The Smyrna Town Council will visit a marijuana production facility before voting on where to allow such a site in their town. (Photo by Aleksandr_Kravtsov/iStock)
With temperatures running high during a debate over where marijuana sales and production would be allowed in Smyrna, the council decided to visit a production plant and see whether or not it smells bad.
And they’re taking some curious town members with them.
Smyrna Mayor Robert C. Johnson said he particularly wanted to go with one of the audience members who admitted he knew what marijuana smoke smelled like, but had no idea the plants were supposed to stink, and that worried him.
The controversy blew up after town planner Jeremy Rothwell told the council that the planning commission recommended that retail marijuana stores be treated like liquor stores.
“You know, alcohol and marijuana are referred to as the sin drugs,” he said, so it made sense to group them together.
The commission came to a consensus that wherever liquor stores are permitted, that marijuana retail facilities should also be permitted. That would mean they could be opened in the highway commercial district, the shopping center district and the commercial corridor.
However, the planning commission wanted to put any cultivation, production and testing sites testing and other sites in industrial sites such as the Duck Creek business campus north of Duck Creek, the Smyrna Business Park and the area around the Walmart distribution facility, Rothwell said.
One woman in the audience jumped up during public comment to say that she lived near the Walmart facility and was not happy about a facility near there because she’d heard that there were terrible smells associated with the cultivation of the plants.
Most of those facilities were expected to be hydroponic, Rothwell said, with tall racks of plants fed by nutrients-laced water.
Ire about marijuana
Several of the people commenting on the plans either thinly or aggressively asserted that they had heard members of the council or close friends or family were involved with plans to grow or sell marijuana.
One woman angrily stopped just short of threatening the council by saying “if I find out that any of these are on that list, and you don’t recuse yourself …” but was stopped short by Councilman William Pressley Sr. who told her, “You don’t come threatening me.”
She wouldn’t back down, saying, “I know there’s people.”
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At one point, Councilman Michael Rasmussen moved to approve the ordinance that would have adopted the planning commission’s recommendations.
But after a healthy discussion, during which it was apparent most of the council and the audience had no idea how the marijuana would be grown, he withdraw that motion and replaced it one to delay the vote until the council could visit a nearby growing facility.
When one woman in the audience immediately responded that she wanted to go, too, Rasmussen and Mayor Johnson said they were welcome to come along.
Rothwell said he would provide them with a list of nearby facilities to contact.
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