Take our poll on whether or not you think Bristol should allow recreational marijuana sales in town.

On Wednesday, June 1, the Town Council authorized a referendum that, if passed by voters in November, will allow for retail sales of cannabis in Bristol.

Unlike most of the matters that come before the Council, this issue is not homegrown — it’s coming to us straight from Smith Hill.

“This has been the subject of a lot of media in the past few months,” said solicitor Mike Ursillo, when asked to explain for the record what this is all about. “The General Assembly did in fact adopt a statute permitting the sale of recreational use of cannabis to adults. They made it statewide, meaning an automatic opt-in for every municipality.”

The General Assembly also authorized a 13 percent tax on recreational cannabis, with 10 percent going to to the state and 3 percent to the municipality.

There is a provision in the statute that permits a municipality to opt out, by putting it to the voters. Without holding an official vote on the issue, such sales will automatically become legal in town. The advice that Ursillo is giving Bristol and his other municipal clients is to leave it up to the voters of the town to decide whether or not they want to have recreational marijuana sales within their town.

The Town will also want to establish zoning for marijuana sales, and have those rules in place in the event that voters approve the referendum.

“You're going to have a resolution and a motion before you whereby you ask the planning board for its recommendation on which areas in town should be zoned for the sale of recreational marijuana in the event that the voters approve,” Ursillo said.

Ursillo suggested that the zoning could mirror what the town currently has for medical marijuana, and a motion was made to direct the director of Community Development and the solicitor to draft an amendment to the zoning ordinance addressing recreational cannabis, setting forth the zoning districts in which cannabis related uses shall be authorized.

There appears to be little support among Bristol’s community leaders for the state’s decision.

“My frustration with this is there's so many things left unanswered…of how you deal with someone under the influence while driving,” said Council Chairman Nathan Calouro, raising the specter of someone getting hurt or killed “because we thought that 10 percent and 3 percent [tax revenue] was more important than human life.”

“I’m so disappointed in our legislators, all of them voting for this and saying yes to this, putting us in harm's way.”

Chief Lynch also concerned about impaired driving
Chief of Police Kevin Lynch likewise stands strongly against this measure.

“I certainly did not weigh in as an individual police chief on the law as it was written,” he said. “That was made up by the people that are elected to General Assembly, and I will support that outcome. However, what I do not support and I’ll speak quite frankly, is that the legislation is silent on impairment.”

Saying the “Rhode Island police chiefs association stood in lockstep against this legislation,” Lynch noted that the group sent many letters to the General Assembly, objecting to the fact that they have no way of knowing if a driver under the influence of cannabis is legally impaired or not. There is no established threshold for impairment, and even if there was, there is no way to measure that.

“We testified in committee, we met individually with leadership,” said Lynch. “If someone is impaired and they are driving a motor vehicle and they seriously injure themselves, their passengers or another innocent bystander, there's absolutely nothing that the Bristol police department can do about that…That's how wide open this legislation is: our hands are tied.”

Lynch suggested that data from other states that have enacted and legalized recreational marijuana show that the fatality rate of motor vehicle accidents drastically increased — although it should be noted that numerous studies on this issue have come to vastly different conclusions, and are all based on data that is, at best, gathered from less than 10 years of available research, since Colorado and Washington state became the first states to legalize cannabis in 2012.

“For every action, there is a reaction,” Lynch said. “The reaction in this case is there will be more roadway fatalities in the state of Rhode island…we do not have a good rating across our state for alcohol consumption and driving and now we have added marijuana. Those are my concerns.”

“This is shocking,” said Town Councilor Mary Parella. “It really is shocking that it was left like this.” Asked by Calouro if there was time that he could recall that the State would pass a law that a local municipality would have to opt out of, Ursillo admitted it was unprecedented in his memory.

“I can’t ever recall a statute of statewide significance such as this that puts the onus on the individual municipalities to opt out,” Ursillo said.

Barbara Palumbo, coordinator for the Bristol Prevention Coalition spoke in strong support of putting the matter to a referendum, and hopes to use the time between now and November to educate and raise awareness of use and misuse of substances.

“We are very much in support of this referendum and getting it out to the public,” she said. “We think it would be obviously a bad idea to just opt in — you can always opt in later if we see what a wonderful thing the sale of cannabis is in our community.”

“We’ve got issues with our youth with alcohol and tobacco, we have a hard time trying to wrangle that, and now we're going to add cannabis?”

The Council voted unanimously in favor of directing Community Development and the Solicitor to establish recreational cannabis sales zoning in advance of the November referendum.