Buy Weed? Can’t They Just Drink Instead?
The Atlantic coast is supposedly the liberal part of Sussex County. So why are its beach towns treating cannabis sales like a pool hall coming to River City? As a News Journal article noted last week, Dewey, Rehoboth, Bethany, Ocean View and Fenwick Island all have banned the legal sale of the devil’s lettuce.
You can’t accuse these politicians of napping on the job. The deadline for a decision is next August, and actual sales aren’t expected to start until February 2025. But they know trouble when they see it coming – trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with P and that stands for pot.
None of these towns has any problem allowing people of legal age access to alcohol. Bethany Beach used to be dry, and even fought in court to stay that way, but they lost that fight in the 1980s.
Consider Dewey Beach, year-round population 372. Town council unanimously banned marijuana sales because, the chief of police said, it would be “one more thing” for officers to deal with. And he does have a lot to deal with. Between bars, package stores and restaurants, the tiny town has about two dozen establishments selling booze. I haven’t been there for years, but it used to be a pretty hard-partying place, with a fair amount of public inebriation on any given summer weekend.
Other officials told reporter Brandon Holveck that they want to “limit the smell of it in public.”
What do these people think goes on at a marijuana dispensary? It’s not like Amsterdam, where people buy it and consume it on site at coffee houses. People can’t toke up and then stagger to the next bar (someone I know was once charged with drunk walking in Dewey). It’s more like a package store where they keep all the booze behind the counter. They could investigate this themselves via a short drive to Maryland or New Jersey.
Even if cannabis laws did allow cafe consumption, what do these folks think would happen? You’re politicians, take a junket to Amsterdam and see for yourself. Some bars are basically beer halls, and they’re loud and boisterous – people having a good time, mostly, but sometimes things get out of hand. Coffee houses, by contrast, are mostly quiet and laid back, though you will smell marijuana there. I haven’t checked the Amsterdam PD stats, but I’m guessing they get called to more bars than coffee houses.
These beach-town bans won’t inconvenience vacationers all that much. Delaware’s law prevents the counties from enacting such bans, so sales can go on in unincorporated areas, of which there are plenty along Delaware 1. Just as well – parking will be easier.
“…trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with P and that stands for pot.”
I laughed. 😂
Where does OC md stand on the sale? As usual those places right next door will reap the tax benefits and de officials will be like – gee they’re making a lot of money, I wonder why?
The weed ban is intended to signal that a a certain group of people aren’t welcome in these places. It’s more subtle than flying a confederate flag
Yeah, this was my take on it, too. You see a much more diverse customer group at a dispensary than you will at any bar, where people tend to self-segregate. The number of Black people in Dewey would suddenly triple if they allowed one in town.
My experience visiting a well known local Maryland dispensary has been that the demographic is no different than the demographic at large.
Exactly. Which isn’t true of most bars.
Unlike most bars where one’s hearing can be challenged due to the loud voices of the patrons, shopping at the dispensary in Maryland is a relatively peaceful experience. The customers are well behaved and the staff are friendly and helpful.
Of course, these hyper-conservative local governments can only ban sale inside their borders, so I encourage folks to do a few things: 1) set up stores right outside of their corporate limits ASAP, 2) gift as much cannabis as is legal to the folks you know going to the beach 3) lobby your congress critter to legalize delivery statewide to nullify their feeble attempt at controlling people.
I think people will just bring it with, don’t you?
The more things change the more they stay the same my father’s ‘29 Sallies classmate , Harry Shaud located the Bottle and Cork a few yards beyond a mile of the Rehoboth town limit. The town got a law passed in Dover after 1933 banning liquor sales in town and a mile beyond town😎 if I were advising a pot seller I’d be looking at the “forgotten mile” conveniently unincorporated ✅
Normally a donut hole relative to commerce, Milford looks poised to reap the tax benefits of cannabis sales within city limits…