City officials at Florence’s first June caucus meeting were faced with a decision that all of Kentucky’s local municipalities are grappling with: the question of whether to allow medical cannabis licenses within their city or to outright ban it.
Officials gathered to hear a presentation of the first proposals for legislation from City Administrator Joshua Hunt.
Hunt’s presentation provided a detailed look at the current status of medical cannabis in Kentucky, what the options the council has, detailed zoning texts (if the city council decides to allow the sale of cannabis), and where they could potentially expect to see these dispensaries pop up in the city.
Starting Jan. 1, 2025, medical cannabis will be legal in Kentucky. Local governments are responsible for creating zoning regulations to make way for (or not allow) those types of businesses to operate. There were a total of 2,650 medical cannabis facility applications submitted throughout the state. The initial cannabis business license application period is currently closed, and the state was set to decide on applications and, if necessary, hold a lottery for the licenses. Each region will initially be granted at least four dispensary licenses, but no more than one dispensary can be located in each county. Learn more and find out what your municipality decided to do regarding medical cannabis facilities here.
The state of medical cannabis in Northern Kentucky
The city of Florence has been given the same three option as all other municipalities in the state of Kentucky: they can pass an ordinance to ban the sale of medical cannabis within the city, adopt the state regulations and create zoning codes to tell the businesses where they can sell, or to put it up to a vote with the residents of the city which would appear on the ballot this November.
Councilmembers can pass an initial ordinance that would prohibit the state from issuing licenses for businesses looking to operate in their city until a decision is reached with the vote.
In terms of zoning, the city is doing something slightly different than what the Kentucky legislation requires. While the state legislation requires dispensaries to be outside of a 1000-foot radius of schools, primary and secondary and daycare centers, the proposed legislation from Florence would extend those prohibitions.
The legislation proposed at Florence’s caucus meeting on Monday would also prohibit these facilities from going within 500 feet of churches, synagogues, mosques, or other places of worship, as well as public parks or playgrounds and sexually oriented businesses.
Hunt’s legislation would also add an additional 1000ft buffer in between medical cannabis dispensaries.
“This is to prevent clusters,” Hunt explained. “Similar to what you’d see in every shopping center if you go out to Colorado.”
In the image above, all the areas highlighted in blue are where the medical cannabis dispensaries are permitted, whereas all of the red is where these businesses are prohibited.
Currently, only two dispensaries are permitted within the three county area of Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties.
“I don’t know if there’s going to be a cap for the Northern Kentucky region, but eventually there will be more dispensary licenses that are issued, for sure,” Hunt said.
When questioned by fellow city officials about concerns for medical cannabis, Florence Chief of Police, Jeff Mallery, explained he had no concerns about medical cannabis, as he’s heard of no issues from other police departments where their state legalized medical marijuana.
“I haven’t heard of any issues… now if it goes recreational then there’s issues. But, as far as medical cannabis, I haven’t,” Mallery said.
City officials have until June 30 before licenses begin to be issued by the state.