Brooklyn's Rise as a Black Cannabis Entrepreneurship Hub

Brooklyn has become one of the most important zip codes in the American cannabis industry — not because of venture capital or corporate consolidation, but because of Black entrepreneurs who refused to be left out of the market their communities helped create. New York's adult-use cannabis landscape, launched under the Marihuana Regulation and Taxation Act, was explicitly designed to prioritize communities most harmed by prohibition. And Brooklyn — from Flatbush to Bed-Stuy, from Crown Heights to East New York — is where that promise is being tested, challenged, and in some cases, actually kept.

We are Silly Nice. We are Black-owned, Veteran-owned, LGBTQ+-owned, and family-run — based right here in Brooklyn, NYC. Shane Breen, a U.S. Army Veteran, and LeVar Thomas, his partner of 25 years, launched Silly Nice in March 2024. In less than a year, our products landed in 150+ licensed New York adult-use dispensaries statewide. That didn't happen by accident. It happened because we built something real, in a borough that has always rewarded realness.

Why Brooklyn? Why Now?

Brooklyn has always been a laboratory for culture — music, fashion, food, art. It was only a matter of time before it became a laboratory for cannabis entrepreneurship, too. The borough's density of historically Black neighborhoods, its deep tradition of independent business ownership, and its community-first ethos make it a natural incubator for the kind of equity-centered cannabis companies New York's law was written to support. The question was never whether Black Brooklyn would show up. The question was whether the system would let them in.

You cannot tell the story of Black cannabis entrepreneurship in Brooklyn without first acknowledging what came before. For decades, Black New Yorkers were arrested, incarcerated, and economically destabilized by cannabis prohibition at rates that were wildly disproportionate to use rates. In neighborhoods like East New York, Brownsville, and Crown Heights, stop-and-frisk policies turned cannabis possession into a pipeline to conviction — and conviction into a barrier to employment, housing, and opportunity. That history is not background noise. It is the foundation of this entire conversation.

New York's MRTA was designed with this in mind. The Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary program — CAURD — prioritized licensing for justice-involved applicants, meaning people with prior cannabis convictions and their family members were given first access to the legal market. It was an imperfect system, slowed by litigation and bureaucratic friction, but the intent was undeniable: the people who paid the price of prohibition should have first access to its profits. Brooklyn entrepreneurs, many of whom had deep personal connections to that harm, stepped into that space with everything they had.

Reparative Policy Meets Street-Level Hustle

Policy alone doesn't build businesses. People do. What we've watched happen across Brooklyn over the past two years is something that goes beyond regulatory frameworks — it's a full-on cultural and entrepreneurial revival. Black founders are not just opening dispensaries. They are building brands, cultivating relationships with farmers, investing in extraction and processing, and creating the kind of supply chains that generate generational wealth. That is exactly the lane we entered when we launched Silly Nice.

Let's be honest: building a cannabis brand in New York in 2024 was not for the faint of heart. The regulatory environment was still evolving. The banking infrastructure for cannabis businesses remained hostile. Marketing on major platforms was — and still is — severely restricted. And the competition? Fierce. Well-funded multistate operators were watching New York the same way everyone watches New York — as the market that sets the tone for the rest of the country. Against all of that, we chose to compete on quality.

Every single Silly Nice product is small-batch, independently lab-tested, and built to exceed the expectations of an adult cannabis consumer who actually knows what good looks like. Our Diamond Powder — 1 gram of ultra-refined THCa crystalline at 86.24% THC and 98.54% total cannabinoids — retails for $50 and stands against anything in the New York market, period. Our Frosted Hash Ball clocks in at 67.34% THC with 5.7% terpenes, handmade and artisanal in a way that no machine-run operation can replicate. These are not products designed to fill shelf space. They are products designed to stop you in your tracks.

Quality Is Our Competitive Advantage — And Our Political Statement

When a Black-owned brand puts out products at the absolute top of the quality spectrum, it sends a message that goes beyond commerce. It says: we are not here to occupy the margins. We are here to lead. Our Bubble Hash — $44 for a gram of solventless, ice-water extracted concentrate at 53.32% THC and 6.2% terpene content — is as clean and expressive a product as exists in this market. The 6.2% terpene content isn't a talking point; it's a reflection of the care we put into every step of our production process. Full COAs for every product are publicly available at sillynice.com/menu because transparency is not optional for us. It is who we are.

Walk through Crown Heights on a Saturday. Stop into a conversation at a barbershop in Flatbush. Sit with the vendors at a weekend market in Fort Greene. The cannabis conversation happening in these spaces is sophisticated, nuanced, and deeply community-rooted. New Yorkers — especially Black New Yorkers — have always had a complex, layered relationship with cannabis. It has been medicine, ritual, recreation, resistance, and community glue all at once. What's new is that the legal market is finally catching up to the culture that never waited for permission.

Harlem deserves mention too — and the Bronx, and Jamaica, Queens. Black cannabis entrepreneurship in New York is not a Brooklyn-exclusive story. But Brooklyn is where so much of the organizing, the brand-building, and the cultural credibility has been concentrated. It's where founders are meeting investors over jerk chicken in Bed-Stuy. It's where pop-ups are connecting licensed brands with consumers who've been waiting for something that actually feels like it was made for them. We feel that energy every day we operate as a Brooklyn-based brand.

150+ Dispensaries Statewide — And the Boroughs Are Our Home Base

When we say Silly Nice is in 150+ licensed New York adult-use dispensaries statewide, we mean New Yorkers across the five boroughs and beyond can walk into a real, licensed shop and find our products on the shelf. That reach was built relationship by relationship, borough by borough. Finding us is straightforward — our dispensary locator keeps it current and easy. This is not theory. This is a Black-owned, Veteran-owned family business operating at scale in the most competitive cannabis market in the United States.

Black ownership in cannabis is not just about who signs the LLC paperwork. It's about who captures the economic value at every stage of the supply chain — cultivation, processing, branding, distribution, and retail. Too many equity-program operators have found themselves with a license but without the capital, infrastructure, or market access to actually build a sustainable business. We've watched it happen. It's one of the most frustrating dynamics in this industry — a system that grants access in theory but withholds the tools needed to execute in practice.

What Silly Nice represents is a model that doesn't wait for those tools to be handed over. We built our own brand identity, our own product development process, our own retail relationships. Our 2G All-In-One vape in Alaskan Thunder Fuck — 82.46% THC, 84.06% total cannabinoids, rechargeable via USB-C, $80 — is a product designed with the adult consumer experience at its center. Our 510 Vape in Pink Stardust — 81.96% THC, 88.36% total cannabinoids, 100% cannabis-derived terpenes at $40 — competes on flavor and potency with anything in the market. We didn't get here by waiting for the industry to make space. We made space.

Veterans, Families, and the LGBTQ+ Community: Ownership Across Dimensions

Shane's service in the U.S. Army, his 25-year partnership with LeVar, and the family-run nature of how we operate Silly Nice — these are not marketing checkboxes. They are the actual architecture of our business. When we talk about community, we mean it in the fullest sense: Black community, veteran community, LGBTQ+ community, New York community. We exist at the intersection of all of it, and we build for all of it. Adults 21 and over who want cannabis products that were made with this level of care and intention now have a home. That's us.

The New York cannabis market is still young. The regulatory environment will continue to evolve. More dispensaries will open. More brands will launch. And yes, more capital — including capital that does not prioritize equity — will continue to flow into the market. That is the reality. But the culture of this market — the soul of what makes New York cannabis distinctly New York — will be shaped by the founders who showed up first, who built with integrity, and who never stopped being connected to the communities they serve.

Brooklyn is a hub for Black cannabis entrepreneurship because Brooklyn has always been a hub for people who refuse to be defined by what they're told they can't have. We launched Silly Nice in March 2024 with a commitment to quality, transparency, and community — and we haven't wavered from that for a single day. Our Infused Flower in Papaya Wine — 3.5 grams, 51.22% THC, 58.63% total cannabinoids, live resin plus THCa diamonds at $60 — is for adults who want the best that New York has to offer. That's the standard we set, and that's the standard we'll keep.

Supporting Black Cannabis Brands Is a Community Act

Every time a New Yorker walks into a licensed dispensary and picks up a Silly Nice product, they are participating in something larger than a single transaction. They are supporting a Black-owned, Veteran-owned, family-run business. They are voting with their dollars for the kind of cannabis industry they want to see. They are saying that quality and equity are not in opposition — that you can demand both at the same time. We built Silly Nice for exactly those people, and we are deeply grateful for every one of them. New York, keep showing up. We will never stop showing out for you.