Though local planning officials may want to position New Canaan so that the town can control whether a medical marijuana dispensary can set up shop here can do so, the best strategy for now may be to deal with an application if and when it arrives, the town attorney has said.
Connecticut has licenses six dispensaries in the state so far—including one in Fairfield County (Bethel)—and in each case the municipality where they’re located readily agreed to the new business’s arrival, Town Attorney Ira Bloom said at the Oct. 28 meeting of the Planning & Zoning Commission.
Town Attorney Ira Bloom (standing) at the Oct. 28, 2014 meeting of the Planning & Zoning Commission, held in the Sturgess Room at the New Canaan Nature Center. That’s Town Planner Steve Kleppin sitting. Credit: Michael Dinan
Though there is no indication that the state will grant more licenses any time soon, “that could happen at any point in time,” Bloom said at the meeting, held in the Sturgess Room of the New Canaan Nature Center.
“So I think so some degree we are in a wait-and-see period in the state of Connecticut, in trying to assess what is going to happen, whether more licenses are granted or there is a change to the law or whatever,” Bloom said.
Ultimately, Bloom said, New Canaan has three options:
- “You can work on crafting a regulation to discuss where the dispensaries would be allowed in New Canaan. The purpose of having the regulation, I think the assumption is that you will find certain parts of town where it will be allowed. There are a number of municipalities that have such a regulation and they specify some common elements—they specify not within X feet of a school or Y feet of a religious institution, things like that.”
- “You can consider a regulation that disallows it entirely in New Canaan. I think there are a couple of towns that have done that or are considering it. I haven’t seen that in a lot of places … The conclusion is that it certainly is not clear whether the local town has the authority to forbid any of these dispensaries in town entirely…. I believe there are a couple of towns that have tried doing that, but there is risk associated. One risk is that someone will challenge it and the ban will not be upheld. The other risk, candidly, I think, is that if you announce that you are forbidding it in town entirely, are you looking for trouble? Are you singling yourself out more than you need to do sort of by advertising or announcing we will not allow it anywhere in town? And does that invite people to come in and challenge it?”
- “The third option and my sense that most towns are exercising this, is doing nothing at all. I talked to [New Canaan Town Planner] Steve [Kleppin] and talked to other planners in other towns and that does seem to be, in my opinion, the most common approach: not passing a regulation to allow it in certain areas, and not passing a regulation to disallow it. The theory being that if it comes to our town, we will deal with it one way or the other. I think some officials feel that it wouldn’t be allowed anyway under their regulations. There haven’t really been any challenges to local regulations yet.”
Commission Chairman Laszlo Papp said that danger of now allowing it is that a major chain already here—say, Walgreens or CVS—decide to take up a medical marijuana dispensary service.
“Then we say, ‘Not in New Canaan,’ we would put the town in a position to fight an expensive battle against a national chain,” Papp said.
Commissioner Dan Radman asked whether the state plans to issue more dispensary licenses, and Bloom replied no, not to his knowledge.
Commissioner Dick Ward said one advantage to putting a prohibition on the books is that it may deter a prospective local dispensary from trying to set up here.