Cocoa Beach officials meet to discuss medical marijuana dispensaries

COCOA BEACH, Fla. — Cocoa Beach city leaders said they want to be ready if voters approve medical marijuana in November.
 
The city's planning board will meet Monday evening to review a draft ordinance for marijuana dispensaries. City officials want to set up rules about where potential shops selling medical marijuana will be allowed to set up.
 
Neither medical nor recreational marijuana use is legal in Florida, but already the city of Cocoa Beach is drawing a map of where dispensaries would and wouldn't be allowed.
 
Some residents think it's a good idea.
 
"It would help people. Then people aren't committing a crime to do what they have to do," said one Cocoa Beach resident.
 
Under the proposed ordinance, no marijuana storefronts would be allowed within 200 feet of any of the city's main thoroughfares, like the Minuteman Causeway, State Road 520 or Ocean Beach Boulevard.
 
The dispensaries would not be allowed within 1,000 feet of a school or church. They would fall under the same guidelines as pain management clinics.
 
"They can't be located less than 2,500 feet from any other pain management clinic," said Zach Montgomery, development services director for Cocoa Beach.

But some said they are still convinced there's no appropriate place for the dispensaries in Cocoa Beach.

"We want to curb it, where it can go, limit it and control it," said Montgomery.

WFTV