Delaware Governor Says County’s Move To Loosen Marijuana Business Zoning Rules Is A ‘Good Step’

Delaware marijuana zoning gets a trim in Sussex County, but the haircut barely shows. On paper, the county eased rules for cannabis businesses—dropping conditional-use hurdles in certain commercial zones and shaving the buffer from town limits down to a half-mile. The governor, Matt Meyer, called it a “good step forward,” a nod to the delicate tango of cannabis taxation, local control and the politics of public safety. He’s dangled a potential sweetener too: routing 4.5 percent of legal cannabis revenue to localities willing to play ball. But behind the polite applause and policy talk is a familiar reality. This is a market where three-mile buffers still fence off dispensaries from each other and from churches, schools, colleges and treatment centers. It’s progress with a handbrake, and the Delaware cannabis market will feel every tug.

Here’s the ground truth. The Sussex County Council voted 4–1 to tweak the map. They removed conditional-use requirements for C2 and C3 zones, the kind of bureaucratic speed bumps that let leaders say “maybe later” forever. They also cut the buffer from town borders from 3 miles to 0.5 mile. But the big wall—the three-mile separation rule between dispensaries and “sensitive uses”—still stands. And Sussex doesn’t have much C2 or C3 land to begin with. That “General” and “Medium” commercial zoning is relatively new and scarce, so available parcels are unicorns—and many of those, county staff conceded, are boxed out by buffers anyway. The cannabis industry impact is obvious: new entrants face rezoning, a process that’s messy, slow and expensive. For a business that moves fast and bleeds cash, Delaware’s marijuana policy reform feels like a lighthouse you can see but can’t reach before the tide turns.

Ask the people living on the knife’s edge. Take Louise Shelton, a social equity cultivation licensee who shelled out thousands to get legal and now has 18 months from September to go from paper to product—or lose the license back to the state lottery. She’d hoped to co-locate a grow with a retail shop, but that’s off the table. She’s working with a realtor, scouring maps, counting churches like mile markers on a desert highway. In Sussex County, those three-mile rings are more like tripwires. “It’s not looking up,” she says, considering a license transfer to Kent County. This is the human side of cannabis taxation and regulation: a clock ticking, a bank account thinning, a market that says “We want you” while the zoning code whispers, “Not here.” Public safety matters. So does neighborhood character. But legal cannabis revenue comes from real storefronts in real places, and the current lattice of buffers treats dispensaries like nuclear plants, not everyday retail in a regulated economy. That’s how you end up with five grandfathered recreational operators—and a lot of shut doors for everyone else.

Zoom out and the picture gets weirder, because the United States doesn’t have a cannabis policy so much as a museum of contradictions. Local control in Delaware echoes the federal ping-pong we’ve seen for years. For a reminder of how the winds shift, see Congresswoman Demands Answers From Trump DOJ Over Marijuana Prosecution Policy Change. Meanwhile, culture keeps outrunning law. Oregon flirted with on-site consumption and then pulled back: Oregon Activists Withdraw Measure To Legalize Marijuana Social Lounges From Consideration For 2026 Ballot. Massachusetts, never shy about ballot brawls, has organized opposition laying groundwork already: Massachusetts Anti-Marijuana Campaign Is ‘Confident’ It Submitted Enough Signatures This Week For 2026 Ballot. And in D.C., hemp’s caught in the crossfire as one senator vows a course correction: Rand Paul Slams Alcohol And Marijuana Interests Over Federal Hemp Ban, Announcing He’ll File A Bill To Reverse It Next Week. That’s the tapestry. Every county line, every statehouse hearing, every courtroom memo tugs this market someplace new, and operators are left to navigate a maze where the walls keep moving.

So what happens now in Sussex? Lawmakers had floated an override of Meyer’s earlier veto that aimed to loosen dispensary siting statewide. After these amendments, their appetite for a throwdown may cool—or not. Either way, the policy math remains the same. If the goal is a functional, safe, regulated market that starves the illicit trade and grows legal cannabis revenue, the county needs more than semantic change. It needs smart mapping, more flexible buffers keyed to reality, and a permitting process that treats licensed operators like retailers, not pariahs. Meyer’s promise to watch public safety and “make sure that the business needs of consumers are being addressed” is the right mantra. Delivering it means squaring buffers with geography, giving social equity licensees a fair shot and recognizing that a three-mile moat around churches in a county full of churches is less about conscience and more about a quiet ban. If you’re looking for compliant, high-quality options while policymakers hash this out, take a breath and browse our shop: https://thcaorder.com/shop/.