York residents will not vote on a recreational marijuana referendum after repeated attempts failed to get the question on the town’s ballot. But they will face a different marijuana-related question in voting booths Nov. 4.
Voters will be asked to enact rules limiting where medical marijuana caregivers can grow their plants, a proposal that grew out of a conflict between one such facility and its neighbors.
The zoning changes would regulate marijuana as a land use, restrict caregivers growing in commercial settings to a section along the Route 1 corridor, and prevent more than one grower from using the same lot. They also would require a public approval process and establish a business licensing requirement to monitor ongoing consistency with the Maine Medical Use of Marijuana Program, according to the proposed ordinance. The restrictions would not apply to caregivers growing medical marijuana in their own homes.
The proposed changes also would limit the town to one dispensary if the state ever approves additional locations in York County. Maine currently allows eight regional dispensaries, including one in York County.
The proposal comes as the town defends a Board of Appeals decision allowing multiple medical marijuana caregivers to continue to grow the drug in separate sections of a warehouse on White Birch Lane. Neighbors of the property filed a suit in August trying to shut down the facility, which is used by about nine licensed caregivers, while town officials say the manufacturing use is allowed on the property and they have no oversight of the growers.
Caregivers are allowed to grow marijuana for as many as five qualified patients. State law bans the small-scale caregivers from collaborating or forming collectives for larger-scale cultivation or distribution. But it does not prohibit multiple caregivers from growing marijuana in different parts of the same commercial facility.
The state has no authority to monitor sites where patients and caregivers grow marijuana, although the operations do have to be secure. The Department of Health and Human Services does not track whether certified caregivers cultivate in residential or commercial locations.
Neighbors, who say the operation has created unpleasant living conditions and public safety issues, contend that the facility is an illegal collective. The property owner denies it. Town officials are caught in between.
“If people are growing for their own medical needs in their home, whether they’re a patient or a caregiver, the town doesn’t want anything to do with it,” said interim Town Manager Stephen Burns. “We don’t want to know anything about it. What we’re after is anyone trying to basically create an industrial type use.”
The York Board of Selectmen in September voted 5-0 to put the changes on the ballot and to recommend their approval by voters.
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