Covington to allow medical marijuana businesses starting in 2025

Covington has voted to allow state-licensed medical cannabis operations, starting in 2025.

The city of Covington decided to allow medical marijuana sales as well as permit and regulate growing within city limits at a city council meeting on Tuesday night.

By moving forward, Covington is following in the footsteps of several other northern Kentucky communities including Fort Wright, Dayton and Erlanger.

Communities such as Ludlow, Bellevue, Florence and Union are leaving the decision up to voters this fall.

It will be allowed in Covington as of Jan. 1, 2025.

City council spent part of Tuesday night considering an ordinance to allow medical marijuana to be sold at businesses within city limits.

The new ordinance also lays out the zoning districts where associated cannabis operations could locate.

Now the City has to decide other details, such as the cost of the City’s license, as well as hours of operation.

“Basically, this ordinance is a statement of intent – it announces that Covington intends to permit state-licensed medical cannabis operations, and it lays out where those operations will be able to locate,” City Manager Ken Smith said in a statement. “We recognize and appreciate that there are people suffering chronic pain and other medical ailments for which this will be a helpful medical tool, and we’re clearing the way for them – through their physician – to access that.”

In a statement, Smith also emphasized the ordinance will not allow for a “wild, wild west of cannabis use” in Covington.

“The number of licenses statewide will be severely limited, and the required buffer and defined zoning districts means there will be only certain areas of Covington where operations can locate,” he said in a statement.

Starting Jan. 1, operators under the state’s initial license period in operations of three sizes: processor, dispensary, and safety compliance (research and development) facility.

In the future, the state plans to add a fourth size of to cultivating operations and add production facilities.

However, there will be strict limits on the numbers of such licenses around the state, and restrictions on operations.

A maximum of one dispensary license will be assigned to each county, and 48 for the whole state.

State rules require locations not be located within 1,000 feet of a school or daycare.

Dispensaries will only be allowed to sell cannabis to those with a medical prescription, no other products will be allowed for sale.

Tuesday’s decision in Covington comes one week after recreational marijuana sales began in Ohio.

Kentucky lawmakers passed the law in 2023, legalizing medical cannabis for people suffering from a list of debilitating illnesses.