For Coco Barron, a senior living in the town’s senior housing apartments, and her neighbors, medical marijuana in the community would be a bad thing. For Chuck Scott, who said he uses medical marijuana to recover from car crash injuries, it is a blessing.
Barron and Scott brought opposing and impassioned comment to the table Tuesday night during the Planning and Zoning Commission’s public hearing on a zoning amendment to ban medical marijuana facilities in town.
Despite support for medical marijuana from several commission members, including John Katz, the anti-medical marijuana sentiment won over and the commission voted later in the evening to enact the proposed amendments.
“The next step is to file a legal notice about changing the zoning regulations, and updating them online,” said Betty Brosius, the town planner, on Wednesday morning.
Medical marijuana had been a controversial issue for the Planning and Zoning Commission. There had been a moratorium against it for several years, until the commission had the time to study it deeply.
The commission prohibits medical marijuana growing facilities and dispensaries largely because the federal government does not recognize marijuana as a legal drug.
Also, a state-licensed medical marijuana dispensary is located in neighboring Bethel.
That is where Scott said he buys his marijuana supplies.
“I go twice a month,” he said, buying a variety of types of marijuana, not just the type that is smoked or the type that contains THC, the active ingredient.
The state law limits him to four grams per month, whatever type he buys.
It eases his pain left from an accident several years ago, helping him to exercise in a pool every day, and also helps him sleep at night when he is restless.
“I can’t say enough good about it, for what it has done for me. It has changed my life,” Scott told the commissioners.
Barron didn’t see it that way. She said she was speaking on behalf of herself and her senior neighbors when she asked to ban the substance.
“It’s a bad influence on the children,” she said. “We already have problems in the community with cocaine and morphine,” she said, referring to street drugs including opioid painkillers and heroin.
The ban on growing facilities and sales boutiques means nothing, in the bigger picture, because the state has already issued all the licenses for these businesses it has at this time. There would not have been another opportunity to open a marijuana dispensary or indoor farm anyway.
But marijuana legality is an evolving political reality in the United States, and some commissioners were hopeful that after several years pass the commission can revisit the issue.
That is written into the amendment. “If these concerns are addressed in the future to the satisfaction of the commission, town agencies and the community, the commission may at any time consider new amendments to the zoning regulations to permit marijuana facilities,” the amendment reads.
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