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Wilmington City Council continues to find lots of division on how, or if, they want to be involved in Delaware’s legalization of retail recreational marijuana sales.
Thirty prospective retail licenses were distributed through an October lottery conducted by the Office of the Marijuana Commissioner.
Those winners are currently going through the supplemental application process, which includes sorting out where they would their businesses, including those in retail, to be located.
Several towns and cities, including Middletown, Lewes, and Bethany Beach, have said no to marijuana, but Wilmington City Council, at least a significant portion, appears willing to embrace the sales, with a catch.
Councilman Chris Johnson introduced a resolution, which was unanimously passed by the 11 of 13 members present at Thursday’s City Council meeting, calling on the state legislature to directly allocate money from the 15% state tax on marijuana, towards Wilmington.
Johnson said he believes Wilmington should get more than the fractured pieces of the Justice Impact Fund from the 15% tax, along with the city wage and business taxes brought in by the new operations and employees.
“What we are finding is this industry will be live in January, it’s just a matter of whether whether Wilmingtonians, and Wilmington’s government, will get a piece of the pie.”
While City Council hopes that legislation can sway lawmakers in Dover, Council President Trippi Congo and Councilman Nathan Field introduced an ordinance that would ban retail marijuana businesses in the city completely.
Council members James Spadola and Vincent White are listed as co-sponsors.
Thursday’s meeting was just an introduction to the ordinance, which will likely be discussed at the next Community Development and Urban Planning Committee meeting on December 2, but that didn’t stop it from leaking into the discussion over the taxation resolution.
Councilwoman Zanthia Oliver strongly took opposition to the ordinance.
“This is ridiculous that we’re trying to stop a whole city, a majority of people, from smoking marijuana, or eating edibles. I’ve been to three different dispensaries, no one is standing outside.”
She emphasized there is money to be made, and that should overweigh whether non-smokers are uncomfortable around marijuana use.
“There’s money to made, most of us didn’t die from it, and now we’re sitting up here because we don’t like the smell. Bull crap. I will be supporting this piece of legislation, grow up.”
Oliver connected the revenue opportunity to when Philadelphia instituted a 1.5 cent per ounce tax on soda starting in 2017.
“Philadelphia, at the beginning they were not getting any taxes off of soda, now they are getting taxes off of soda because councilmembers came together and passed an ordinance to get revenue. It’s up to us, there are other ways to get revenue.”
Councilman Johnson said he would rather not see a citywide approach to banning marijuana.
“I would hope marijuana industry is allowed in the parts of the city that want it, and the part of the city that don’t want it, let them choose they don’t want it, but to cut off the whole city is really not in the direction the city needs to grow.”
The marijuana industry is growing in Delaware, but whether it is cut off in Wilmington is still to be determined.
”}]] Wilmington City Council continues to find lots of division on how, or if, they want to be involved in Delaware’s legalization of retail recreational marijuana sales. Read More
