Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small welcomes what he calls “a new industry in the area.”
“If it’s gonna benefit the great city of Atlantic City, provide jobs, another revenue stream, I’m all for it,” Small said. “I think people have the wrong perception. I think people think that people just gonna be walking up and down the street anyway smoking. That’s not what’s gonna happen. We will have world-class dispensaries.”
Small is embracing recreational cannabis and hoping it will bring the area additional revenue through a sales tax.
“We look at it as an exciting new industry,” Small said.
But other shore town mayors are opposed to it, including in Wildwood Crest.
“Whatever you do on your own private property, your rental property, that’s totally your business. But from our standpoint, from a zoning perspective, we don’t want to see it in any of our business district, hotel districts, what have you,” Wildwood Crest Mayor Don Cabrera said.
The Wildwood Crest mayor is now working to introduce an ordinance that if passed would ban recreational marijuana in public areas in his community, something other shore towns are also looking to do.
“We don’t think it’s a good fit for a family-friendly vacation resort,” Cabrera said.