GREEN COVE SPRINGS – The Green Cove Springs Planning and Zoning Board unanimously approved new language to the city’s zoning code that will allow Medical Marijuana Treatment Center Dispensing Facilities within city limits.

The topic came back up after the city’s second consecutive moratorium on the issue was scheduled to come to a close on May 15. The current moratorium was issued as a six-month extension to the original one-year moratorium issued by the city after a 2016 statewide ballot measure passed with more than 70 percent in favor of state-regulated treatment centers in Florida.

At the Feb. 20 City Council meeting, council members asked staff to draft language to allow dispensing facilities in the city, regulated the same way as pharmacies as required by the state. The facilities are tightly regulated by the state, and as explained by City Attorney Jim Arnold, regulations will continue to be added as the system works itself out.

“We hope the state does their job, obviously, if you’re gonna have them in your community,” Arnold said. “There’s gonna be a lot more regulations, I’m sure, as time goes by.”

Arnold did note, though, that any sort of changes that regulations might see wouldn’t really affect the item up for discussion at the meeting. He is always quick to point out that the city really only has two choices in the matter, either vote in language to allow treatment centers, or ban them outright. He also noted that even if the city didn’t adopt the code proposed to the board, patients living within the city limits could still receive deliveries from facilities in Orange Park where their town council has already voted to allow them.

Members of the board had numerous questions for Arnold regarding the regulations, which he was quick to answer with language from the state resolution which is basically a mirror image of the language proposed for city code.

There was not much discussion among the board on the topic, with member Marilyn Haddock speaking at the top of the agenda item on her support for the language on the grounds that a vast majority of voters wanted it and that it is identified as a medicine and, when used as a medicine, has helped people.

Speaking to the same sentiment, but with a more personal connection was board member Bob Lewis who also spoke at the Feb. 20 council meeting.

“Opiates, at least so far, are classified as being more dangerous than [medical marijuana],” Lewis said. “If it works for me, I can switch to this.”

Lewis, who has been prescribed opiates for decades, explained that the state had just passed a bill that would only give patients a three-day supply of opiate prescriptions before having to go back to their doctor. For him, that won’t work, and he wants to try medical marijuana as an alternative, something he thinks should be as accessible to him as his current prescriptions that can be had at Walgreens or CVS along Orange Avenue in Green Cove.

He also talked about the differences between the two prescription pain drugs, including the long-term effects of opiate use.

“[On opiates] you’re taking more pills to counteract the effects of oxycodone, instead of taking two pills you’re taking eight,” Lewis said. “Medical marijuana seems to be an unobtrusive treatment.”

Before a vote was taken, Lewis made one last comment on the issue. He said approval would allow local medical marijuana patients to shop in their city instead of spending their money at Orange Park dispensing facilities.

Following a motion from Haddock and a 5-0 vote, the code change will undergo its first public hearing at the April 17 meeting of the Green Cove Springs City Council, with the second reading on May 1, which, should it pass the first reading, would be the date of adoption for the new code.