By Paul Sylvain  

The Machias selectboard and Town Manager Bill Kitchen have spent the better part of 2023 first considering, then committing to drafting an all-encompassing medical and adult-use, recreational marijuana ordinance they hope to present to Machias voters sometime next spring. However, given the apparent lack of interest and limited participation, even from the owners and operators of the town’s existing medical marijuana storefronts, the effort begs the question, “Why?”

The town currently has two marijuana/cannabis ordinances on the books. The first, titled “Town of Machias Medical Marijuana, Retail Stores, Manufacturing Facilities and Testing Facilities Ordinance '' was enacted by town voters on Dec. 1, 2018. 

This ordinance defined a medical marijuana storefront as “any store, house, garage, shed, or structure, having a location on a street or thoroughfare, having display windows, business, signs, or advertising media with the purpose of selling medical marijuana, or any given location that provides medical marijuana products to 10 caregivers selling medical marijuana products to 10 or more patients within a 15 day period regardless of the number of caregivers operating out of said location.“

It further prohibited such storefronts from being located “within 1,000 feet of the property line of a pre-existing public or private school, or within 500 feet of a pre-existing state, licensed daycare facility, or within 500 feet of recreational areas designated for use by children up to 18 years in age and/or areas designated as a municipal safe zone.“

The ordinance set a $250 non-refundable application fee, with a first-year license fee of $3,000, and annual license renewal required at a cost of $5,000 each year. 

Then, on June 27, 2022, voters enacted a second ordinance titled “Town of Machias Adult Use, Marijuana Cultivation, Manufacturing, and Testing Ordinance.” This ordinance set licensing fees of $1,000 for an adult-use manufacturing facility and $500 for a testing facility. A fee from $1,000 to $5,000 based on the number of mature marijuana plants and the amount of square feet of “canopy space” involved, is also included.

LawInsider.com states the square footage of canopy space “is measured horizontally, starting from the outermost point of the furthest, mature, flowering plant, and a designated growing space, and continuing around the outside of all mature, flowering plants located within the designated growing space.” The town’s ordinance encompasses everything from less than 500 square feet to 20,000 square feet, with an additional $1,000 fee for every 7,000 square feet beyond that.

Interest in revisiting the town’s cannabis ordinances heated up shortly after local hemp and CBD medicinal products seller Ben Edwards was elected to the selectboard this past June. However, it wasn’t Edwards who brought it up.

Robert Boggia, owner of Downeast Smoke and Vape at 28 Main St., asked the selectboard on June 28 to consider drafting an adult-use recreational ordinance. Boggia said in an interview at the time that he was seeing a high demand for it in his shop, which opened in 2022. “I am literally turning away 10 to 20 customers a day, which means on average we’re losing $6,000 to $8,000 a month,” he said at the time, adding, “Demand is increasing more and more.”

Boggia also asked the board to limit the number of cannabis storefronts, saying. “ I don’t think there is room for five stores in Machias. Restrictions are working in Calais. They only have three medical stores, so they don’t have an over-saturated market.”

Machias already has five medical marijuana storefronts located within a roughly two-mile stretch of Route 1 from Outer Dublin Street west of downtown, past Water Street, and up to Main Street east of the town’s center. Besides Boggia’s store, the others are Indian Trail Farms, at 241 Dublin St.; Bold Coast Cannabis, at 185 Dublin St.; Lake Smoke Farms, at 7 Water St.; and Green Life Medical Cannabis Dispensary, at 305 Main St.

On July 12, the selectboard permitted limited discussion about allowing recreational marijuana shops to operate in Machias. Board member Edwards said at the meeting he spoke to “a lot of people” about the issue and noted, “There are a lot of conflicting interests and a lot of conflicting opinions.” 

One thing Edwards was adamant about was the need for local zoning, which Machias has none. “The big issue is for some kind of zoning control in Machias,” Edwards said in a July interview. “For me, the issue of zoning needs to precede the taking up of adult-use storefronts.”

Up to that time, the town manager said that owners of two of the five shops and one resident had been coming to the town office frequently saying that they wanted adult-use retail stores. Finally, on Sept. 14, a handful of voters at a special town meeting passed a 180-day moratorium on any new medical cannabis storefront applications to allow the selectboard time to forge a new ordinance.

With the clock ticking down to a March 12 moratorium deadline, a Marijuana Ordinance Subcommittee, consisting of Kitchen and all five selectboard members, finally held an informal, pre-workshop session six weeks into the moratorium on Oct. 25. Several shop owners — the most vocal of which was Bold Coast Cannabis owner Jason Prescott — along with his wife, Meaghan Prescott and Boggia and his wife Katie attended that meeting. 

In the more than two months of almost weekly workshop meetings since, the shops’ owners and the public have been mostly absent from the sessions and deafeningly silent despite consistent public notice and coverage on these pages. The selectboard and town manager have continued to urge people to offer suggestions and participate in the process, but the response amounts to crickets.

So where is the subcommittee at now in its work? In spite of Edwards’ desire for zoning to be addressed either first or in concert with a new marijuana ordinance, the subcommittee agreed that time didn’t allow for zoning to be addressed as part of the marijuana ordinance.

Subcommittee members have said repeatedly during the process that the only point of agreement from the few local shop owners and residents they’ve spoken to is about a cap on the number of marijuana businesses. However, the once favored plan to reduce the number from five to three, with two of the current five grandfathered, has been scrapped at the urging of Maine Municipal Association attorneys and the town’s legal counsel.

As to the March 12 deadline, the subcommittee is already planning to go back to town voters for an additional 180 days. The reality is that, in spite of its best efforts, and with almost no input from shop owners and the town’s residents, a finished product will not be written, reviewed by the town’s attorney, and ready for a vote before the March 12 deadline expires.

Edwards’ participation on the subcommittee has raised questions of conflict of interest from at least one shop owner based on Edwards’ hemp business. However, Kitchen put that argument to rest on Dec. 20, saying both the MMA and the town’s attorney ruled that the subcommittee was an advisory group drafting a policy that would be ultimately decided by resident voters and not unilaterally by the board at a town meeting. 

Given the frustrations experienced by town officials and the near lack of response from townspeople, the broader question remains, “Why?” Clearly, the average person on the street couldn’t care less, and, as the board has noted many times, most people do not even understand what the difference is between medical and adult-use recreational marijuana.

Machias Town Manager Bill Kitchen told the selectboard last summer that he was dealing with regular visits from several people wanting the town to draft an ordinance permitting adult-use, recreational retail stores. Photo courtesy Paul Sylvain.