WESTBROOK, Maine — Cities and towns across Maine are considering temporarily banning businesses from selling marijuana as voters prepare to decide Tuesday whether the drug can be legally sold in the state for recreational use.
Passage would allow retail stores and social clubs to open around the state. However, municipalities would be allowed to decide whether to permit marijuana businesses in their town.
Maine is one of five states that could legalize recreational marijuana on Election Day. Proposed laws in the states take differing approaches to how marijuana would be sold and regulated. In Maine, unlike other states, the proposal explicitly states that marijuana would be sold for consumption on premises at clubs or over the counter at stores for home use.
Westbrook City Council President Brendan Rielly said he wants his city to go even further and indefinitely ban pot shops. For now, Westbrook has given preliminary passage to a temporary moratorium on pot businesses, and a final vote is slated for the day before the election, he said.
“We don’t want to be viewed by our citizens and our children as being in favor of the recreational use of drugs or marijuana,” he said. “We have no interest in spending the money and time to craft a regulatory system and enforce it.”
The Maine Municipal Association said it appears at least two dozen municipalities are looking to pass moratoriums on pot-dealing facilities, or have done so already. State law allows cities and towns to enact 180-day temporary bans on the issuance of business development permits.
Eric Conrad, a spokesman for the association, said he expects many more municipalities to do so in the wake of legalization if the measure passes. He said a temporary pause on marijuana businesses will allow cities and towns to tailor laws about recreational marijuana sales to their own communities.
However, the action is also largely symbolic, because it will take the state months of state rulemaking for pot shops to open anywhere in the state, Conrad said.
“Moratoriums are fine now if you want to restrict properties from changing hands now in advance of the question,” Conrad said. “Or even send a message that it’s not going to be easy here or welcome here.”
The other states voting on legal marijuana are Massachusetts, Nevada, California and Arizona. Marijuana already is legal in Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Alaska. Campaigners in the other states seeking legalization have not had to deal as much with calls for moratoriums, said Mason Tvert, a spokesman for Marijuana Policy Project, which has pushed for legalization in many states.
But in the legal states such as Oregon and Colorado, municipalities have passed laws to restrict the operation of marijuana businesses, said Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML, a leading pro-marijuana group.
Bangor Mayor Sean Faircloth’s city has enacted a 180-day moratorium, and he said it would allow the city to prepare local rules if pot goes legal. He said he’s personally in favor of legalization but feels Bangor needs to craft laws that will keep edible marijuana products from being easily accessible to children.
“If it passes and it’s legal, I’m not going to thwart that,” he said. “But I want to see all the regulations in place and say, they’re not strong enough — here’s what we’ll do.”
