Back in the early 1980s, I interviewed an old rancher who lived in Dragoon, Arizona for a feature story about rural Cochise County.

His 1800s stone ranch house was decorated with rustic furniture, a smattering of family heirlooms, and a large collection of old glass bottles. Being somewhat of an antique buff myself, I remarked at the variety of old bottles he had collected. As I photographed him, his house, and the bottle collection, I asked where he had gotten them all.

“This house is on the Mormon Trail,” he explained. “I found them all on my property.”

“The Mormon Trail?” I inquired– thinking it was a migration route like the Oregon Trail or Cornado’s Trail.

The grizzled old rancher chuckled, “The Mormon Trail is the route the Mormons took from St. David to the bars in Willcox. They didn’t want their family members or church elders in St. David to know they had been drinking in Willcox, so they dropped the evidence– the alcohol bottles– along the Mormon Trail as they rode their horses back home.”

I was reminded of the old rancher’s story this morning when I read Mesa seeks to seclude shops selling medical pot in today’s Arizona Daily Star.

In an attempt to legislate morality and control the temptation of the evil weed– even though it has been approved only for medical purposes– Mesa’s city council is considering highly restrictive zoning laws. Here is an excerpt from the Star (with emphasis added).

Mesa won’t let medical-marijuana shops open in most of its commercial districts, with city leaders saying they don’t want the substance sold near neighborhoods or in prominent locations.

Instead, the shops will be forced to industrial areas and just one kind of commercial use.
The city is taking a different approach from most other Arizona cities, which so far have been restricting the shops to commercial zones. The city staff had proposed that kind of regulation, but members of the City Council feared that would put the stores at the corner of major intersections.

The stores will be restricted from most areas in the city, as they must be at least a mile from each other, 2,400 feet from rehab facilities, 1,200 feet from churches and schools, and 500 feet from day-care facilities or preschools.

A map prepared by the city shows only slivers of land where the shops could open.

This is folly, and obviously another example of Arizona’s nanny state leanings. Once the Arizona Department of Health Services sets up the system for licensing dispensaries, caregivers, and medical providers, medical marijuana sales will begin in Arizona. It will be legal– even for Mesans– to purchase medical marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation.

The Mesa city fathers should learn a lesson from the Mormon Trail story. If people want or need drugs– legal or otherwise– they will find a way to obtain then, even if it means driving to an industrial district of their lily-white city or (heaven forbid) driving into Phoenix.

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.