While a constitutional amendment allowing medical marijuana was overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2016, the law passed this year by the Legislature requires cities and counties to regulate dispensaries exactly as they would pharmacies.

Among Central Florida cities, only Oviedo is moving forward with an ordinance allowing dispensaries. Orlando has declared its two dispensaries on North Orange Avenue to have been grandfathered in, a strategy county attorney Whitney Evers called “a somewhat risky position to take.”

Speaking before the commission, state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, described the Legislature’s rules as a “trap to share the blame with local governments. It muddies the water further and voters just blame everyone. But I fear they’re going to blame you.”

Jacobs partially agreed with Smith, saying the law “puts local governments between a rock and a hard place, and I’m really just trying to understand why. … To say, ‘If you don’t like it, just ban it’? That is not a situation I ever remember being in.”

Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs described a medical marijuana decision forced on them by the Legislature as feeling like 'a gun to our head'