A medical-marijuana dispensary needing permission to set up shop on Edgewater Drive will have to appeal or find another location after a zoning board said no, siding with College Park neighbors and Orange County’s school board chair.
The Plants of Ruskin, a Tampa-area firm which owns cannabis company MÜV, sought a variance to bypass state law and an Orange County rule forbidding a medical-marijuana dispensary from operating within 500 feet of a school property.
Sandwiched between entrances to Bishop Moore and Edgewater high schools, the proposed site of 3550 Edgewater Drive, a former Amscot money store, is far enough from both main campuses to satisfy the law. But it is just 338 feet from 901 Maury Road — a school-owned acre used by Edgewater’s agricultural education program.
Zoning officials said 94 property-owners emailed in opposition to the dispensary’s request and two in favor.
School Board Chair Teresa Jacobs opposed the variance on behalf of the district’s governing panel, citing the harmful effects of marijuana on teen-agers and the state of Florida’s dismal regulatory history with opioids and other drugs.
“We take the safety of our students very seriously as I’m sure you do as well,” Jacobs told the zoning board, a