State officials expect to award the first licenses to grow medical marijuana in Connecticut this week, but it's a step that will have little impact for more than a dozen towns - they have already placed a moratorium on considering such businesses.

The state Department of Consumer Production, which oversees the marijuana program, expects to issue the first licenses for production facilities by week's end, and licenses for dispensaries by April.

Of the applications for a marijuana production licenses, only three will receive state approval. State officials have said that local approval is critical to receiving a license.

The entirely new prospect of being home to marijuana businesses has left towns and cities trying to figure out how these businesses fit — if at all — into their community.

Most of the moratoriums are officially in effect for a few months to a year, but some aspiring growers and sellers say the moratoriums will have much longer-lasting effects.

A moratorium issued while the state decides who get licenses essentially shuts out the possibility of a marijuana business opening in that town indefinitely, said Erik Williams, executive director of the state chapter of marijuana advocacy group NORML.

"Whether it's an unintended consequence or not, that is the consequence," said Williams, who is also part of a company seeking to open a production facility in New Britain. "If you don't have the [local approval] for this, you're not going to get a license."

Towns that have already issued moratoriums include Ansonia, Berlin, Madison, Milford, Monroe, New Canaan, Ridgefield, Shelton, Trumbull, Wallingford, Waterford, Westport and West Hartford. Williams said his organization was keeping track but lost count after a while.

Diane Whitney, an attorney who represents Advanced Grow Labs, a company that has received approval for a production facility in West Haven, said the moratoriums may do more than just extend the decision-making process.

"I don't think anyone knows when the [Department of Consumer Protection] will issue additional licenses, so the effect may be to put off any facilities in that place for quite a while," she said.

Whitney said she suspects that some municipalities want to see how it all works in other places before taking action.

Mark McGovern, director of community services in West Hartford, said officials there simply want to make sure they know the best way to proceed. What kind of impact such businesses could have on residential areas, or areas with schools, were among the questions town officials have asked.

Other communities have raised questions about security, specifically about preventing the product from leaking into the black market by theft or through patients who turn around and resell the marijuana.

West Hartford officials issued a nine-month moratorium in October but said they won't need that much time. Officials have begun work on an ordinance that would place restrictions on where the businesses could be located in relation to schools and places of worship.

"We wanted to see what he implications would be and appropriately come back with regulations that would govern the situation," he said.

Hellyn Riggins, director of development services for Berlin, said the town's recently enacted moratorium is for one year at most. If officials are satisfied that they've come up with a good plan before that, the moratorium will be lifted.

She said that the moratorium was never intended as a prohibitive measure, and that the commission is eager to have a plan in place. There's just a lot of information to process, she said.

"I need to sit down and read everything," Riggins said. "There's a brand new law. This isn't just tweaking a law — those are complicated enough — this is a brand new law, and I need to understand it and talk to the town counsel and get his understanding of it and then we can decide where these can go."

Growing Vs. Dispensing

Although these moratoriums apply to both marijuana production and sales, Whitney said local officials have generally been a little warmer to aspiring producers than they have been to sellers. "As far as growing facilities, 'welcoming' is probably too strong of a word, but towns have not been hostile to growing facilities," she said.

As for dispensaries, though, Whitney said municipalities have been less than welcoming.

"As to why, I can only guess," she said. "My guesses are that with growing facilities, the operations are entirely indoors, often in some abandoned warehouse, and virtually every town has at least one of them."

So not only does the town fill some vacant space, it's neatly tucked away in an industrial area. "There's not a lot to object to," she said.

"With a dispensary, you're selling to the public and you're visible," she said. "And people seem to be very worried about crime and about the perception of illegality. And they hear horror stories, mainly from California, about robberies and people getting mugged."

The distinction between growers and sellers has been apparent to Jason Vincent in Norwich. Vincent, vice president of the not-for-profit Norwich Community Development Corporation, said his organization reached out to a handful of aspiring marijuana producers.

"This could be a whole new industry for Connecticut, and that really got us excited," said Vincent. The town has a business park, he said, zoned for the production of legal drugs, so there was no need for two pending medical marijuana proposals to even go before the planning and zoning commission.

Less exciting to the town, he said, was the prospect of hosting a dispensary.

"We were open-minded on the production side of it because we recognized the value of it," he said, "but we were not comfortable with the dispensary side."

Even though Connecticut regulations are very strict, he said, there's a perception that dispensaries will bring people to town seeking recreational marijuana.

"There's some fear that it's going to be like California — 'wink, wink here's your medical marijuana,'" he said.

Bridgeport's Reaction

PharmaFarm, one of the companies that hopes to open a production facility in Norwich, first went to Wallingford. David Kimmel, founder of the company, said he and town officials had "months of conversations" about the proposal.