Mayor Edward A. Bettencourt, Jr. is asking the City Council to approve a new ordinance that would allow retail sales of recreational marijuana in Peabody. The ordinance will also expand the areas where marijuana sales will be permitted.
The mayor said the city currently permits the sale of medical marijuana at four designated locations on Route 1 in the vicinity of the Bertucci’s Restaurant and former location of Brothers Kouzina. The new ordinance would extend the area on the northbound side of Route 1 as far north as 151 Newbury St.
“This would expand the zone significantly, but will still keep it restricted to the Route 1 area,” said Bettencourt. “We feel it is important to keep the area away from schools, residences and places of worship.”
The mayor submitted the proposed ordinance to the council Nov. 17. The ordinance states that its purpose is “to allow state-licensed marijuana establishments to to exist in the City of Peabody…and impose reasonable safeguards to govern the time, place and manner of marijuana establishment operations and any business dealings in such a way as to ensure public health, safety, well-being and undue impacts on the natural environment.”
The City Council approved a ban on retail marijuana sales in 2018. The decision was backed by Bettencourt and was permitted under state rules that allowed municipalities that had voted against legalizing retail sales in 2016 to ban all retail sales.
Bettencourt said at the time Massachusetts voters approved the 2016 state referendum legalizing recreational marijuana, voters in Peabody opposed legalization by a significant margin.
“There were so many unanswered questions especially when it came to how law enforcement would work in cities and towns and it was important to see how law enforcement was dealing with it,” Bettencourt said, who added he was in favor of medical marijuana use by people with health issues.
Bettencourt said his decision to approach the council comes on the heels of the state’s marijuana reform legislation signed into law by Gov. Charlie Baker in August 2022.
That law, S.3096, An Act Relative to Equity in the Cannabis Industry, provides significant changes to Host Community Agreements (HCAs) between licensed marijuana medical and adult-use businesses and their host municipalities. The law also provides additional restrictions on community impact fees.
Specifically, the fee must be reasonably related to the costs imposed on cities and towns. The fee cannot exceed three percent of gross marijuana sales and cannot include any additional required payments, including monetary payments and charitable contributions by the marijuana businesses to the host community or any other organization.
“What was happening was these groups were coming in saying they would contribute to the schools or other charitable groups,” said Bettencourt. “There were questions about host fee agreements. It basically was the Wild West with no real rules in place. We didn’t want to be one of those early test cases so we stopped meeting with groups wanting to come into Peabody. This new law really tightened all that up to the point where, while I have some misgivings, I am much more comfortable with it.”
