City Planners Looking To Limit Pot Dispensaries Before They Even
Exist

MIDDLETOWN - City planners are hoping the Planning and Zoning
Commission will approve preemptively limiting where marijuana
dispensaries can be located before medical marijuana is made legal in
the state.

The commission will be discussing a proposed zoning text amendment
Wednesday that limit the place of sale of marijuana, medical or
otherwise, to an accessory use where the primary use of the building
is an over 50-bed hospital, a pharmacy, or a medical clinic with more
than five practitioners.

The change would only allow the sale or dispensation of marijuana in
certain zones and the location would have to be at least 100 feet
from a residential zone unless a variance was granted, among other
restrictions.

"We don't want to have a situation where we have to regulate after
the fact," Michiel Wackers, deputy city planning director, said in
explanation of why the department was proposing the zoning regulation
change.

He said the planning department staff believes that Middletown could
be ripe for such dispensaries, citing Wesleyan University's ranking
as 18th in the "Reefer Madness" category of the Princeton Review's
2009 college guide and Middletown landing in the 39th spot of the
Daily Beast's list of the nation's 40 most pot-loving
communities.

"There's a perception that Middletown has a strong market for this
use," Wackers said.

In Connecticut, an effort to legalize medical marijuana passed the
state legislature three years ago, but Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed the
measure. The law would have allowed those with debilitating medical
conditions to have up to four marijuana plants for palliative use
with physician permission.

Other states have allowed medical marijuana use, though it is illegal
under federal law, most notably California, where medical marijuana
use has been legal for qualified patients since 1996 and where limits
on the cultivation or distribution of medical marijuana are left up
to local jurisdictions.

In Los Angeles, hundreds of marijuana dispensaries have opened in the
last couple years, and now a city ordinance to control them is taking
effect June 7 that will potentially shutter over 400 of the
dispensaries and leave somewhere between 70 and 130, the Associated
Press reported.

Last month, city planning staffers had proposed an zoning prohibition
on the sale of medical or recreational marijuana in Middletown, but
the Planning and Zoning Commission voted 4-3 against adopting the
more stringent regulation. Wackers said commissioners suggested
afterward they would consider a less restrictive version if one were
proposed.

Planning and Zoning Commission Chairman Quentin Phipps, who voted
against the first version, called the newest proposed zoning text
amendment a proactive solution that would allow patients access to
prescribed medication but would not "promote elicit substance abuse."