MEDICAL MARIJUANA DISPENSARIES DESERVE REASONABLE ZONING

When does a city's use of zoning to protect public health and safety
overreach into meddling in private business practices?

Answer: When the proposed zoning code for a medical marijuana dispensary
exceeds even the cautious standards set up by proponents and approved by
voters.

The medical pot initiative -- Prop. 203 -- passed by a narrow margin
statewide but by 18 points in Flagstaff. It essentially seeks to treat
marijuana as a prescription drug -- but without a doctor's formal
prescription or a licensed pharmacy.

Instead, doctors will issue recommendations (an actual prescription
apparently would jeopardize their license to practice medicine because
of federal marijuana laws) and private businesses will sell the pot
out of storefronts under regulations still to be issued by the state
Department of Health.

Drafters of Prop. 203 included a few rules of their own, including no
more than 2 1/2 ounces per patient every two weeks and a 500-foot
minimum distance between dispensaries and schools. They pegged the
number of dispensaries to a percentage of local pharmacies, meaning
Flagstaff is in line for a total of three dispensaries.

But Flagstaff planning staff had their own ideas about what voters
should have approved. They proposed a doubling of the distance from
schools, and added churches, parks and libraries to that 1,000-foot
buffer zone. As for drug treatment centers, they made the buffer 2,000
feet.

They also limited the size of a dispensary to 2,500 square feet and
set the hours of operation from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

As a result, out of thousands of commercially zoned properties inside
the city limits, only 118 areas would be viable as medical marijuana
dispensaries under the staff proposal.

City staff defended the recommendations, saying dispensaries in other
states had led to more DUI arrests related to marijuana purchases,
burglaries at dispensaries, mugging of patrons and a decline in retail
sales at adjacent businesses.

That might be true in states like Colorado, which has a very lenient
medical pot law that has led to high-volume dispensaries on nearly
every corner in cities like Boulder. But the Arizona law restricts
medical marijuana use to a few specific conditions that must be
diagnosed by a physician, meaning there's likely to be a lot more foot
traffic at the Walgreen's pharmacy right across from Coconino High
School than any one of the three marijuana dispensaries in town.

Our concern is not just with this case but with what appears to be a
consistent impulse by city staff to tell someone how to run a business
that goes way beyond public health and safety. We last encountered
this proclivity in the case of the proposed new Greyhound bus station
in Flagstaff, which city staff and planners wanted to be open 24/7 so
that late-night travelers would not be left standing out in the cold.
This despite the fact the city doesn't require all-night operations of
the airport or Amtrak station, even though both are in city-owned buildings.

Greyhound is appealing to the full city council.

Then there is the infamous case of the proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter,
which ran afoul of the city council's new law in 1994 forbidding big
discount retailers from running a supermarket under the same roof.
Voters overturned the ordinance.

The current council appears to be more sensitive to unnecessary
meddling by city staff, at least when it comes to medical marijuana.
They have told city staff to come back with a much less restrictive
zoning amendment. When and if the three dispensaries do open, the
rules can always be tightened up if there is trouble.

Until then, our advice to city staff would be to give any business
applicant the benefit of the doubt on operating rules -- it's tough
enough to get a financial foothold in this town without City Hall
stacking the deck before they even open the doors.