A new ordinance designed to regulate medical marijuana within the City of Pauls Valley will be amended after local medical marijuana retailers protested the limitations it places on their businesses.
The ordinance, which was enacted last month, prohibits commercial grow houses inside city limits and requires city permits for dispensaries and medical marijuana patients growing plants for personal use.
It also limits the hours of operation for dispensaries to 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and requires them to be closed on Sundays and certain holidays, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and July Fourth.
The requirement to close on Sundays and holidays was the primary issue raised by dispensary owners who attended last week’s Planning and Zoning Commission meeting to share their concerns with Commission members.
The city’s Planning and Zoning Commission was tasked by the City Council to create the ordinance. Commission Chairman David Assad said the ordinance was based on similar ordinances already in use by other Oklahoma municipalities.
“We’re here to listen to you guys, to your opinions and your concerns. We were asked originally to adopt a policy. The policy that was brought to us. We reviewed it. We changed it. We actually made it less restrictive than it was when it was brought to us, and that’s how it was presented to the council,” Assad told the group gathered at last week’s meeting.
“This board is more than happy to listen to everybody and if something needs to be adjusted, we can make those recommendations,” Commissioner Richard Ragland added.
Dispensary owners questioned the reasoning for requiring them to close on Sundays, saying their businesses are more like pharmacies than liquor stores, which are often required by law to close on Sundays.
“We’re distributing medicine essentially, because only people with a medical necessity can obtain medical marijuana. So, we would be along the same lines as a pharmacy,” dispensary owner Adrian Johnson said. “I would echo the same thing that any medical marijuana business owner would say, which is treat this as it is. It’s medicine. It’s not pot. It’s not weed. It’s not something that we’re doing on the black market. It’s something that we’ve all obtained a license for. It’s all something that we are operating in the best interest of our patients.” Johnson said.
He went on to say the new rules are not only restrictive, but they create additional hardships for medical marijuana patients, who often come in during low traffic times such as Sunday or later at night to avoid drawing attention to themselves because medical marijuana carries a stigma in many areas.
“You still have people who want that privacy. Who want to be able to go somewhere after hours where they won’t be seen,” Johnson said.
Dispensary owner Katherine Foster said many of her patients choose to come in on Sundays or late in the evening as a result of the conditions they are being treated for.
“We have so many veterans, so many Post Traumatic Stress Disorder patients that are not veterans, that come in on specifically Sunday, because they cannot handle the busy Monday through Friday people all around them kind of thing,” Foster said.
Foster’s husband, Tommy, said forcing them to close on Sunday not only results in lost business, but also in lost wages for his employees. He said their customers are not likely to “stock up on Saturday or wait until Monday,” but will drive to another town to make their purchases instead, taking valuable tax revenue with them.
Dispensary owner Bill Glenn agreed.
“We’ve got six employees on Sunday, including a manager, that’s gonna lose wages that they need,” Glenn said. “With the tax dollars alone that we bring to the town, you’d think that they’d be a little more friendly to what we’re doing.”
After hearing the business owners out, the Commission agreed the section of the ordinance restricting hours of operation was unnecessary and moved to recommend to the City Council that part of the ordinance be removed.
The City Council took the recommendation up during their regular meeting Tuesday night.
Council member Jonathan Grimmett addressed the handful of dispensary owners present and explained the original intent of the ordinance was to prohibit commercial grow houses inside the city limits, not necessarily to place limits on retail businesses. Grimmett said once they started researching ordinances of other municipalities, they became aware of the potential for additional issues they had not previously considered, and so a comprehensive ordinance addressing the industry as a whole was put together.
“I didn’t want you guys to feel singled out, because that was never the intent,” Grimmett said.
During the discussion, council member Chip Pearson asked if the council could also ask the Planning and Zoning Commission to revisit the portion of the ordinance requiring permits for medical marijuana patients growing plants for their own use to ensure it doesn’t conflict with HIPPA laws or other privacy issues.
The Council voted to approve the recommendation as brought forth by planning and zoning to amend the ordinance, removing the restrictions on hours of operation for dispensaries.