Reversing prior allowance of medical marijuana facilities as pharmacies since 2020, the Eustis City Commission voted to approve a prohibition on dispensaries earlier this week.
Commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the ordinance banning future Medical Marijuana Treatment Center, or MMTC, with existing facilities allowed to continue operations.
Currently, there are two MMTC facilities in Eustis — a Trulieve dispensary on South Bay Street and an AYR Cannabis dispensary located along U.S. Highway 441. The two facilities are just over a mile apart.
State rules adopted in 2017 left cities with options to either ban medical marijuana dispensaries outright or regulate their locations the same way pharmacies are regulated.
Eustis city officials initially prohibited MMTC facilities back in September 2017, passing an ordinance stating that medical marijuana dispensaries “shall not be considered pharmacies” and banned their use within the city.
In November 2020, months after several other Central Florida cities approved dispensaries and a Mount Dora nursery with medical marijuana sold its location for $14 million, the Eustis City Commission reconsidered the previous ban and revised its approach to the facilities by classifying them as pharmacies.
During the approval, former Eustis Mayor Michael Holland and other commissioners praised Commissioner Marie Aliberti for her work informing the commission on the topic.
“The League of Cities led several forums on this and [Aliberti] traveled around the state trying to learn more and to get us in a focused direction to where we could accept this,” Holland said.
Following a regulatory review last April by the Eustis Local Planning Agency, or LPA, a consensus was reached on “re-establishing the prior prohibition.”
As part of their review, the LPA concluded that MMTC facilities operate differently from traditional pharmacies, utilizing controlled-access entry, limited public accessibility, enhanced on-site security measures, and other characteristics not typical of most pharmacies.
The LPA found that MMTC facilities exhibit distinct land-use impacts and operational characteristics “not adequately addressed” by their classification as pharmacies.
According to Eustis city officials, their ability to properly regulate MMTC facilities is constrained by state laws that require the facilities to be treated similarly to pharmacies unless prohibited.
By amending the city’s Land Use Regulations, the ordinance approved Thursday establishes a separate classification for MMTC dispensing facilities, removes their uses from the city definition of “pharmacy” and prohibits its uses in “all land use districts.”
The ordinance applies to MMTC applications submitted after the new prohibition goes into effect, meaning only completed applications will be considered and preliminary inquiries or informal requests can move forward on a case-by-case basis under Florida law.
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