Sussex missed mark on marijuana

Sussex County Council’s loosening of its marijuana regulations has done little to make the legal product available for residents and visitors.

Gov. Matt Meyer gave council officials a second chance to get it right when he vetoed a bill that would’ve forced new regulations on Sussex, reducing the distance between marijuana retail stores and churches, schools and treatment facilities to 500 feet. 

Instead, the county reduced only one buffer – the distance from such a store to a municipal boundary – from three miles to a half-mile. Everything else – the three-mile separation from churches, schools and treatment facilities – remains unchanged. In a county crisscrossed with churches and dotted with schools, those buffers alone create a patchwork of exclusion zones so vast that even the county attorney couldn’t say whether a single viable parcel exists. That uncertainty is admission enough.

Council members justify their rules by pointing to state liquor regulations requiring distance between liquor stores. But the state does not require liquor stores or breweries to be miles away from churches or schools. Anyone who has driven through this region knows the reality: Numerous liquor stores and breweries sit steps from houses of worship. 

More importantly, the General Assembly legalized retail cannabis with the expectation that counties would regulate placement, not erase the industry through zoning. By clinging to three-mile buffers, Sussex County continues to undermine the state’s decision and the will of local residents who supported legalization. Only time will tell if state legislators want to again attempt to override the county’s regulations. 

Sussex County Council’s amendments were an opportunity to create lawful, sensible and functional regulations. Instead, council continued to be as restrictive as possible, essentially prohibiting marijuana sales yet again. Sussex County can insist it moved in the right direction, but until it abandons its de facto ban, it’s moving nowhere at all.