WORTHINGTON — The Worthington City Council voted to retain licensing and regulatory authority of cannabis businesses within the city during a special meeting Wednesday. With recreational use of cannabis legalized in August 2023 by the Minnesota legislature, the state will issue its first retail licenses to dispensaries in early 2025.
Nobles County, because of its population size of 12,500 to 25,000 people, is required to issue licenses to at least two dispensaries within the county, while Worthington — a city with a population of nearly 14,000 — is mandated to have one.
The alternate decision brought before the council Wednesday was to enter a joint powers agreement with Nobles County wherein the county would take over licensing and regulatory authority from the city, which would work similarly to tobacco licensing. In doing so, the county would be the sole entity determining how many dispensaries would operate in Worthington.
Several council members expressed their desire to have Worthington be the one to decide how many dispensaries would be in the city rather than Nobles County.
“Once we give up control of it, then we’re out of it,” said Councilman Dennis Weber. “To me, you don’t want to give up control.”
“We want to retain the authority with such factors as separation to churches, schools,” City Administrator Steve Robinson said. “Everything that we saw when the county established a 1,000-foot barrier separation from tobacco and the issues that caused — if they did that and we had a 1,000-foot barrier, we would run out of retail locations where our zoning laws could even allow a retail operation.
“We want to maintain that authority so we can establish what we think are reasonable boundaries,” he added.
“The other thing I did see that I found interesting — at least possibly in our case — is that unlike alcohol, municipalities cannot have an absolute only license, (an) exclusive license,” said Councilman Chad Cummings. “As a total hypothetical, if the city were to say, ‘We want one of the licenses to run out of the liquor store,’ then we would be obligated to then issue at least one other license somewhere else in the community.”
Worthington City Planner Matt Selof will be in charge of zoning future dispensaries, City Clerk Mindy Eggers will be in charge of licensing dispensaries and Robinson will work in conjunction with the two in such factors as hours of operations and the number of stores within Worthington.
Samuel Martin became a reporter for The Globe in September 2023. He has a bachelor’s degree in media studies from the University of Sioux Falls.
