7 January 23-29, 2025 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | Contents | Letters | news | night+Day | CuLture | Cafe | MusiC | miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | RIPTIDE | METRO | NIGHT+DAY | STAGE | ART | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | WEED DID IT! Miami’s first medical marijuana dispensary finally opens. BY NAOMI FEINSTEIN N early ten years after Florida voters legalized medical marijuana, the first medical marijuana dispensary has officially opened within Miami city limits. The City of Miami has been an island of prohibition Ayr Wellness opened its dispensary in Midtown at 3160 N. Miami Ave. on Friday, January 10, after years of the city dragging its feet in permitting the opening of medical marijuana dispensaries. “It’s pretty exciting. This has been a five- plus-year process since we started planning this particular dispensary,” Rob Vanisko, vice president of public engagement for Ayr Wellness, tells New Times. “From lease signing to all the approvals to the appeals to actually be able to get this open has been quite the process.” Following the passage of the 2016 consti- tutional amendment legalizing medical mari- juana, then-city attorney Victoria Mendez claimed that the federal Controlled Sub- stances Act (CSA), which classified cannabis as an illegal drug, superseded the state law — preventing the city from issuing a permit for a dispensary. In the meantime, the city watched other municipalities allow dispensa- ries within its boundaries with specific zon- ing regulations. In 2021, real estate investor and Los Ange- les entrepreneur Romie Chaudhari sued the city for blocking his two entities — MRC44, LLC, and 60 NE 11th, LLC — from opening a dispensary near nightclubs Space and E11even in the Park West neighborhood. Two years prior, the city zoning director denied Chaudhari’s application for a certifi- cate of use on the advice from the city attor- ney’s office. Even after a federal judge and the city’s planning and zoning appeals board sided with Chaudhari, the zoning director ap- pealed the board’s decision. Aside from the legal hurdles, city commissioners were not exactly welcoming to medical marijuana dis- pensaries. Commissioner Manolo Reyes claimed children would be able to access marijuana gummies, while Commissioner Joe Carollo, who called the appeal the “Cheech and Chong ordinance,” said people would get be- hind the wheel high on cannabis should a dis- pensary open. Despite Carollo’s and Reyes’ hatred for marijuana, in May 2022, the Miami City Commission finally struck down the ap- peal, permitting Chaudhari to obtain a certificate of use to open a dispensary. This paved the way for other companies to apply for permits within the city. The medical marijuana question was back on the dais last February when the city voted to approve a certificate of use issued to Ayr Wellness at its proposed Midtown location. Once again, Carollo and Reyes expressed their concerns regarding marijuana dispensa- ries. Reyes asserted that children would start smoking marijuana in school and that people could easily get fraudulent medical marijuana cards. “What I don’t want to open is the door,” Reyes said at the commission meeting in Feb- ruary 2024. Carollo claimed that kids in Hispanic and Black communities would suffer due to medi- cal marijuana. He argued that the city would turn into a “free-for-all.” “I remember when I was a young man, we would see the movies and laugh at Cheech and Chong,” Carollo added. “Welcome to the world of Cheech and Chong that we live in today. The people that are going to suffer the most are going to be poor areas, beginning in the Black community.” The city ultimately denied the zoning of- fice’s appeal to block Ayr Wellness’s certificate of use, allowing the dispensary to open. Car- ollo and Reyes were the two lone “no” votes. Ayr Wellness, which acquired Liberty Health Sciences for $372 million in 2021, now has 67 locations across the state. Both Vanisko and the company’s chief rev- enue officer and chief development officer, Jamie Mendola, reiterated that the Miami market was underserved from a medical mar- ijuana perspective. “Traveling out to Miami-Dade County, we saw something like 62,800 to one ratio of population dispensary, which is pretty huge,” Vanisko says. “Miami proper is even more dramatic than that.” Mendola says much of Carollo’s and Reyes’ previous claims about cannabis have been dispelled. “There’s a lot of good studies that are out there that show that youth incidents of using cannabis have decreased, which is not what people expected, and certainly the fear-mon- gering crowd, you know, everyone’s just going to be using this all the time. It’s been the in- verse. “In any market that has underserved regu- lated access with demand that is there, the demand will be met one way or another. It’s either the traditional market or it’s the intoxi- cating hemp market or its other substances in almost every case that are going to be unregu- lated, untested, and less safe.” [email protected] Miami, weed finally did it! New Times photo-illustration (via Getty Images) | METRO | “THIS HAS BEEN A FIVE- PLUS-YEAR PROCESS.”
