The legalization of marijuana has grown across the country at a rapid pace. 

Now that marijuana is legal for recreational purposes in New York State, the doors have opened for lounges, dispensaries, and other amenities for cannabis fans from Long Island to Watertown. 

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But which city in the Empire State is the best of the best for weed lovers?

Weed-Friendly Cities Ranked Across The US

The real estate site Clever teamed up with Leafly, a cannabis rating site, to declare the 50 best cities for THC lovers in 2023. 

Clever looked at some of the following metrics to determine their rankings:

  • Legality
  • Cannabis-prescribing doctors per 100,000 residents
  • Dispensaries per 100,000 residents
  • Affordability of high-quality weed
  • Google search trends

Buffalo Is The Best City In NYS For Weed In 2023

Buffalo is already known for ranking towards the top of lists of food, sports, and breweries across the country. Now, we can add another thing that Buffalo is great at - weed. 

After sitting at #14 last year, Buffalo, New York has jumped fourteen spots to #3 on Clever’s annual ranking of the 50 best weed cities in the US and the highest ranking city in New York State.

The only other city in the Empire State to make the cut was New York City, which landed at #21. 

The City of Good Neighbors ranked extremely well in the amount of doctors that prescribe medical marijuana (0.5 cannabis-prescribing doctors per 100,000 residents - 79% more than the average city). 

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Buffalo also had big scores on how inexpensive legal cannabis is there, with the average ounce of medium-quality marijuana in Buffalo costing only $226 (10% less than average prices around the country). 

When Clever looked at cannabis-related Google searches, Buffalo ranked #6, and also had the 4th highest (heh) number of visitors to Leafly.com.

Buffalo Needs More Cannabis Dispensaries

More and more dispensaries have been popping up around Western New York, but Buffalo still lacks the amount that the two top cities, Portland, Oregon and Denver, Colorado, have. Our area only has 3 dispensaries per 100k citizens. 

So even though the interest is there and the price is reasonable, it's tough to get your hands on marijuana in Buffalo without a prescription thanks to the lack of places to find it. 

“Buffalo is the dark horse. It’s still lagging in terms of dispensaries per capita, but New York is a real example of changes in legalization and the growth of personal cannabis freedoms.” - David Downs, senior content manager at Leafly

This Factor Could Have Boosted Buffalo’s Weed Ranking

Although landing at #3 on Clever and Leafly’s list of the best weed cities in the US is pretty impressive, we think they ignored a very important factor that could have boosted Buffalo’s ranking. 

One of the metrics evaluated in the cities on the list of the number of Taco Bell’s in the area per 100k residents. We can’t argue their logic with including this - Taco Bell is a known stoner hot spot.

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But what Clever might not have considered is that Buffalo is not a Taco Bell town. Yes, it has 3.6 Taco Bell restaurants per 100k people according to their data, but we bet if they factored in all of the Mighty Tacos available when the munchies hit, we bet Buffalo's ranking would be even “higher.”

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