Medical Marijuana zoning ordinances - next up: Tempe, Thursday night

On Tuesday, the Scottsdale City Council approved a zoning ordinance for medical marijuana dispensaries by a 4 - 3 vote.

Thursday night, the Tempe City Council will consider a proposed ordinance for their city.

There are some similarities between Scottsdale's recently-enacted ordinance and the proposal up for consideration in Tempe at Thursday night's meeting. 

Both require a significant buffer between any dispensary or cultivation site and a multitude of other businesses, buildings and other urban features - other dispensaries, schools, child care centers, churches (of any denomination or faith), parks, public buildings, residences.


Both limit the hours of operation -

- Scottsdale: 6 a.m. until 7 p.m.;

- Tempe: 8 a.m until 6 p.m.


Both place significant hurdles in the way of any medical marijuana dispensary operation -

- Scottsdale: all dispensaries will have to go through the "Conditional Use Permit" process, which means that each dispensary will have to be approved by the City Council before it can begin operation;

- Tempe: the proposed ordinance is designed to isolate the businesses in areas zoned for industrial use.

Tempe's proposal is actually stricter than Scottsdale's.  Where Scottsdale will allow cultivation of medical marijuana if the cultivation location, including patient residences, meets certain criteria (not easy, but possible), Tempe's proposal bars cultivation of medical marijuana in the City, even for home-bound patients, if there is a medical marijuana dispensary within 25 miles of the location.

While the agenda can be approved in its entirety by a single motion, but the agenda item for this measure, D4, is marked as a "public discussion" item and can be removed for separate consideration by any member of the public. 

I expect it will be so removed. 

Bring your munchies.  :))

The Tempe City Council meets at 7:30 p.m. in the City Council Chambers, 31 E. 5th St. in Tempe.  Interested folks can send an email to the entire Tempe City Council here.  Note: Communications with the Council are considered public records under Arizona law, and subject to public disclosure.  In other words, keep it civil and on point (of course, since some of the members of the Council are friends of mine, I'd recommend that anyway :) ).

Later...