Why Should Delaware Care?
A Milford dispensary’s fight against the city’s ban on recreational marijuana sales is the latest addition to an ongoing conversation about the intersection of cannabis regulations and local versus state control in Delaware. A lawsuit could end up overturning the prohibition on recreational marijuana sales set by the Milford City Council.
The future of recreational marijuana sales in Milford is in limbo, as the city’s lone dispensary battles a recent local government prohibition against the substance.
Fresh Dispensary, which has sold medical marijuana in Milford since 2024, has been unable to sell recreationally within the city despite receiving a conversion license from the state to do so. A city law passed earlier this year banning recreational weed sales has prevented the dispensary from expanding its business.
Justin Weisser, the store’s owner, reached out to Delaware Marijuana Commissioner Joshua Sanderlin for help. Weisser said the commissioner’s office told him it would “look into the matter,” but he has yet to hear any updates. If he does not get a response from them in the next week or two, Weisser said he plans to file a lawsuit against the city in the Kent County Superior Court.
“There were just a bunch of misrepresentations made by people who worked at the city,” Weisser told Spotlight Delaware. “The whole process was beyond frustrating.”
Weisser had previously filed a lawsuit in Chancery Court earlier this summer, but a judge dismissed that suit citing a lack of jurisdiction over the subject matter. The judge, however, granted Weisser the ability to transfer his case to the Superior Court.
A spokesperson for the marijuana commissioner’s office declined to comment on the lawsuit and Weisser’s request for help.
Fresh Dispensary’s case
Shortly after opening for medical sales in Milford last summer, Weisser applied for a conversion license to add recreational sales.
Those licenses allowed already-operating medical marijuana dispensaries to add recreational sales to their businesses after statewide legalization went into effect on Aug. 1, 2025.
After Weisser applied for the conversion license, the city of Milford confirmed in a September 2024 email that city zoning allowed for recreational marijuana sales at Fresh’s location, Weisser said.
In that same email, however, Milford Planning and Zoning Director Rob Pierce expressed some concern, stating he did not want to give Weisser approval only to have the city change its rules, according to court filings.
Still, Fresh was granted its conversion license by the state on Oct. 14, 2024, including a zoning letter from the city that provided clearance for recreational marijuana sales at the dispensary’s existing Milford location – a strip mall just off U.S. Route 113.
Weisser said he did not receive any indication during the conversion license application process that Milford was considering passing an ordinance to ban recreational sales. He also had to pay $100,000 to the marijuana commissioner’s office to complete the conversion application, he added.
The license fee costs $100,000 to be paid out over the course of 12 months in quarterly installments, according to the state law. All medical marijuana dispensaries that applied for conversion licenses last fall were granted them, a spokesperson for the marijuana commissioner’s office told Spotlight Delaware.
Once Weisser had gone through the conversion process and paid part of the fee to the state, however, he received a notice from the city on Oct. 30, 2024, that officials were considering a recreational cannabis ban, according to court records..
By that point, Weisser said, it was too late for him to switch his conversion license to another municipality, as the application window had closed on Sept. 13.
“[Milford] really screwed us, for lack of a better word, with the way they timed this entire process,” he added.
A spokesperson for the city of Milford declined to comment for this story.
Weisser filed his original Chancery Court lawsuit against the city and Pierce on July 8. Just days later a judge dismissed the case though, citing a lack of jurisdiction over the subject matter. The judge, however, gave Weisser the ability to transfer his case to the Kent County Superior Court.
While Weisser has not yet transferred the case, his original lawsuit alleges that Milford’s marijuana ban should not apply to Fresh, given its conversion license.
In essence, Weisser said, Fresh should be grandfathered into Milford’s previous rules that allowed for recreational sale.
Milford’s marijuana ban
A number of municipalities across the state created new laws in 2023 and 2024 banning recreational marijuana within their jurisdictions in anticipation of the statewide legislation allowing its sale to go into effect on Aug. 1. The city of Milford began publicly discussing a recreational marijuana prohibition at the end of October 2024.
The City Council first held what it called a “Discussion of Marijuana Regulations” on Oct. 28 – 14 days after the state issued Fresh its conversion license.
Then, in mid-December, the City Planning Commission voted on two ordinances: one that would prohibit recreational weed sales within the city, and another that would have allowed recreational sales, but with restrictions on where dispensaries could operate.
The City Council voted on those ordinances in January 2025, ultimately passing a complete ban on sales.
Some council members expressed concern that prohibiting recreational sale would lead to more people purchasing unregulated hemp products from convenience stores, or would detract additional business opportunities from the city. The ordinance passed 6-2.
When asked about Fresh’s request to be exempted from Milford’s ban, the marijuana commissioner’s office said those decisions would need to be made at the local level.
“The state does not oversee local zoning ordinances, so businesses are encouraged to work directly with their local governments regarding any proposed changes,” a spokesperson wrote.
The battle over recreational sales in Milford comes amid a number of discussions in Delaware about local versus state control over marijuana regulations.
In August, Gov. Matt Meyer vetoed Senate Bill 75, giving counties and municipalities more control over local land use decisions, like weed regulations.
While the majority of towns in Sussex County have banned recreational marijuana, the county cannot under the law that legalized recreational sales of the drug. It was also to regulate where it would be allowed, however, and Sussex County approved the most restrictions in the state. It is now considering loosening those zoning regulations though.
Kent County, on the other hand, has taken a less stringent approach. The county does not have specific retail marijuana regulations, so dispensaries are treated like other retail stores under the county code.
Milford is now one of four towns in Kent County that has banned recreational sales within its jurisdiction. Harrington, Hartly and Camden all passed prohibitions earlier this year, after Milford’s ban.
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
