St. Johns County, FL Cannabis Regulations: Dispensary Zoning (2026)

08 of the St. Johns County Land Development Code makes Medical Marijuana Treatment Center (MMTC) Dispensing Facilities a prohibited use in all zoning districts, including Planned Unit Developments, Planned Special Developments and Planned Rural Developments, and in all use classifications. 986(11)(b)(1), Florida Statutes (2017), which lets a local government opt entirely out of allowing dispensing facilities within its boundaries even though medical marijuana itself is legal statewide. The Code states plainly that it is unlawful for any person to establish or operate a MMTC Dispensing Facility within the unincorporated area of St.

Johns County; the ban does not reach the City of St. Augustine, which administers its own code. The prohibition is narrower than a blanket marijuana ban: it exempts Cultivation Facilities and Processing Facilities, and it exempts delivery of medical marijuana from a cultivation or processing facility to treatment centers, marijuana testing laboratories, or directly to a qualified patient's home. The Code's Article XII definitions require that Cultivation and Processing Facilities, the two components still allowed, sit more than 500 feet from the real property of any public or private elementary, middle or secondary school.

The dispensing prohibition has been carried through more than two dozen amending ordinances since 1999, most recently Ordinance 2025-49 and Ordinances 2026-17 and 2026-18, without the Board of County Commissioners ever reversing the opt-out.