N.S. won’t let weed ‘get out of control’

Citing public safety concerns, Town Council proposes amendment to Zoning Ordinance that would sharply limit where marijuana may be grown and by whom

NORTH SMITHFIELD — Through the Department of Business Regulation, medical marijuana is capable of reaching the marketplace through a half-dozen legal windows. Now the town wants to close a few. Citing public safety concerns, the Town Council has proposed an amendment to the Zoning Ordinance that would sharply limit where marijuana may be grown and by whom.

“I think we’re just trying to keep a handle on things and not let it get out of control,” said Town Council President John Beauregard, a former state policeman. “I’ve been to many houses where people are doing their own grows – and it’s a very dangerous situation. We’re just trying to keep a handle on that sort of thing.”

Officials say fire is a high risk for marijuana grows, which typically involve indoor settings augmented by artificial, high-intensity lighting, humidifiers, temperature controls and other equipment that runs on electricity.

The proposed measure would not interfere with the rights of card-carrying medical marijuana patients who grow their own pot to treat a verifiable medical condition. State law presently allows them to grow up to 12 marijuana plants for their own use.

The zoning amendment would allow this largely home-based group of marijuana growers to cultivate marijuana in any zone in town, even on someone else’s property, so long as the grower has the owner’s permission.

The only other type of permissible class of growers would be state-licensed cultivators, a category that the state began regulating for the first time in January. Such operations, which can vary quite widely in scale, would be permitted only in manufacturing, business highway and limited commercial zones, provided they obtain a special use permit from the Zoning Board of Review.

Applicants would be granted permits only after a full vetting of their proposals by the Planning Board and a hearing before the Zoning Board of Review. Town Planner Tom Kravitz said such proposals would also have to be in compliance with a smorgasbord of regulations governing site plans, lighting, security and other operational requirements designated by the DBR.

“They’ve already done an excellent job of covering all the things we need to look at,” said Kravitz. “There’s a lot of crossreferencing in our code with that.”

Medical marijuana has been around for years now, but in January the DBR issued new regulations for legally-fuzzy cultivation setups that have sprouted up in the ever-changing landscape of an increasingly decriminalized marketplace for marijuana.

The state has long afforded growing privileges to patients as well as others, known as caregivers, who grow marijuana for them. More recently, however, the state began regulating new classes of growers defined as residential and nonresidential cooperatives – situations in which multiple caregivers may share a growing location. The state also recognizes retail sales outlets called compassion centers, three of which are presently in operation. All cooperatives and compassion centers would be entirely prohibited under the proposed amendment to the zoning ordinance.

“I personally did not want to see any retail use,” said Beauregard. “I did not want to see that kind of traffic coming into North Smithfield. If somebody wants to grow it in a warehouse and ship it out of town, I don’t have a problem with that.”

By opening the door to licensed cultivators, the proposed zoning amendment makes it possible for the town to consider approving a warehouse-size growing operation. State regulations currently set a cap of 500 plants on licensed cultivators, but they’re apparently flexible on the question of how big a footprint the growing facility may be allowed. Licensing fees are calibrated to the size of such operations – $80,000 a year for a 20,000square-foot grow is the largest explicitly covered in the DBR’s regulations, but it’s not a ceiling. While no fees are speci- fied, DBR advises prospective cultivators seeking permission for larger commercial facilities to submit plans for consideration. DBR said it intends to revisit the issue of the 500-plant cap when it adopts a system to track plant inventories that is designed to drive operational fees in the future.

Though he gives Beauregard and Town Administrator Gary Ezovski most of the credit for advancing the new marijuana measure, Councilman Dan Halloran gives the zoning amendment a thumbs-up.

There are already 30 statelicensed growers in town, including one cultivator, officials say, and Halloran doesn’t see the demanding for medical marijuana tapering off any time in the near future. While recreational marijuana was legalized in two New England states in 2016 – Maine and neighboring Massachusetts – Rhode Island’s General Assembly has signaled it is disinclined to follow suit this year, making medical marijuana the only legal avenue for the drug to find its way into the marketplace.

Even if recreational marijuana were passed by state lawmakers next year, it’s anyone’s guess how long it would take to phase in.

“It’s got to be regulated,” said Halloran. “I don’t think you can just have 50 or 60 or 80 of these grows throughout the town. So putting this ordinance in is a good idea.”

If all goes according to plan, the council will vote on the proposed ordinance immediately after a public hearing on June 5.

Passage of the measure would make North Smithfield the first town in the Blackstone Valley to adopt some type of legislative curb on the proliferation of medical marijuana growing operations.

Town officials began exploring the idea several months ago, after Attorney General Peter Kilmartin met with town officials to advocate for stricter controls on medical marijuana.

Kravitz said he looked at a number of existing municipal ordinances, eventually settling on one adopted by the town of Westerly as a model for the proposal before the council.

Westerly is among nine cities and towns which have, to one extent or another, already adopted local regulations governing the cultivation and sale of medical marijuana. The others are Bristol, Coventry, East Greenwich, West Greenwich, West Warwick, Tiverton, Middletown and Johnston.

Most of the measures were passed after 2015, but Kravitz says he wouldn’t be surprised if more municipalities consider such legislation in the future.

“It appears to be growing,” said Kravitz, “I suspect there’s probably a lot state-licensed growers out there...and they’re getting an increasing number of state licenses for cooperatives for which there are no zoning laws to enforce.”