Even before the bill to legalize marijuana emerged from State House printers last week, Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin had employed a plan to oppose it, dispatching a top aide to town council meetings around the state to decry further acceptance of the drug.

“The reason we’re here tonight is if we’re going to bring a legal market on top of our medical [marijuana] market...We think you should be able to say ‘no,’” Assistant Attorney General Joee Lindbeck told the Middletown Town Council this week in her latest presentation, packed with photos of fire damage, overloaded electrical sockets and firearms recovered from marijuana grows.

“Why are we going to legalize marijuana? To provide for medical usage? We’ve already got that. To allow for small possessions of amounts of marijuana? We’ve already done that too,” Lindbeck said.

Each council gets a Kilmartin-approved packet with copies of ordinances passed by municipalities across the state to limit the drug. The packets also have pre-written resolutions the towns can pass and forward to the General Assembly. For example: "A resolution to oppose the legalization of marijuana ... in the city/town of _____."

The latest push to legalize comes as Gov. Gina Raimondo’s administration is trying to bring municipal leaders up to speed on tighter regulations governing the state’s decade-old medical program.

Those new regulations attempt to curb the black market by creating a pool of licensed “cultivators” to supply the state’s three dispensaries, and a computerized tracking system for all medical marijuana plants grown in the state. Kilmartin contends, however, the changes did little to stop the 16,731 medical marijuana patients from each potentially producing far more marijuana than one person can consume and feeding the black market.

For Jared Moffat, director of Regulate Rhode Island, Kilmartin’s town-level lobbying clashes with his group’s campaign for legalization -- and in a year when he expected more leverage following Massachusetts voters legalizing recreational use in November. The current bill would let cities and towns outlaw marijuana businesses but only by referendum.

“I think the attorney general’s office is trying to raise a lot of concerns as part of their strategy to oppose legalization. They’re going in and saying ‘You should be afraid’ … Part of the challenge is trying to keep up with where they’re going,” said Moffat, who is now running damage control, attempting to get his own time before the public bodies Lindbeck has visited.

The Kilmartin-sponsored tour began in December with the intention of hitting every community. So far, it’s been to seven cities and towns.

Kilmartin, who recites the negative impacts marijuana can have on student learning and adult work performance, said he wants municipal leaders to know that they have a powerful say whether the drug is grown for recreational use or as part of the medical marijuana program in their communities.

“The ball is in their court," he said. Do parents taking their children to school "want to walk by a retail marijuana store? We just want to make sure they make an informed decision….They have control over their zoning and over really what could be a quality of life issue.”

“The black market is going to exist…so the mantra that if Rhode Island legalizes the black market will disappear, that’s a falsehood, plain and simple.”

This week a convergence of presentations unfolded on a single night in Middletown, with Lindbeck warning of the dangers of legalization and the state’s “pot czar” Norman Birenbaum, explaining to town officials they have final say over whether "cultivators" seeking state licenses can operate in their towns.

But those newly approved “cultivators” usually want to be in the running for growing marijuana for a recreational market, too, if the bill to legalize passes this year.

And so municipal leaders are finding themselves having to address both issues simultaneously -- and getting such warnings from Lindbeck as, “Where’s there’s drugs, there’s violence.”

Is the timing of the attorney general’s campaign great? No, Birenbaum said.

He worries that there’s already a fundamental lack of understanding about the medical marijuana program, and legalization complicates an already confusing topic.

"One out of every 50 people in this state are in the program, and there are those that shouldn't be ... but for a large segment of the population, they need this every day just to function," Birenbaum said.

JoAnne Lepannen, executive director of the Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition, calls the presentation upsetting. She worries that statistics included about homicides and suicides related to medical grows are unsubstantiated and towns might pass ordinances that undermine state law out of fear.

“We can’t ignore this anymore,” Lepannan said, adding that the group is putting together a letter to cities and towns refuting the presentation.

Last month, after another presentation by Lindbeck in North Kingstown, the Town Council there passed one of Kilmartin's boilerplate resolutions opposing legalization of marijuana “and the creation of a commercial marijuana industry.”

The council sent the resolution to their local State House representatives and legislative leaders.

Two weeks later, a proposed cultivation center was on the North Kingstown council’s agenda. Some members were cool to the idea, noting numerous odor complaints they had received in recent years from the three or four marijuana grows already in town.

Further, said council member Doreen Costa, “the state gets the revenue and the town gets nothing in return” from these new cultivation licenses, except the expense of increased police scrutiny and fire protection.

Kevin Hoffman, of Jamestown, who has applied to operate the cultivation business in town, felt compelled to speak up.

First, he said, Lindbeck’s earlier presentation was “a little swayed;” she raised the fire danger of extracting marijuana oil using the highly flammable fuel butane, but “they didn’t mention the fact that that stuff’s illegal.” Legitimate makers don’t use that extraction method, he said.

Further, Hoffman said, if he’s allowed to become a cultivator -- he’s leased a building in an industrial center on Dry Bridge Road -- his business would be strictly regulated.

“So a lot of good positive things are going to come of this, as far as, you’re not going to have people coming in here complaining about odor. It’s basically, you do that you lose your license and you’re out."