MALTA – This town’s supervisor would love to let residents decide if businesses can sell marijuana and let people use it on site.
But it looks like the only way a public vote can happen is if residents run a petition drive during the holidays, in winter.
“The only way to allow the public to make this decision rather than the board is to opt out,” Supervisor Darren O’Connor said at Monday’s public hearing on the issue, adding later, “I’m sorry it has to be done in 45 days in the winter but that’s just the way things worked out.”
Almost every resident who spoke at the public hearing wanted sale and on-site consumption in the town. But only seven people spoke.
“It’s not like a referendum. We get a few people. We just can’t consider that the feeling of Malta,” O’Connor said. “I really think this is an issue that should be decided by the residents, not five members of the Town Board.”
The board plans to vote on Monday, Dec. 6.
Rob Arrigo, chairman of the Saratoga County Libertarian Party, told the board that allowing sales and consumption would make residents safer.
“Prohibiting dispensaries doesn’t do anything. There are dispensaries all over the town of Malta as we speak. There’s one probably on this road…and I guarantee you there are dispensaries in the school,” he said. “They’re not legal dispensaries, they’re black market dispensaries, but they exist.”
He hopes that legal businesses would out-compete the black market.
“What I want, as a person with children in this community, is to make sure that black market dispensaries go out of business. We can’t do that through prohibition. We’ve tried that for 50 years and it doesn’t work. But we can do that through legal competition,” he said. “This way when someone chooses to consume a product like this they don’t have to worry about it being laced with fentanyl or some other contaminant that might possibly kill them.”
People who sell marijuana now ignore more than just the law against selling drugs, he noted.
“They’re selling god knows what to god knows who,” he said. “They don’t care if the kid is eight years old, or a cancer patient. I long for the day when illegal dispensaries are put out of business.”
He added that illegal drug dealers also don’t pay taxes on their sales.
“What revenue share do you get from black market dispensaries? Zero,” he said.  “Plus, Saratoga Springs is going to do it anyway and they don’t revenue share. You don’t want to give all that business to them.”
O’Connor said later that Arrigo made good points, but a resident at the meeting disputed the central idea.
“(Legal) dispensaries, that’s not going to put the black market out of business – you can buy a lot of things legal but you can still buy them illegally, whatever you want to buy,” said resident Kathy Eitzmann.
She was the only person at the public hearing to speak against on-site consumption of marijuana.
“I don’t see a benefit to the citizens,” she said.
If the Town Board opts out of either sales or consumption at local businesses, residents will have until about Jan. 20 to collect about 711 signatures asking for a referendum.
Resident Travis Fealy said it would be hard work.
They would have to collect signatures “in the dead of winter to equal pre-COVID voters,” he said. “Yes, it’s doable but that would be a high task to ask people to do.”
He was in favor of allowing sale and consumption, saying it would be a boon to the town’s bottom line because the town would get a share of the 4 percent tax on each sale.
“Obviously, the tax benefits are there. A huge influx of cash,” he said, adding that it could “keep small towns afloat.”
Besides, he said, the anti-drug ship has sailed.
“The fact of the matter is that marijuana is legal. There’s nothing we can do about that,” he said.
But O’Connor, who had a long career with the State Police, said he doesn’t want to allow anything that would lead to more intoxicated drivers on the road.
“I am just so attuned to the problems with driving under the influence,” he said. “To me, impaired driving is the biggest danger in Malta for kids.”
It’s harder for police to prove a driver was intoxicated to an unsafe level with marijuana – no test limits have been set yet – and people also don’t yet know how much marijuana they can consume and be safe drivers, or how long they need to wait after consumption before being safe to drive home.
“I think that’s a big problem,” O’Connor said.
Be the first to comment