Medical marijuana survives Lindenhurst Village trustee ban

The Lindenhurst Village board of trustees has approved a ban on new electronic cigarette and hookah businesses, but not medical marijuana dispensaries. The board last week had voted unanimously in favor of a law which, when first proposed last month, banned not only e-cigarette (vape) shops and hookah lounges but businesses that include the “smoking or selling of medicinal marijuana.”

The village has two vape shops and no hookah or medical marijuana businesses, but Mayor Mike Lavorata had said at the time that as the village looks to build up its downtown, he wants more “family-friendly” businesses and doesn’t want to encourage “bad habits.”

After hearing from medical marijuana advocates at a public hearing, as well as via letters, Lavorata said, the village removed medical marijuana from the ban. “There were several people who made the case — they were glaucoma patients, people with cancer,” he said, noting that his main goal had been “to stop the synthetic marijuana.”

That part of the law currently reads that it is illegal to operate any facility “whose business operation whether as an ancillary use, includes the smoking, or selling of synthetic marijuana, or cannabis substitutes, or related products.”