As it implements a state law that restricts local regulation of medical-marijuana dispensaries, the Deltona City Commission is taking steps to prevent such businesses from coming into the city. 

“I think we shouldn’t allow any more,” City Commissioner Emma Santiago said April 7, adding she favors “banning altogether any additional dispensaries for medical marijuana.”

Santiago’s colleagues supported her call to halt the growth of legal-cannabis businesses within Deltona. 

Instead of adopting the ordinance recommended by the city’s staff and the Planning and Zoning Board, the commission took a more strident stance against increasing the availability of legal marijuana in Deltona. The governing body voted unanimously, 7-0, to request an ordinance barring additional dispensaries within the city.

“We have two operating right now and one [application] underway,” city Planning and Development Services Director Jordan Smith told the commission.

If Deltona does indeed prohibit new medical-marijuana businesses from opening, what about those now operating?

“We would not allow any more than what we have, except the existing ones would be nonconforming. If they were to go out of business, they would not be allowed to re-establish,” Smith said. 

Thus, if the opponents of prescription cannabis prevail, the two dispensaries already open for business in Deltona would be allowed to continue, and if the application now in progress wins approval, the city of almost 100,000 may be limited to three dispensaries. 

The state law on medical marijuana sets separation distances between dispensaries — as well as pharmacies — and certain land uses. While the statute would allow a medical-marijuana business in any zoning district that permits a drugstore, there must be a minimum of 1,500 feet between one dispensary or pharmacy and another dispensary or pharmacy. 

In addition, a dispensary or a pharmacy must be at least 500 feet away from a park, a school or a house of worship. The only exception to these setbacks may be if a local governing body approves a major conditional use at a public hearing. 

A conditional use is an exception in the zoning that allows a property owner to use that property in a nonconforming way. 

Deltona’s 2014 local ordinance on dispensaries also prohibits sales of medical marijuana on Sundays. That provision has become null and void by the state law.

In rejecting the draft medical-marijuana ordinance submitted to it, and by calling for a stop on future dispensaries, the City Commission in effect ordered a new beginning of the legal process on dealing with the controlled substance. 

A new proposed ordinance on medical marijuana must be drafted and reviewed by Deltona’s Planning and Zoning Board. That panel will probably not see the new draft measure before its next regular meeting, set for May 21. The Planning and Zoning Board normally convenes at Deltona City Hall, 2345 Providence Blvd., at 6 p.m. on the third Wednesday of each month.

After the planning body conducts a public hearing on the proposed measure and votes on whether to recommend its approval or rejection, the ordinance will go to the City Commission for final action. The commission must vote for the ordinance on two readings before it becomes law. Thus, the submission of the ordinance may not come until June.

Although the Deltona City Commission turned down the medical-marijuana ordinance, Commissioner Nick Lulli said prescription cannabis has “some benefits.”

“I think that alcohol and tobacco are far more destructive than this,” he told his colleagues and the audience. “Five years ago and change, I took one of these things. I had a neck injury, … very serious, … and I took this thing for 30 days. A little capsule, every night at 8 o’clock, and after 30 days, I was cured.”

Legal explained:

That pending application to open a medical-marijuana business will be reviewed and processed for possible approval, inasmuch as it was submitted under the current legal framework for such requests.

With the recommendation of the Planning and Zoning Board, the city’s planning staff had submitted to the City Commission an ordinance “to align [Deltona] with state law.” 

Though the 2018 state law allows local governments to ban medical-marijuana outlets outright, it forbids cities and counties to adopt or impose any regulations on medical-marijuana businesses that do not apply to pharmacies and drugstores. Nor may any local regulations be more stringent than those of the state. That law effectively pre-empts home rule over dispensaries and pharmacies.