The Cariboo Regional District doesn’t think medical marijuana operations belong on rural properties near where people are living.
Last Friday the board gave second reading to a proposed bylaw that would relegate medical marijuana operations exclusively to heavy industrial areas.
“If you’ve located your home near a heavy industrial site it wouldn’t be a big surprise, but if an operation is established on a rural property, you could end up with a clash with the neighbourhood potentially,” CRD chair Al Richmond said.
Now the board is hoping to find out if the public agrees.
“Our concern is if we provide nowhere for them to go, operators might use things like the right to farm act to go wherever they wish,” Richmond said.
“It’s a fine line, but what the directors have suggested is if we provide them somewhere to operate, and it’s on industrial land, then there will be better separation been them and residents and other locales.”
It would be a better fit in heavy industrial areas, he added.
Within the CRD, most areas have industrial lands, but not all.
Citing Area G for example, Richmond described the industrial area at 93 Mile, where there’s log home building, RV storage, commercial and industrial storage.
“They are already there and people could apply to use them, but we want to find out if there is public support for that.”
To date the CRD has received at least six applications for medical marijuana commercial licenses so it will become an issue for the region.
Public consultation about the bylaw will begin in about a month, Richmond said.
