members of the New York Cannabis Retail Association embrace a philosophy of collaboration over competition.

NYCRA Vice President Jayson Tantalo explains, “We share valuable resources such as business plans, SOPs, along with just emotional support, which have proven essential for licensed operators who may not know where to start.”

Here’s why hundreds of NY dispensary openings have been delayed

In the Bronx, the House of Hibernica endured multiple delays before finally being cleared to open this April. “It was a whole year from when we applied for the license, to opening,” said Hibernica co-owner Bojan Trpcevski. “We had to have a store so we could apply. Then the injunction happened in 2022. So we were paying rent for a year,” Trpcevski said.

In November 2022, a judge blocked hundreds of stores from opening for six months as part of a controversial injunction. The lawsuit that caused the injunction was filed by an out of state resident who said the program’s social equity requirements violated the US constitution.

Just as the first applicants were being approved to open in 2022, multipleinjunctions placed the rollout in jeopardy. Dispensary owners were on the hook for real estate, operations costs, and private investments. Delays compounded as the state’s resources and attention went to the court case. When the first injunctions finally began to lift in May 2023, the plaintiff in one case received a license as part of a settlement agreement. By then, many owners were already 6 months behind their business projections.

Then, this October, a group of unlicensed dispensaries that were shut down for allegedly selling cannabis without a license also took the state to court, and won. They claimed they were put out of business without receiving due process as part of Mayor Eric Adams’ Operation Padlock, which has reportedly padlocked over 1,000 unlicensed shops since kicking off this spring. Last month, a judge ruled that the operation “stands against the cornerstone of American democracy and procedural due process.” The ruling could encourage unlicensed shops to re-open, adding uncertainty for operators as newly-approved stores open almost daily.

Operators like Budega’s Alex Norman have had no time to place their dreams on hold. “I started my brand three years ago in anticipation of an opportunity like this,” Norman told Leafly days after the injunction came down. “But I’m not gonna say it’s gonna stop me.” Over a year after the injunction and still not open, Norman remains dedicated to seeing things through with Budega after decades in the legacy market.

House of Hibernica’s team said they had no idea it would be this difficult when they started the process of applying. “We thought it would be similar to the restaurant business,” Trpcevski said, “because we opened a few before. We didn’t expect that we were going to wait so long, and that every small thing is going to stop the whole process.”

How much is a New York dispensary license worth?

The unforeseen delays have some license holders thinking about selling equity, or their entire license to the highest bidder. “The valuation is running from $600,000 to $800,000,” according to Daron Hudson, owner of Brooklyn Legends Dispensary, which is licensed and waiting to open. “If you have a location secured, it’s going up to $2,000,000,” Hudson told Leafly this fall.

Hudson is also a board member at Housing Works, New York’s first retail dispensary, which opened in December 2022. But opening his own store has proven much more difficult than getting the well-known nonprofit off the ground.

To help with start-up costs, the state originally promised owners a private equity fund to support store build outs. But the fund failed to launch.

“The access to capital and other resources that were promised to all of us CAURD applicants was simply not there. When you are promised a turnkey dispensary with low interest rates and access to grants from your state regulators, you don’t plan to obtain these things for yourself. When we realized that the promises were not going to be fulfilled anytime soon, if at all, we had no choice but to pivot. Most of us could not find investors because investor confidence was low due to the failed rollout.”

Britni Tantalo, Flower City Dispensary

Now, a new loan fund may provide some relief. But Hudson and other owners have already begun vetting investors who can help them get opened. And they’re finding that these new potential partners have far more leverage than the state’s regulations intended.

How NYCRA and Leafly are helping New York dispensaries thrive

Leafly is proud to help bring New York dispensary owners new legal customers from across the state. Jayson Tantalo said dispensaries need help creating “brand recognition and demonstrating what legal cannabis looks like here in New York.” That’s why we’re leaning into content and activations that represent the very best of New York cannabis.

Our content partnerships with stores like Good Grades and Trends use the power of Leafly’s strain and product database to help keep shoppers informed about what they’re buying. In-person activations around the state are also helping first-time legal shoppers discover the top dispensaries and cultivators in their area. With the both the state, and federal laws, limiting the ways dispensaries and cannabis brands can advertise, every new customers counts.

“Partnering with Leafly brings tremendous value to our organization. Advertising and marketing are extremely difficult to navigate and complex to understand. By providing this platform to our members. With almost 20 years of experience in search engine optimization, I understand the challenges involved in effectively advertising. The terms being offered by Leafly to our members are particularly valuable because they make customers more accessible.”

Jayson Tantalo, Vice President of NYCRA and co-owner of Flower City Dispensary

Leafly and NYCRA also work closely with store operators to analyze data that improves their performance. We’re going the extra mile to make the cannabis industry accessible for all – including those negatively impacted by the failed war on drugs.

“I had Leafly before the legal industry even started,” said Hudson. “It was for the strains. Back in the legacy era, if somebody was selling me cannabis and said this is purple something, I’d go see what purple is on Leafly.”

Since 2010, Leafly has provided cannabis patients, users, growers, advocates, and researchers with groundbreaking data that’s helped normalize the plant in 38 legal states and over 40 counties. With New York City consuming more cannabis than any other city in the world, the state’s new legal market presents an enormous opportunity for residents and visitors to safely and responsibly support local growers and sellers.

Now let’s get to work!

Click here to find your closest New York legal dispensaries on Leafly.

This Trenton, NJ native is opening his town’s first adult-use cannabis dispensary later this year.

After receiving more than 1,000 applications across all license types, New Jersey’s cannabis board awarded its first 11 conditional adult-use retail licenses on May 24th, 2022 — and one of those licenses went to entrepreneur Tahir Johnson. Tahir won a conditional license for his business, Simply Pure Inc., which is located in Trenton, New Jersey.

Tahir also helped lifelong friend and fellow social equity applicant John Dockery receive his own conditional license approval to open a second location. Tahir, who had cannabis-related charges prior to applying, had been closely monitoring the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission for updates on social equity applicants and prospective business owners.

He also consistently advocated for equity in the space. As Tahir was pursuing his dream of becoming a dispensary owner, and while he had his conditional license, he built key relationships and support as he continued to raise capital. 

For more than a century, Harlem has helped define New York City’s world famous cannabis scene. From 1920s-era Jazz pioneers to the legal legends of today, Leafly honors the neighborhood’s deeply rooted influence on weed culture.

1914: New York begins restricting cannabis to medical use

1927: New York state prohibited the sale and possession of cannabis altogether

After more than a decade of medical-only laws, New York fully banned the plant in 1927. The law aimed to “remove habit forming drugs and assert control over narcotic drugs,” according to historians. There was still an exemption for “medical preparations made with cannabis sativa and cannabis indica when combined with other ingredients in medicinal doses.”

1920: Louis Armstrong was blowing loud

Jazz icon Louis Armstrong reportedly first tried cannabis in the 1920s and continued to use it throughout his career, including before performances and recordings. He referred to cannabis affectionately as “the gage.” The musician was an instrumental influence in Harlem’s rich Jazz scene during the early Harlem Renaissance.

When describing his relationship with cannabis to biographer Max Jones, Armstrong said, “We did call ourselves the Vipers, which could have been anybody from all walks of life that smoked and respected the gage… That was our cute little nickname for marijuana.” Armstrong added: “We always looked at pot as a sort of medicine, a cheap drunk and with much better thoughts than one that’s full of liquor.”

It is said that the jazz instrumental song “Muggles” was influenced by cannabis. Before the term “muggle,” aka a non-magical person, made its way into popular culture thanks to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, the term “muggles” or “mugs” had often been used by jazz musicians to refer to cannabis.

1923: Harlem’s legendary Cotton Club is founded

Opened in 1923, the Cotton Club was originally located on 142nd St & Lenox Ave in Harlem. The club was founded and operated by British mobster Owney Madden. The previous establishment was called Club Deluxe and had been owned by legendary boxer Jack Johnson. Johnson sold control of the establishment to Madden but remained onboard as manager and the face of the club. Madden redesigned the club to serve minstrel shows and bootleg booze to New York’s white upper class.

Nate Sloan, who holds a PhD. in musicology from Stanford, studies “the largely forgotten racist history of a legendary musical venue.” Sloan points out that while Harlem’s top Black performers were the club’s main draw, Black patrons were not allowed to attend. The club was often decorated to resemble a plantation or jungle.

“Those upper-class white New Yorkers got their kicks ‘slumming’ in Harlem,” Sloan explains. Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and Lena Horne performed there in time as the club evolved from serving New York’s bourgeois in the 1920s to the hip crowd of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s. Madden also used the Cotton Club as an outlet to sell beer during alcohol prohibition, and at times it was a safe space for artists and visitors to find and consume cannabis. Other legendary performers included Dorothy Dandridge, Adelaide Hall, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Ethel Waters, and Louis Armstrong.

1932: Cab Calloway’s ‘Reefer Man’

In 1932, Cotton Club favorite Cab Calloway released the song “Reefer Man,” which coined the slang term that some OGs still use when referring to the plant. Despite the growing popularity of cannabis in the 20s, laws became more stringent. In 1933, the Uniform Narcotic Control Law removed medical exemptions for cannabis use.

A report from the 1930s details anecdotes about cannabis from this era and speculates that there were more than 500 individual sellers and 500 “tea-pads,” or weed shops, in Harlem alone at the time.

1937: National ban on cannabis begins decades of federal prohibition

In 1937, Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act, which explicitly criminalized cannabis. At the same time, the New York Academy of Medicine issued a report declaring marijuana did not induce violence, or insanity, or lead to addiction or other drug use, as the 1936 film Reefer Madness claimed.

1940s: Malcolm Little smokes and sells weed in Harlem before becoming Malcolm X

In his autobiography, Malcom X (born Malcolm Little) intertwines hazy descriptions of his first experiences smoking “reefer” with hazy memories of dance parties at the Roseland Ballroom, shooting craps, playing cards, and betting with a pool hall friend named Shorty. “All of us would be in somebody’s place, usually one of the girls’, and we’d be turning on the reefers making everybody’s head light, or the whisky aglow in our middles,” he wrote.

1950s: New York drug treatment programs derailed by racialized Drug War

During the 1950s and 1960s, heroin addiction across the US prompted concerns. As a result, New York passed progressive laws to support those battling heroin addiction. Cannabis, labeled a narcotic, was closely associated with heroin, despite sharing little similarities with the substance.

But New York’s rehabilitative push was short-lived. Instead, new laws instead aimed to punish drug users and sellers. The passage of the country’s harshest drug laws to date, the Rockefeller Drug Laws, came in 1973. Historians say, “In large part, the criminalization of Black drug users and dealers in New York City drove this punitive turn. By looking at New York state’s response to heroin in Harlem during the 1960s, we can better understand how racialized narratives about drug addiction impact policy.”

After World War II, heroin use spiked throughout the country, and Harlem became a central point for its distribution. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics reported that in 1964, an estimated 48,525 “active addicts” resided in the country, half of whom were believed to live in New York City. Harlem was referred to as the “Dope Capital” of the nation.

1969: Summer of Soul is the Woodstock of West 125th Street

Despite legal issues and social stigmas surrounding cannabis, the people of Harlem continued to use the plant with pride. 2022 Oscar-winner “Summer of Soul” documented the ways in which cannabis catalyzed cultural change and innovation during the time.

1972: Nixon declares Drug War, targets ‘Blacks and Hippies’

In the early 1900s, marijuana was used to justify violence and discrimination against Mexicans by border patrol agencies. Then in 1968, the Nixon White House identified two groups as domestic enemies: the antiwar left (hippies), and Black Americans. The administration decided to use drugs to declare an uncivil war. “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war, or Black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin… And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders. Raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” 

John Ehrlichman, former Nixon domestic policy chief (2016), Harper’s Magazine

1980s: Weed influences seeds of Hip Hop

Harlem was a hotbed for the growth of early Hip Hop culture, and while cannabis wasn’t much of a topic on the records at the time, it was widely used by popular musicians and dealers. In the video above, Fab 5 Freddy, who hails from Brooklyn, explains the essential role that Harlem legacy dealers played in New York’s cannabis culture.

1990s: Rappers make an underground legend notorious

Initially working out of a candy store-slash-juice bar in Harlem, Branson was a major conductor and distributor of high-grade marijuana and hash oils in NYC during the early 90s. Operating in the thick of the War On Drugs, Branson was one of the rare standalone plugs that celebrity smokers visiting NYC could count on to deliver good gas. Hence the chronic name drops on songs from East Coast rappers like The Notorious B.I.G., The LOX, Nas, and Redman himself (read more classic lyrics about Branson below).

2000s: Diplomats and Purple City brand Piff and Purple Haze

In the 2000s, legacy pioneer Shiest Bubz made his name in music with his Piff brand, mixtapes, and by founding Purple City Productions, which contributed heavily to New York’s underground mixtape scene and the careers of artists like Smoke DZA.

Bubz worked with Harlem icons Cam’ron, Jim Jones, and Juelz Santana, all three of whom are poised to follow in his footsteps as they venture into the legal cannabis industry. Bubz and company’s influence is well-documented in DVDs and tapes that once circulated nationwide. Some videos still live on YouTube and provide background to those looking to understand how guys with names like Shiest Bubz and Luka Brazi became the top dogs in New York’s budding cannabis industry heading into the 2020’s and beyond.

Just under a decade since medical cannabis returned to New York in 2014, and nearly two years since adult-use was legalized, Harlem continues to stand at the forefront of New York’s world-famous weed culture.

Dan Reagans and Calvin Stovall

Dan Reagans is a veteran journalist now living in Los Angeles. The Harlem native has covered culture and media for over a decade.

Calvin Stovall is Leafly’s East Coast Editor.

View Dan Reagans and Calvin Stovall’s articles