Arizona bureaucrats are wringing their hands over the implementation of Prop 203– the medical marijuana law that voters approved in November 2010.

The roadblocks that bureaucrats like Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall, Arizona Bar official Patricia Sallen, and now Arizona Department of Health Services Director Will Humble have erected bring me question one of this state’s core Republican values– free-market capitalism.

Is Arizona a nanny state that wants to protect its citizens from legal marijuana distribution? Or is Arizona a business-friendly, capitalist state that will allow the free market decide which marijuana dispensaries survive? So far, Arizona’s approach to the medical marijuana business is out-of-step with its generally laissez-faire, no-holds-barred business attitude.

The latest example of the state’s schizophrenic behavior appeared in an Associated Press story in today’s Arizona Daily Star. The story features hand-wringing Humble brainstorming about ways to hamper the medical marijuana industry with fees and over-regulation before it even gets off the ground. [Emphasis added.]

“Most other states, you hang out a shingle and you’re a dispensary,” said Will Humble, director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, which will regulate the medical marijuana industry. “I want to avoid those kinds of abuses.”

Humble sees limiting the number of dispensaries and putting stringent requirements in place as a way to avoid such issues.

Dispensary hopefuls will have to pay up to $5,000 to apply for a license. In their application, they’ll need to include addresses for their pot shops and off-site cultivation facilities; detailed security plans to prevent break-ins; procedures for accurate record-keeping; information about employees for background checks; a sworn statement that they’re meeting zoning requirements; and a statement pledging they won’t sell pot to unregistered patients.

The department hopes to post a draft of proposed requirements on Dec. 17 and finalize rules by late March.

If a business owner has the proper business licenses and has complied with local zoning, why shouldn’t they be able to “hang out a shingle” and become a medical marijuana dispensary? How is that an “abuse”? Isn’t that called capitalism? Seriously, folks, how is this different from setting up a pharmacy or a shop that sells nutritional supplements?

So, Governor Jan Brewer wants to give huge tax cuts to businesses that will re-locate to Arizona, but would-be marijuana dispensary businesses get hefty fees + mountains of procedures + a patchwork of city and county zoning regulations + the requirement to be non-profit + a limit on growth + no legal help? That doesn’t seem business friendly to me.

UPDATE: Check out this link for the update on this story.

Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall and other attorneys from her office are continuing their campaign against medical marijuana, which is on the November 2 ballot as Prop 203.

LaWall and Deputy County Attorney Thomas Rankin used the same fear tactics on AM1330′s John C. Scott Show recently as she did at her public non-forum a few weeks ago.

To his credit, Scott started the show by asking how she can campaign for or against an issue when she is county attorney. LaWall said she is allow to “voice her opinion” but is not allow to tell anyone how to vote. Technically, LaWall didn’t say, “Vote NO on Prop 203″, but she spent nearly an hour of the two-hour show lambasting medical marijuana and sneering at anyone who would “demand” it.

LaWall called medical marijuana a “smoke screen” and a “prescription for disaster.” Comically, she used the same “it’s so long!” defense that the anti-healthcare-reform folks do. Problem is the medical marijuana legislation is 36 pages, and the healthcare reform bill is 2000. Come on, Barbara, 36 pages is too long?

Under Prop 203, a person can get a medical marijuana patient card for any of a number of major illnesses like cancer or HIV/AIDS or to sooth the side effects from treatment for a major illness or to provide palliative care for chronic ailments like depression or chronic pain. The patient card allows you to buy 2.5 ounces of pot every 2 weeks. If you live more than 25 miles from a dispensary, you can grow up to 12 plants in a locked room, closet, shed, green house, or anything else that can be secured. (Of course, you don’t want anyone stealing your plants.) People who are licensed as unpaid caregivers can take care of as many as 5 patients, which allows the caregivers 5 times as much pot.

Rankin and LaWall contend that there are already prescription drugs for pain, and people should just use those. The problem is prescription drugs are expensive, and they usually have side effects. Cancer treatment, for example, is thousands of dollars; why add hundreds of dollars of addition cost for palliative care when you can grow 12 marijuana plants in your bedroom closet? Medical marijuana is a very affordable, natural drug– unlike most pharmaceuticals.

Personally, it really riles me up when LaWall starts putting down cancer patients who want marijuana to help them endure the side effects of treatment. She did this at the forum and on Scott’s show. After a few minutes, I couldn’t take it and called the show. She claimed that no doctors at the Arizona Cancer Center want marijuana for their patients. This is a flat out lie.

I pointed out that at her non-forum, there was a cancer doctor and a cancer nurse from the Arizona Cancer Center and a breast cancer patient; none of them were allowed to speak. When I interviewed the doctor and nurse outside later, they were appalled by the way LaWall’s performance that evening. The doctor told me, “I want to be able to prescribe marijuana for my patients. They need it.”

LaWall moves into Reefer Maddness mode when she talks about dispensaries and growing operations. Prop 203 limits the number of dispensary licenses to 120 statewide. Both Pima County and the City of Tucson have been working on zoning regulations for dispensaries.

Arizona voters have passed medical marijuana laws twice before, but the Arizona Legislature stopped the measures from becoming law. Since then, another voter initiative was passed that forces the Legislature to make anything law that the voters vote for.

If you want an unbiased report about medical marijuana, I recommend Diane Rehm’s recent National Public Radio show. NPR has had several other shows about the topic like this one about it’s medicinal properties. From the New York Times, this story Marijuana, Once Divisive, Brings Some Families Closer talks about adult children supplying marijuana to their aging parents. The quotes from patients who have had experience with both prescription pain relievers and marijuana are enlightening.

For the law enforcement point of view, check out Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). This is a group of current and retired law enforcement officers and lawyers who believe that prohibition of marijuana and other drugs escolates violence. They advocate legalization. (By the way, on Scott’s show, I asked LaWall and Rankin if they had ever heard of LEAP, but they didn’t answer.)

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have medical marijuana. Will Arizona be next? I hope so. I have worked in healthcare and public health for more than 20 years– including several years at the Arizona Cancer Center. I have interviewed patients, family members, caregivers, and physicians about cancer, cancer prevention, and cancer treatment. When you have seen the courage these people have and witnessed their struggle first hand, you would never deny them something that helps them become disease free. Vote YES on Prop 203.

As political junkie, I have attended numerous public forums, City Council meetings, Pima County Board of Supervisers’ meetings, and even Arizona Legislature sessions, but tonight’s “educational” forum on medical marijuana (Prop 203) was the weirdest, most one-sided and contentious non-debate that I have ever witnessed.

In a nutshell, Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall [check out the seriously under-the-radar website link] used this public forum (and a Pima County facility) to give her personal opinion on medical marijuana, scare the audience, and campaign for a No vote on Prop 203. (Isn’t this unethical behavior?)

At the onset, LaWall said that the meeting was not a debate or a public forum but simply an educational meeting. She said her goal was to “educate and inform” the audience about Prop 203. Fair enough but that is not what transpired.

LaWall’s slanted slide show, her “facts” about medical marijuana, and editorial emphasis on certain key points made it obvious that she was not providing education; she was using her office to campaign against medical marijuana.

Early on, in the non-debate, the mostly pro-203 audience of about 40 people began to challenge her “facts”. For example, she said that marijuana was not approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a “medicine” and that it has not been research-tested. (Earth to Barbara, the FDA has not approved St. John’s Wort for depression, black cohash for menopause, or any number of herbal remedies and supplements, but drug stores and health food stores are selling them.)

Marijuana has not been approved as a medicine because there are no pharmaceutical companies producing marijuana pills and funding multi-center clinical trials. Since it is illegal in most states, there is no economic incentive to pay millions of dollars to test it. (Drug research in the US is based on capitalism, not on the overall public good.) On the flip side, there have been loads research articles providing anecdotal evidence and case studies on the benefits of medical marijuana.

Regarding research testing of Controlled Substances, in the US most research is funded by the federal government or by drug companies. After the free-wheeling 1960s when Timothy Leary. Ram Das, Andrew Weil, and others at Harvard Medical School were conducting clinical trials of, writing about, and/or experimenting with mind-altering drugs, the Nixon administration clamped down on experimentation (research or otherwise), and medical research into potential benefits of controlled substances was suppressed. (Research funding is a political football.)

I digress. Back to tonight’s political theater… instead of answering questions from the audience, LaWall became defensive, skipped through some slides, threatened to have people removed, and solicited help from uniformed police officers to control the crowd of citizens with legitimate questions. Since LaWall refused to call on people who raised their hands early on, audience members started shouting questions and comments.

For example, she answered one of my questions, but only when I said I was a journalist and asked, “Do you want me to write that you refused to answer audience questions?” When I raised my hand with a follow-up question, I was ignored– along with many others.

Eventually the audience turned to heckling, but, seriously, LaWall deserved it. One breast cancer patient shouted out how much medical marijuana has helped her over the past 2 years of chemothearpy. Community activists accused LaWall of abusing her elected office by using the public forum to voice her personal opinion. Outside, a cancer doctor and palliative care cancer nurse told me that LaWall just doesn’t understand the benefits of medical marijuana to their patients.

The meeting lasted about 30-40 minutes, since LaWall refused to answer the vast majority of questions or address comments from the audience. This was a pathetic performance by an elected official.

On November 2, 2010, Arizona voters will again have the opportunity to approve medical marijuana (Prop 203). Arizonans have approved medical marijuana at least twice before in my recollection. What makes the 2010 vote different? In 1998, Arizona voters got tired of voting for initiatives and then having the Republican-controlled Legislature not enact the voters’ wishes. Consequently, the Voter Protection Act was passed. This forces the Legislature to enact laws approved by the voters. (Watch out for this because Republican legislators are trying to undermine our initiative process.)

Old hippies, stoners, cancer patients, people with chronic pain and other medical conditions improved by marijuana, and other freedom-loving Americans who want less government control of our lives– mark your calendars. I’ll make it easy for you. Here are the election-related deadlines you need to know:

- To vote on November 2, you must register by October 4, 2010. You can register to vote here.
- The first day of early voting and the day that early ballots are mailed is October 7, 2010.
- You can also request to be on the Permanent Early Voting List (PEVL). This means you automatically always get a ballot in the mail. (You can change this at any time; you can also drop the ballot off at a polling place on election day. It’s easy, trust me.)
- The last day to request an early ballot is October 22, 2010. Here is a list of early voting sites.
- Election day is November 2, 2010. If you don’t know where to vote, check out the Pima County Recorder’s website. And, again, thanks to Republicans, you have to take an official government identification with you to the polls.

Also, while you’re voting for medical marijuana, vote for Arizona Democrats. Statistics show that most people don’t like the way the Republicans are running this state (ie, 2nd in poverty, 50th in education, worst unemployment in 27 years). It is long past time to throw those bums out!

In the future, looks for public forums on zoning for medical marijuana. Counties and cities around Arizona will be trying to control usage, dispensaries, and cultivation. Don’t let them undermine your rights!