City is preparing for medical marijuana sales
Businesses set sights on limited number of operating licenses
With dozens of medical marijuana entrepreneurs inquiring about building businesses in Texarkana, Ark., the city has begun formulating a legal structure to accommodate any who win state licenses.
The city has fielded 70 to 80 serious inquiries about opening medical cannabis cultivation centers, where the plant will be grown, or dispensaries, where it will be sold. Some have come from “proven operators” with “shovel ready” plans, City Manager Kenny Haskin said after a Planning Commission workshop Tuesday.
That leaves city government hurrying to establish zoning and permitting rules for medical pot businesses, which may submit applications for state operating licenses beginning Friday.
The workshop focused on which land use zones would be appropriate, taking into consideration state-mandated location restrictions. The state’s new Medical Marijuana Commission dictates that a cultivation center must be at least 3,000 feet, and a dispensary at least 1,500 feet, from any school, church or daycare.
At the workshop, assistant city planner Mary Beck shared maps showing that between those two restrictions, medical marijuana businesses are excluded from almost all of Texarkana. But by state law the city cannot shut them out altogether, and a rule that dispensaries must have the same zoning as retail pharmacies further complicates the problem.
Beck proposed restricting cultivation centers to manufacturing zones, as well as allowing retail pharmacies in those zones so dispensaries may operate there.
She also suggested excluding pharmacies from office quiet zones—where small businesses are allowed to operate among homes—to help ensure that medical pot dispensaries will not be built in residential neighborhoods.
The Planning Commission’s recommendations are expected to be finalized at its July meeting, and a proposal could come before the city Board of Directors at its first meeting in August, Beck said.
City staff is also drafting local permitting procedures and submitting them to the city attorney for legal review, and those rules should be rolled out next week, Haskin said.
State regulation of medical cannabis businesses is so extensive that there is little room for cities to do much themselves besides zoning and permitting, Beck said.
Arkansas voters elected to legalize medical marijuana in November 2016, and three state agencies tasked with overseeing the industry have since been busy establishing regulations. MMC governs cultivators and dispensaries, while Alcoholic Beverage Control will inspect facilities and the Department of Health will approve patients eligible to use medical marijuana and issue them registry cards.
The Arkansas Legislature decided to allow 32 dispensaries statewide, to be divided equally among eight geographical zones: four in each. Texarkana is in Dispensary Zone Eight, a roughly 14-county area of Southwest Arkansas. Only five cultivation centers will be allowed to operate anywhere in the state.
MMC will accept applications for cultivation and dispensary licenses from June 30 through Sept. 18. An early plan proposed using a lottery system to determine the order in which applicants would go before the commission, but MMC scrapped that plan in April and will evaluate applications solely on their merits, according to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette report.