The location of a Woodstock marijuana dispensary is at odds with town supervisor Bill McKenna’s desire to be consistent with what he believes to be the spirit of state law.
The business at 17 Tinker Street, which uses the lower-case title hemp&humanity, describes itself as “a quadruple-bottom-line company which provides education about hemp-derived products.”
Melissa Gibson and a business partner applied for an adult-use retail dispensary license under the name Plant Meets Public LLC at the state Cannabis Control Board’s (CRB) June 11 meeting. It was granted.
At a meeting of the town board that evening, McKenna argued for a moratorium on Woodstock dispensaries until changes under way to the town’s zoning were completed.
“Back several years ago, when the state approved marijuana sales, the town had the option of saying yes, no, opting in, not opting,” McKenna said. “And the town board at that time took the position that the state had certain regulations and guidelines that they would require, two being that they [the proposed dispensaries] needed to be 200 feet from a church and 500 feet from school, We signed off and said, ‘You know, we’re comfortable that the state will follow these rules and regulations.’ It’s come to pass that they are not following the rules and regulations. And they’ve twisted things around to the point where they’re about to give a license to a shop right off the village green, which is less than 200 feet from the church.”
The moratorium McKenna wants would not ban retail cannabis altogether, but would forbid it within 200 feet of a church or the village green or within 500 feet of a school.
Though the Woodstock Reformed Church has not taken a position on dispensaries, McKenna said that some of its members have raised concerns. “It would be the same as what the state initially proposed,” he said. “They claim that the church is not on the same street. It is.”
The Reformed Church’s official address is 16 Tinker Street. It is on a church-owned road behind the green named “Tinker Street II” on town maps.
Hemp&humanity is at 17 Tinker Street, less than 150 feet from the church.
In a later interview, McKenna called the CRB “totally incompetent” and expressed frustration about its constant changing of how it interprets its regulations.
“What I’ve been shown now is it states that it needs to be on the same street, which means you could have two buildings — a building in from the corner — one a school and one a dispensary 50 feet apart. It doesn’t make any sense,” McKenna said. “Initially, they told me they had a letter of support from the church. And ultimately that turned out not to be true. What the church did provide was some factual information on the building, when they use it, where they use it, the doors they use, and other things like that, and all the other activities that took place in the church. So that’s a far cry from support.”
The state told McKenna the 200-foot rule didn’t apply because the building was not solely used as a church.
McKenna said he was working on a solution with Gibson that allowed her to run a dispensary.
“We met yesterday, she and I and her partner,” he said on June 14, “and we had a very fruitful, productive conversation, and we are working together to come up with solutions that would respect the town’s desire to keep things out of the center of town and to honor the spirit of the 200-and-500-foot rule.”
Gibson confirmed the meeting. “We are working together with the town supervisor to seek solutions that would address concerns of the community,” said Gibson, who declined to comment further at this time.
Gibson, a former Team USA snowboarding champion, founded hemp&humanity in 2016 to educate the public on the benefits of cannabis products. She credits cannabidoil (CBD) with helping her survive many auto-immune diseases. She opened the brick-and-mortar store selling CBD, hemp and other products in 2020.
“I’m not opposed to [marijuana] sales. We’re all supportive of it, but I think we need to have some amount of protections here,” McKenna said. “Ten years from now when this all becomes fairly common, maybe we can loosen that up. Maybe it’s not a problem, but we don’t know how it’s going to end up.”
He concluded with a vignette about a recent trip to New York City.
“The place reeks of marijuana,” he reported. “I don’t want to see that happen to our community. I don’t think most people do.”
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