Role of Municipalities

While legalization of marijuana is enacted at a state level, cities and towns have the authority to define how cannabis businesses can operate within their municipal boundaries.

What Municipalities Can Do

• While the Commission is required by law to engage in the licensing process for ME/MTCs, a municipality may implement its own local licensing or permitting process, as long as it does not conflict with state laws and regulations.
• The law allows—but does not require—municipalities to pass by-laws or ordinances governing the time, place, and manner of ME/MTCs, as well as businesses dealing with marijuana accessories. These by-laws or ordinances may not be unreasonably impracticable. Under the definition in the law, this means that the local laws cannot be so difficult to comply with that they would subject licensees to unreasonable risk, or require such a high investment of risk, money, time or any other resource or asset, that a reasonably prudent businessperson would not operate an ME/MTC.
• A municipality may negotiate terms of an HCA with business owners while adhering to laws and regulations. A municipality shall develop a standard evaluation form or use the Commission’s form to score components of an application for an HCA.
• A municipality shall publicize information relating to ME licensing in a conspicuous location at its offices and on its website which at a minimum shall include: all required steps of a Host Community’s Local Approval Process; identification of key individuals involved in a Host Community’s Local Approval Process;  a list of all documentation required by a Host Community’s Local Approval Process; identification of application criteria for local approval to operate an ME/MTC and scoring methodologies relied on by a Host Community; and general scoring information for all applicants and a Host Community’s scoring of each individual applicant.
• A municipality may pass a by-law or ordinance limiting the number of MEs to 20% or more of the number of liquor licenses issued pursuant to G.L. c.138 §15 (sale for off-premises consumption) in that municipality without going to the ballot. For example, if a municipality has granted 100 liquor licenses, it may set a maximum limit for 20 marijuana retailers in its locality. If a municipality is calculating 20% of its §15 liquor licenses, and the calculations results in a number less than one, the Commission recommends that the municipality round up to one retailer. If the calculation results in a fraction greater than one, the Commission recommends rounding up to the nearest whole number if the municipality does not wish to limit the number of retailers to fewer than 20%. A municipality may elect to increase its existing limit on the number of MEs or MTCs permitted to operate, provided that a minimum of 50% of the additional licenses beyond the previously set cap are allocated for business with majority ownership comprised of Social Equity Participants and/or Economic Empowerment Priority Applicants, Social Equity Businesses (SEB) or individuals pre-verified as SEBs.
• Under state law, an ME/MTC may not be located within 500 feet of a pre-existing public or private school providing education in kindergarten or any of grades one through 12. Municipalities may adopt an ordinance or by-law to reduce that distance requirement.
• A municipality may regulate—by by-law or ordinance—signage regarding marijuana-related uses, but the ordinance or by-law may not impose a standard more restrictive than those applied to retail establishments selling alcoholic beverages within the municipality.
• A municipality shall develop a unique Equity Plan to promote and encourage full participation in the regulated cannabis industry by individuals from communities disproportionately harmed by cannabis prohibition and enforcement and to positively impact those communities and shall publicize its equity plan at its offices and on its website.
• A municipality may impose an optional local tax of up to 3% on the retail sale of adult-use marijuana.

What Municipalities Can’t Do

• A municipality may not prohibit or inhibit the transport of legal marijuana through its locality.
• Local laws cannot subject ME/MTCs to unreasonable or impracticable demands or require an increased investment of risk, money, time, or any other resource or asset.
• A municipality may not attempt to collect impact fees relating to any operations occurring prior to the date an ME/MTC is granted a final license by the Commission or from an ME/MTC that has held a final license for more than nine years.
• A municipality may not mandate or otherwise require that the CIF be a certain percentage of an ME/MTC’s total or gross sales as a term or condition of an HCA.
• A municipality may not include additional payments or obligations in its invoice of claimed impact fees, including but not limited to monetary payments, in-kind contributions and charitable contributions by an ME/MTC to a municipality or any other organization.
• A municipality may not include any legal costs incurred by a municipality to defend against a lawsuit brought by an ME/MTC in its invoice of claimed impact fees.

View municipal zoning and bylaws in Massachusetts.