Written by Dean Wright on The Bristol Press
BRISTOL – After roughly four hours of discussion in a public hearing and ordinance committee meeting Sept. 6 where City Council and committee members voted to propose an ordinance banning recreational cannabis sales in Bristol, another special ordinance committee meeting is slated to be held this Thursday to nail down the potential ordinance’s legal language.
The meeting is slated to be held at 5:30 p.m. on the lower floors of the Bristol Public Library.
According to Mayor Jeff Caggiano, Bristol was unique as it had one of the first medical cannabis dispensaries in the state.
“The state regulation allows all of the medical dispensaries to switch over to hybrid with a small fee, a million dollar fee,” he said via the Bristol Mayor’s Office Facebook page in a video. “However, the goal of the state was to have all of the medical dispensaries remain medical and add in retail.”
The mayor said that they will look at the guard rails that were put into place within the ordinances to make sure to either allow retail sales in conjunction with medical or get rid of all sales because they’re linked.
“The economic forces that would require a dispensary to just operate as medical pretty much puts that out of business in the future,” said Caggiano.
To the mayor’s knowledge, he knew of no dispensaries being solely pursued as medical only endeavors in Connecticut. He said Bristol’s sole medical dispensary, Trulieve, has said it wants to stay and put in its million dollar fee to become a hybrid and is looking to relocate to allow for more space within the municipality. City officials in the past have said the dispensary is looking to move to the old Applewood Restaurant and Bar location along Route 6.
“Ordinance Committee has to re-meet on Thursday. They need to make sure that they have the appropriate ordinance language codified,” said Caggiano. “Although we had a lot of debate, we really haven’t had the true debate on exactly what those terms are and quite honestly whether we’re going to let sales happen on the retail side at all.”
The mayor said he believed that if the city were to ban recreational sales, it would also “banish the medical use sales” and he reasoned it was not economically feasible for such a business to continue on in such an environment. He encouraged those concerned to focus on specific ordinance language in the coming Thursday meeting.
“One thing we did hear clearly from many of the people who came out to the first ordinance meeting is everybody seems to be in favor of medical use marijuana,” said Caggiano. “We’re different than many other cities, most other cities, but certainty any city around us in that we’re the only one with a medical dispensary right now so those rules and regulations are complicated.”
In the following week, City Council will hold a special meeting Sept. 22 to review the proposed ordinances from the ordinance committee before voting on them. More details have yet to be announced about the meeting.
In a vote of two-against-one, Councilwomen Sue Tyler and Jacqueline Olsen, both representing City Council District Two, voted at the Sept. 6 Ordinance Committee meeting to propose an ordinance banning recreational cannabis sales but to continue allowing medical dispensary operation and the potential for manufacturing businesses focused on cannabis products within Bristol
Councilwoman Cheryl Thibeault said she would not vote for the measure out of concern that should Bristol’s sole medical dispensary, Trulieve, not be able to become a hybrid model, medical and recreational dispensary, it would leave and potentially put around 3,000 patients in a more difficult position.
Olsen voiced concerns with cannabis as a substance that physically harms mental development in youth and that several other communities surrounding Bristol had chosen to not have recreational cannabis.
Tyler has said she thinks with the uncertain future of many decisions involving cannabis at the state level, she would like to see the recreational use of the substance banned for the time being and the issue to be potentially revisited in the future as more information from the state becomes available.
Both Olsen and Tyler support the medicinal use of cannabis.
H/T: The Bristol Press
