Superior Court Judge Allows Cannabis Grow Op in Wakefield, Rhode Island

A Rhode Island Superior Court Judge has ruled in favor of a medical cannabis grow operation that was told it was not allowed in the city of Wakefield due to a zoning violation.

The South Kingstown Zoning Board had decided that the grow operation counted as an “agricultural products manufacturing,” and such businesses were not allowed to operate in the Commercial Downtown Zoning District. However, in court last week, Judge Bennett Gallo stated that this was “tortured reasoning” on the part of the zoning board, according to the Providence Journal.

The grow operation, owned by Jordan Carlson, is licensed legally through the state. In April 2014, Carlson received a citation from a Building Official and Zoning Enforcement Officer Jeffrey O’Hara, who believed that the business was in violation of the zoning ordinance.

In a hearing that occurred in July 2014, O’Hara admitted that he based his information solely on police reports from when law enforcement had responded to an alarm at the location of Calrson’s operation (a former movie theater that Carlson was renting out). O’Hara also stated that he had issued the violation even though he had never entered the building to verify his findings.

The Zoning Board voted 3-2 to shut down the grow operation, stating that there was “marijuana cultivation taking place on the premises constitutes agricultural manufacturing and thus was barred in the downtown district.”

Judge Gallo spoke against the Board’s decision, stating that cannabis is permitted in all areas of Rhode Island, and also that the state’s Medical Marijuana Act defines useable cannabis as both dried leaves, dried flower or any other mixture of the two. “Manufacturing entails more than simply drying out plants,” Gallo wrote on his ruling. “If an individual grows some plants then harvests those plants and dries them, that individual has not manufactured anything.”

After hearing Gallo’s ruling, O’Hara said he accepts his decision. “They’re making these laws faster than anyone can read them. I can’t understand it.”