Presque Isle medical pot ordinance
sparks debate on creeping normalization
PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Officials in Aroostook County’s largest city are moving to regulate a potential medical marijuana dispensary, while wondering about the implications of the quasi-legal substance coming out of the black market.
In a joint meeting of the Presque Isle City Council and planning board last Thursday, members were asked to give city staff some direction on drafting a new medical marijuana dispensary ordinance. The ordinance would replace a city regulation enacted before Maine’s 2010 voter-approved dispensary expansion.
According to city officials, Aroostook County’s only medical marijuana dispensary, Safe Alternatives in Eagle Lake, is considering relocating to Presque Isle, where it could grow and sell marijuana in various forms to patients with a certification card. Seperately, a local couple who currently grow medical pot through the caregiver system would like to set up a cultivation space along Main Street on U.S. Route 1.
The council enacted a 180-day dispensary moratorium in August to create time to discuss the issues. The moratorium could be renewed, but City Manager Martin Puckett is hoping that city staff can write an ordinance proposal that will be ready for a public hearing and city council vote in early 2016, before Maine voters decide whether to legalize recreational marijuana sales in a referendum next November.
Pucket’s task now is to write a draft ordinance that meets state standards, includes a permit fee and sets requirements on issues like public safety, setbacks and odor reduction. But the board and council’s discussion reflected the national fault lines in public opinion on pot, a plant prohibited by the federal government since the 1930s but still used as a modern recreational drug and medicine by an estimated 19 million Americans annually.
“I am not going to support anything that allows violation of the laws of the United States of America,” said councilor Dick Engels, a lawyer and former Army intelligence officer during the Vietnam War.
Presque Isle Police Chief Matt Irwin said he would help the city council work with whatever ordinance they end up agreeing to. But he argued that the city should “make it as hard as possible to have,” raising concerns about a dispensary drawing crime or bringing more intoxicated drivers.
“When the dispensary comes here, with sympathy for those that need the help they need medically, people are going to be coming from all over the place,” Irwin said.
Planning board member Pam Sweetser, a farmer and social studies instructor at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics, argued that the medical dispensary ordinance should keep in mind access for patients with diseases like cancer. “I think this conversation needs to include the morality of denying or thwarting palliative care,” said Sweetser.
Marijuana is being grown, sold and consumed in greater Presque Isle, medically and otherwise. “There are already quite a few caregivers,” the usually home-based, state-registered medical marijuana growers, Puckett said.
“We’re seeing a lot of husband and wife teams.” Together a couple can grow upwards of a dozen plants and store more than 15 pounds of the marijuana flowers for patients with one of 11 conditions, including cancer, glaucoma, post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic pain.
Those caregivers are largely immune from local regulation. As long as they’re meeting state medical marijuana law, they can grow in owned spaces as well as leased apartments or commercial properties. It is only the dispensary that the city’s ordinance would address, limiting distances from schools and daycare facilities and requiring odor abatements.
But the dispensary would offer the city some certainty about where medical pot is being grown and sold, said George Howe, Presque Isle’s code enforcement officer. “The caregivers, we have no control over. But the dispensaries we can control.” Marijuana legalization advocates also argue that an accessible dispensary offers patients more choices and more reliable quality than the caregiver networks.
Councilor Mike Chasse wondered whether the city should get ahead of state and national trends with a regulatory system that “could at least get it controlled and make it easier” for police and public safety.
“Is it pretty much just going to be legal anyway?” asked council chair and farmer Emily Smith.
Sales of recreational marijuana have been legalized in Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Oregon, after a half-century evolution in American public opinion that now has a small majority in favor of legalization. Advocates in Maine sponsoring the 2016 referendum hope that state will be the first in New England and the East Coast allowing recreational marijuana cultivation and sale.
“Well, you want to keep young people in The County, here you go,” Smith said at one point in the meeting. The comment brought laughter, but advocates argue that legalized marijuana could bring a new industry and agricultural diversification to rural Maine communities like Presque Isle.
“It’s going to be a boon for small farmers and auxiliary businesses like realators and agriculture supply shops,” said David Boyer, campaign manager for the Maine Marijuana Policy Project, in an interview. The proposal Boyer’s group wants Maine voters to approve would allow 70 retail stores regulated by the Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages and Lottery Operations, with fee and tax revenue split between the state and local governments.
Smith, whose family farm grows one of the largest broccoli harvests on the East Coast, said she knows the local caregiver couple looking to set up a growing space on Main Street. “They’re good kids, they’re smart, they’re making money,” she said. “They tell me, ‘Look Emily this is the real deal. It’s a real business.’”
