Schaumburg approves rules for recreational pot sales
Schaumburg - Illinois' second-largest economic hub - will potentially add recreational marijuana to its list of industries in the new year.
Village trustees voted unanimously Tuesday to allow but regulate the dispensaries and cultivation centers that will become legal in the state on Jan. 1.
Also on that day, the nonpublic use of recreational marijuana by adults over the age of 21 will become legal.
Though municipalities cannot restrict such adult use, they have been given the right to tax sales up to 3% and to regulate such businesses to the extent of prohibiting them.
Schaumburg trustees, who previously approved the maximum tax, opted to limit the number of dispensaries at five on properties zoned for retail, and also to limit the number of cultivation centers and other manufacturing uses at five on industrial sites.
They further required that dispensaries be at least 1,000 feet from any school, day care center or house of worship.
Though not specifically mentioned in the new local law, Schaumburg has existing regulations that would require cultivation centers to install exhaust filtration systems to keep any odors from escaping their buildings.
The addition of houses of worship to the setback requirements and the setting of a maximum number of manufacturing businesses were first recommended by the village's zoning board.
But trustees dropped the zoning board's other suggestions of limiting the size of dispensaries at 10,000 square feet and making the setback requirement 1,500 feet from schools, day care centers and houses of worship.
Trustee George Dunham, at the initial stage of the village's consideration of allowing recreational marijuana businesses, voted against it out of what he called philosophical opposition to their legalization.
But he joined his colleagues Tuesday in approving the new regulations.
"It would be irresponsible to vote 'no' on appropriate controls," Dunham said.