Photo by Jon Anderson
The H.H. Smoke Shop at The Village at Lee Branch shopping center in Hoover, Alabama.
The Hoover City Council on Monday night passed a six-month moratorium on issuing new business licenses for CBD and vape shops while city officials try to figure out appropriate regulations for those businesses.
Hoover City Planner Mac Martin said there have been a proliferation of CBD and vape shops in certain commercial districts to the point that it is having a negative effect on the overall business community.
Also, the city has been getting complaints about illegal products being sold in some of these businesses and some legal products being sold illegally to minors, Martin said. Additionally, CBD and vape shops frequently are found to be in violation of various city and state regulations on a recurring basis, including sign regulations and the types of products being sold in stores, he said.
“They’ll clean up for a time, then they’ll be back in violation,” Martin said.
One issue is that the City Council in 2019 passed particular rules about where vape shops can and cannot be, but similar rules are not in place for CBD stores, Martin said.
The regulations passed in 2019 prohibit new vape stores, tobacco stores, pawn shops and short-term loan shops from opening within 500 feet of a residential area and within 1,000 feet of a K-12 school, child care facility, church, public library, public playground, public park, youth center or other space primarily used for youth-oriented activities.
Also, any such stores are only allowed in C-2, C-3 or C-4 commercial zones and have to get special permission from the city to operate in such zones as a “conditional use.” Further, any such stores cannot be within 1,000 feet of another store in any of those categories.
But those same rules are not in place for CBD shops, Martin said. As a result, some shops get their business license as a CBD store but later begin offering a variety of vape products, putting them in violation of city regulations but not necessarily in a way that’s easy to detect because of their business classification, he said.
In other cases, there are questions about the legality of products being sold, Martin said. Some products are labeled in such a way that they meet state guidelines for the level of THC in the product, but Hoover officials have acquired some of those products and sent them to an out-of-state lab for testing and found that the labels are inaccurate and that the THC level is illegal in Alabama, he said.
The nature of the products also makes it difficult to enforce because some products sit on the shelves in a form that is legal, but when someone buys it and manipulates the product (such as adding water or setting it on fire), it changes form and becomes an illegal substance, Martin said.
“We’re at a point in time where it’s not well-regulated at the state or local level,” he said.
City officials want time to research the issue and come up with better regulations, but they want to keep the proliferation of these businesses from occurring in the meantime, Martin said.
Police Chief Nick Derzis said police and other city officials need to make sure they understand what’s happening and find ways to help ensure that businesses operate within the law. “But that law seems to change quite a bit,” he said.
The moratorium does not affect existing CBD and vape shops, just anyone applying for a new business license for one or seeking to change ownership of one, Martin said.
In their review, city officials also will look at businesses that sell CBD or vape products as secondary products, such as more general merchandise stores, gas stations or pharmacies.
Council President John Lyda said the council felt it was appropriate to put a halt on new licenses while city staff members evaluate the issues to see if more regulations are indeed needed.
“It may come out we need to do nothing else, but we’ll know at the end of the six-month period of how we’re going to move forward,” he said.
In other business Monday, the Hoover City Council:
- Agreed to accept a $365,000 rescue vehicle donation for the Hoover Fire Department from Shelby County.
- Amended a contract for the repair of Lake Forest Circle and a dam underneath the road in the Riverchase community due to some changes in the scope of the work that added $13,755 to the cost. The total cost of the repair job is now $2,933,867.
- Agreed to buy two Chevrolet Tahoe police pursuit vehicles from Donohoo Chevrolet for $49,548. The vehicles will replace two others that were totaled, and the city will recover $20,529 of the cost from its insurance company, fleet management director Dustin Moore said.
- Agreed to begin the process to seek accreditation for the city’s emergency communications center. It likely will take two years to go through that process, 911 Director Linda Moore said.
- Approved agreements with Alabama Power Co. that will allow the utility to relocate its lines and equipment along Valleydale Road between U.S. 31 and Riverchase Parkway East and between Caldwell Mill Road and Inverness Center Drive to make way for road widening projects.
- Approved alcoholic beverage licenses for Desi Tadka at 1843 Montgomery Highway, Suite 105, and Sushi Village at 601 Doug Baker Blvd., Suite 101 and 102.
- Annexed property at 5410 U.S. 280 currently containing American Family Care and a day care behind it.
- Set public hearings for July 15 to rezone recently annexed properties at 2849 Berkeley Drive, 995 Bridgewater Park Drive, 1523 Highland Gate Point, 2440 Southwood Trace, 2444 Southwood Trace, 2448 Southwood Trace, 2821 Sterling Way, 249 South Burbank Drive and 250 South Burbank Drive for R-1 single-family use. Most of the properties have existing homes.
- Declared property at 2152 Larchmont Circle as a public nuisance due to high weeds and/or grass and set public hearings for July 15 to consider whether to have the high weeds and/or grass cut at 2054 Woodmeadow Circle, 2161 Kelly Lane, 2337 Tyler Road and 3575 Lorna Ridge Drive, with liens put against the property to recover the cost.
See the complete video of the July 1 Hoover City Council meeting on The Hoover Channel YouTube page.
