UPDATE: Seaford City Council moves forward ban on recreational marijuana licenses in city limits

UPDATE  12/12/23: On December 12th the Seaford City Council reversed their decision that would extend the city’s ban on recreational marijuana businesses from from their downtown, to the entirety of the city.

The final vote came in at 3-2 in favor of adult use with exemption: meaning that if a business wishes to open an adult use marijuana establishment within the city they will need first need approval from the city council.

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SEAFORD, Del. – The Seaford City Council Tuesday night approved a measure to extend the city’s ban on recreational marijuana license-holding businesses in their downtown to extend to all their zoning categories within town limits.

“It’s our downtown area, it’s our commercial areas and our shopping centers, and those areas, it just cannot be in those locations, It also can’t be in our M1, which is your manufacturing areas, so in essence, it’s a complete ban, we don’t want retail recreational marijuana in Seaford,” said Seaford Mayor Genshaw.

Genshaw says that he does not expect license holders to be affected, as the first state is still months out from issuing the licenses or creating the regulatory framework that would allow a location to open and operate, characterizing the decision as a pre-emptive ban in line with other localities in Sussex County.

However, he says he could see how the ban might impact existing medical dispensaries that would have hoped to convert to dual-use once those recreational licenses became available.

” I believe a lot of these medical marijuana facilities opened up with the hope, with the intent that someday recreational marijuana would come along as well. And that was part of their business model,” Genshaw said.