MANCHESTER – Township officials will soon be introducing an ordinance that would ban the sale and growth of cannabis in the township. During a recent council meeting, they received some hostility and even accusations from non-residents concerning the matter.
The state gave municipalities an August 22 deadline to determine if they wanted to opt out of permitting a dispensary for recreational distribution and areas where cannabis could be grown.
Councilmen Robert Hudak and James Vaccaro headed a committee to explore options. Seeing limited areas for both sale and growth, and a lack of time to properly examine the issue, the councilmen recommended to the Township Council that they follow what most municipalities in Ocean County have done, which was to ban sales and growth of marijuana in the community.
Because of the pandemic, the most recent Township Council meeting was broadcast using Zoom. Several visitors to that session questioned the council and at least one accused Councilman Hudak of making a statement which he denied. Later in the session, the speaker apologized to Hudak for that accusation.
Vaccaro reviewed the pending ordinance stating that he and Hudak had met twice with the township planner and received property data “that we will present to members of council in June for their consideration, discussion and recommendations for a draft ordinance for a total ban of recreational marijuana in Manchester Township.”
“We know we can opt out on the sale, distribution and manufacture and cultivation of recreational marijuana. If that is the final action of our Township Council at that time, I thank my colleagues for their actions,” Vaccaro added.
He thanked Hudak and Councilman Sam Fusaro who noted that the passage of the ordinance would also fall under the township master plan and the area of warehousing, definition of warehousing, zoning and its use.
Hudak said during the meeting “there are all kinds of changes to be made to our master plan and very soon we will be able to give the council the ordinance that will address many of the topics that have been talked about and addressed in prior master plans. That will be the first piece of what we want to do, which includes cannabis related legislation.”
Hugh Giordano, a representative of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which is a national labor union which represents cannabis workers said, “we oppose any opt out or ban that have been pushed by the League of Municipalities. These are good union jobs. These are living wage jobs. They will be careers and they will be educated careers – people with degrees in botonny, horticulture, chemistry. At the medical dispensaries, there are pharmacists working.”
He advised the council to review an ordinance passed by Bayonne weeks earlier “so that you can decide who comes in and what kind of character they have and look at their labor rights, community standards, environmental standards and security standards on a point-based system and the city of Bayonne has done that work already.”
Edward “Lefty” Grimes a member of a non-profit group advocating for disabled rights and cannabis patient rights said he heard Hudak say earlier in the meeting that he was looking forward to live meetings again to keep disabled people out of the meeting. “Now you can’t wait to take it away from us and put the homebound back in their homes. You can’t wait to take it away. We all voted for cannabis but we don’t want it in our town.”
“I never said that,” Hudak responded. “You can go over the tape. I never said that. We all said the same thing. It is exciting to be able to go back to in-person meetings. I said nothing about cannabis patients.”
Council President Craig Wallis said he was a veteran and did not want to hear anything further from Grimes. “If you are going to sit there and accuse people about something you don’t know about do it somewhere else. You have to talk like a reasonable person and you aren’t there right now.”
At the close of the meeting Grimes returned to apologize to Hudak.
Eatontown resident Jeff King advocated for medicinal marijuana use for cancer patients and others in need of pain relief “and any number of conditions.” As to recreational use he called for council to “keep an open mind and if you would speak kindly for home growing that really would be the right thing to do.”
“The medical marijuana is not what is being discussed right now. That has been resolved by the state. This is strictly dealing with the recreational and the manufacture and sale of it in the town and that is up to the leaders of the town with how they want to deal with that,” Wallis said.
