Committee meeting to order.

First order of business of the approval of the May 12th meeting minutes.

All in favor?

All

right, motion passes.

Briefings, we have our Texas Compassionate Use Program and Zoning Regulations.

Thank you, Dave.

Good

afternoon, members of the committee, city staff.

My name is Dave McCorkadell with uh development services, and you have seen much of this presentation back in March.

This is just a short recap with a couple added notes and then open for questions from the committee.

So just as a present or an overview, rather, of the March uh presentation, the the Texas Compassionate Use Program or T Cup allows registered providers to prescribe low dose THC cannabis for qualifying medical conditions to registered patients.

There are currently three licensed dispensing organizations in the state.

Licensees may operate satellite locations.

One satellite per licensee per hub public health region until the licensee has a satellite location in all 11 of the public health regions in the state.

As well.

Again, I mentioned there are three licensed dispensaries in the state.

You see them listed on the slide there.

Two of those three do have a pickup location in the city of Fort Worth.

There are 12 more conditionally approved licenses with the state.

Two of those are in our public health region three.

Today we have 12, so you kind of see the pace of the state's actions on those.

Again, satellite locations, just talking about those, those operate as a pickup location, and they're the big change between the old pickup location and the satellite location is they are able to store the prescriptions overnight at the location.

They can only dispense the prescriptions under T Cup.

In other words, they cannot have any other products there at that location.

They may not be located within a thousand feet of a school or daycare center.

All products are stored and locked.

And again, only one satellite location per licensee per public health region until the licensee has a satellite location in all 11 of the public health regions in the state.

We would do so by amending the definition of pharmacy to include the compassionate use satellite locations.

And as with other pharmacies, the use is allowed by right in all commercial and industrial zoning districts and in certain form-based districts.

There are about three primarily residential form-based districts.

One of those is Trinity Lakes.

Create a definition for that and allow those to be only in our industrial districts.

So IJ and K.

There were a couple questions from the committee on March 10th, or other cities regulating this land use.

Still, we only find that the city of Tyler, Texas, in East Texas, they had adopted medical marijuana regulations back in 2023 before the recent state change around the program.

No other cities that we found do have any regulations.

One of the questions, you know, or or kind of one of the obvious questions too, that is why wouldn't any of the other uh uh cities in the state regulate it?

The T Cup program in general.

While we can't say specifically why they chose not to, uh the T Cup program is very narrow in scope, very highly regulated by the state.

Um, there's a term that I had heard earlier from seed to sale, in terms of how the state is regulating this, and they regulate again not only the the folks that are they they do not operate a system where someone could just be a grower for this program, someone could just be a dispenser for this program.

You do it kind of from cradle to grave.

If you um have a license in the state, you've got to be the one that's doing the cultivating, the testing, the processing, the distribution.

Um given those the very highly regulated nature of the program by the state, um, that could have been one of the reasons.

Again, we don't know for certain, but that could have been one of the reasons that other cities you know looked at it and evaluated, okay.

Well, how much of this is going to be affecting the land use in our city?

Um, and there's not just given the current size of the program, there's not a lot of need to regulate beyond what the state already does.

Another one of the questions was can a city further limit the number of satellite locations or make the land use more restrictive?

Um there are several zoning tools that are available.

Um being adding a uh conditional use permit for either or both the satellite locations and the cultivation or uh processing facilities.

Um there is a question in terms of the preemption, which is again where we're cities go in overstep into areas where states are regulating, and um so there are some there is that consideration with adding a uh a conditional use permit.

Um there's the possibility of considering satellite locations as a distinct land use, not regulating them as a pharmacy, but considering them to be something all their own and to restrict the zoning districts there.

Um thirdly, it's not on the slide.

There also is the possibility of considering a separation requirement between those, but again, these would be any of the proposed regulations that we have would need further uh dialogue with the city's legal team to understand you know what the implications are and what the likelihood of any type of adverse action to the city, you know, by getting into the preemption, you know, sphere where we're doing something that the state is already regulating.

So

again, back to the current staff recommendation.

This was the same as March.

There is no change.

We staff still proposes to regulate the satellite locations as a pharmacy.

We would uh define pharmacy to include the T Cup satellite locations, allow those in any district that a pharmacy is currently allowed to operate in.