A.G. Gancarski
Tuesday’s agenda meeting of the Jacksonville City Council Land Use and Zoning committee shows that the latest iteration of Charlotte’s Web legislation, establishing post-moratorium parameters for the cultivation and dispensing of low-THC cannabis, is in draft form and on track for that committee’s Nov. 3 workshop with the Planning Commission.
A sign of the times: Committee members asked whether a quorum of the Planning Commission would be necessary for that workshop; it will not.
It will be the third and final joint workshop from the two bodies on the matter.
FloridaPolitics.com obtained a copy of the draft legislation, intended “to clarify and define the cultivation, processing, and dispensing of Low-THC Cannabis and related terms in the Zoning Code in an effort to regulate and limit said uses within the City and to repeal Ordinances in conflict (Ord. 2015-436-E and Ord. 2015-485-E).”
A temperamentally conservative piece of legislation, it hews with Florida statutes on low-THC cannabis, and does not go farther.
“These definitions and standards [are] to be adopted to provide more specific guidance as to where organizations and facilities that cultivate, process, and/or dispense Low-THC Cannabis may be located,” reads the bill text.
The bill, which relies on Florida statute to define acceptable cannabis derivatives and dispensing organizations, is crafted to avoid potential slippery slopes into inadvertent legalization of other forms of cannabis.
“Low-THC Cannabis means a plant of the genus Cannabis, the dried flowers of which contain 0.8 percent or less of tetrahydrocannabinol (“THC”) and more than 10 percent of cannabidiol (“CBD”) weight for weight; the seeds thereof; the resin extracted from any part of such plant; or any compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such plant or its seed or resin. No other formulation, strain, or ratio of THC and CDB shall be considered Low-THC Cannabis,” read the bill, which adds that it “does not include the possession, use, or administration by smoking.”
One dispensary would be permitted within each planning district, and they must be at least a mile apart from each other. Processing and dispensing would be permitted in commercial and industrial zoning areas, and the draft language of the bill makes no provision for required distance from schools, which is something that was broached in a previous workshop. Cultivation, meanwhile, would be permitted in agricultural districts.
This ordinance would supersede any moratorium legislation that had been passed previously. There is no indication at this time that the ordinance would be considered an emergency, which would push back enactment of the legislation to early 2016.
