Ashcroft Council is preparing to a bylaw to govern any requests received by the Village to set up a local commercial production of medical marijuana. The TNRD has already made and passed such a bylaw.
The Thompson-Nicola Regional District board of directors adopted Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 2442, 2013, during its Jan. 16 meeting.
The bylaw allows licensed medical marijuana production facilities in AF-1, FL-1, I-2 and I-3 zones or lands within the Agriculture Land Reserve, subject to the following conditions:
(a) Facilities must be licensed by Health Canada.
(b) Use must be located on a parcel having a minimum parcel area of eight hectares except on lands zoned I-2 or I-3, where the minimum parcel area shall be four hectares.
(c) All buildings used for medical marijuana production shall be set back a minimum of 50 metres from all parcel lines.
At its Jan. 13 Council meeting, Ashcroft councillors asked staaff to draft a proposed bylaw for them to look at. The bylaw would be an amendment to the current Zoning Bylaw and would stipulate where such an facility would be permitted and how it would be placed.
Council determined that any and all applications would be considered on a case by case basis.
The new federal legislation allowing commercial medical marijuana operations comes into effect on Apr. 1. Applications to start such an operation will be made to the federal government and then forwarded to the appropriate local government.