As medical cannabis is soon to be legal in Kentucky, Campbell County voted to opt out of allowing cannabis business operations in the county—at least for now.
Medical cannabis will be legal in the state effective Jan. 1, 2025. Each individual city is responsible for creating the zoning regulations to make way or not allow those types of businesses to operate; however, if cities do not have those regulations in place by June 30, the state can begin issuing licenses, and if those businesses start operations, they will be grandfathered against any future regulation.
The state will begin issuing licenses to businesses on July 1, so they have six months to get up and running and gather inventory before Jan. 1. Applications will then be approved through a lottery. Learn more about how that system works here.
The county chose to prohibit medical cannabis businesses to give each city more time to develop its own regulations. Individual cities and the county have the option to opt in in the future.
“A lot of our cities only meet once a month, or their planning commission’s maybe once a month; they just don’t have the time to put together the zoning and any regulations they would want on the businesses,” Campbell County Administrator Matt Elberfeld said. “So, this really just buys everyone more time to think through and each city to make their own decision.”
The county opting out has nothing to do with the use of medical cannabis as that was legalized (as of Jan. 1, 2025) by the state.
“All we’re doing here is saying that we’re opting out—there aren’t going to be applications made for businesses in Campbell County to produce cannabis for medical purposes,” Campbell County Judge/Executive Steve Pendery said. “We’ll see what happens in the future, but nobody’s prepared to react as swiftly as the legislature, which left everybody scrambling with this thing.”
Across all of Kentucky, the state will issue 10 licenses for cannabis processors and 48 licenses will be available for dispensaries.
Those licenses will be issued in 11 regions across the commonwealth; each region will initially be granted at least four dispensary licenses. However, no more than one dispensary can be located in each county — the only exception to this rule being Kentucky’s two largest counties, Jefferson and Fayette.
“I think it’s also something to consider in that this is not like gas stations opening up on corners and they’re everywhere,” Campbell County Commissioner Geoff Besecker said. “These are already regulated in terms of numbers.”
Besecker said due to the regulations, one given community can’t decide how many licenses operate through their zoning.
“I believe that the cabinet made it so that no person would be within greater than an hour’s drive to a distributor,” Besecker said. “So, for Northern Kentucky to even get a couple would be a consideration through the lottery system.”
