Wilmington Considers Plan To Permanently Ban Recreational Marijuana Sales

WILMINGTON, MA -- Wilmington officials have until June 30 to decide whether they will make permanent a temporary law that prohibits the sale of recreational marijuana in town. Massachusetts voters approved legalized recreational marijuana with a ballot question in last year's general election. But towns like Wilmington are debating whether or not that yes vote means voters also wanted the drug to be sold in their communities.

Wilmington passed a moratorium at town meeting this year. That moratorium expires on June 30 of next year. On Monday night Town Manager Jeffrey Hull recommended that Selectmen put forth two warrants for town meeting that would make the ban on recreational sales permanent The board voted 5-0 to accept Hull's recommendation.

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The debate on whether or not to ban recreational marijuana sales in Wilmington mirrors debates playing out for legislative bodies in a band of towns north of Boston that all voted against the last fall’s ballot question to legalize recreational marijuana use and sales in Massachusetts. The measure passed statewide, but Wilmington voters were almost evenly divided on the ballot question in last years general election. In Wilmington, just 6,805 voters, or 50.48%, opposed legalized cannabis, while 6,569 voters, or 49.2%, supported the measure.

Almost all of the towns in Massachusetts that voted against question four are considering or have adopted laws that will ban recreational marijuana sales. Statewide, the measure passed by a margin of 1,745,394 to 1,511,747. Earlier this year, the state legislature passed a “compromise bill” that reworked the law to address concerns in the original language of the law. One of the biggest changes in the compromise bill was giving towns where the measure failed more leeway to ban recreational marijuana sales.

But the state has yet to fully figure out how it will implement and regulate legal marijuana sales. And banning sales may cost towns like Wilmington. Backers of legalized recreational marijuana use, sales and possession are pushing for new laws that would penalize towns and cities like Wilmington if they completely bar retail marijuana sales. While their plan is admittedly facing steep odds of working, those legalized marijuana backers are pushing state legislatures to make sure towns that ban marijuana sales do not get any of the state tax revenue that will be generated from the sales.

If town meeting were to permanently ban recreational marijuana sales, Wilmington would lose its chance to collect a three percent, local sales tax on recreational marijuana sales. But now opponents of such bans also want to bar towns with bans from tapping into the pool of money that will come from the state's 17% sales tax on marijuana sales.

"Municipalities shouldn’t be entitled to something they took no part in," Kamani Jefferson, who runs the Mass. Recreational Consumer Council, told the Boston Globe, which originally reported on the proposal. The proposal "would force their hand and really encourage them to let these businesses in."

How much tax revenue will be generated is a question open for debate. Shawn McCormack, a litigation, real estate and environmental attorney in the cannabis group at the Boston-based law firm Davis Malm, said there have been varying estimates of how big the legal marijuana market will be in Massachusetts, so it's impossible to accurately predict how much towns could collect from the 3% sales tax, which would be on top of a 17% state sales tax on marijuana.

"Nobody really knows how large the recreational marijuana market will be, but estimates are between $700 million and $1.3 billion in sales in the first two years, meaning this could be a significant revenue source for municipalities," McCormack told Patch.

Top: Patch file photo.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).