Leamington took the lead when it came to growing medical-marijuana in Essex County several years ago, and they're taking the lead when it comes to opting-in on retail pot sales heading into the New Year.
Council voted 5-2 in favour of a motion to say yes to welcoming retail sales on Monday night despite not qualifying for a licence — the current regulations won't allow licencing to municipalities with less than 50,000 people until at least December of next year.
Mayor Hilda MacDonald says council is receptive to community concerns, but change is coming whether the town waits to say yes or not.
"The moral aspect has already been decided by the federal government, we just need to be ready for the next step ... despite the fact that we don't have the population," she says. "It's coming no matter what. The flood gates will open and everyone will be faced with this."
MacDonald tells AM800 News the town will be ready to hit the ground running when the town qualifies for stores later in 2019.
"When those floodgates open you're going to have a different calibre of investor coming," says MacDonald. "I want those big guys with the deepest pockets with the biggest plans to be ready to open up a retail outlet in our town."
Aphria employs hundreds in Leamington directly and even more indirectly, something MacDonald says had to be factored into the decision.
"For us to not move and show confidence in the industry would be a serious mistake," she added.
Councillors Paul Tiessen and John Hammond were the lone opposition.
Tiessen tells AM800 the town should have waited until it had more control.
"Cannabis is legal, I don't think we're ever going to keep the retail outlets out and we're not going to keep people from using it," he says. "We just need to have the regulations around it and some control over how it's placed in our community."
He says the opportunity to push for more control may be completely lost.
"Join forces with some of the other municipalities who've opted-out based on regulations, then at least you've got some bargaining power," says Tiessen. "Right now if we're in I don't believe that we have any bargaining power left."
The deadline to opt-out is January 22, 2019, any municipality that doesn't notify the government of their stance is automatically opting into retail pot when it's rolled out in April.
Lakeshore and Tecumseh are the only Essex County communities to have chosen to opt-out already.