Where should new pot shops go?

The Kalispell Regional Medical Center complex, or areas surrounding it, may be a reasonable place to set up medical marijuana shops, according to the Kalispell Planning Board.

Residential neighborhoods, not so much.

But whatever happens with dispensaries, shops and grow operations in the city, the board generally agreed at a work session Tuesday night that some restrictions need to be in place.

It was the first of a series of public hearings and meetings of the Planning Board and City Council as the city crafts its first-ever zoning ordinance dictating where and when — or whether — to allow growing and dispensing of medical marijuana in Kalispell.

Last week the council imposed a 90-day moratorium on new medical marijuana businesses in the city, sending the issue to the Planning Board with a directive to begin crafting some guidelines.

“We’re dealing with how to dispense and how to grow in Montana,” Planning Director Tom Jentz cautioned board members — not with whether they agree with the law.

Montana voters approved the medical use of marijuana in 2004. The section of Administrative Rules of Montana took effect in October 2009, laying out broad procedures to enable the law. No legal cases have worked their way through Montana courts yet to set precedent, Jentz said.

Even so, some board members were wary about how the Montana Medical Marijuana Act is playing out.

A statewide tour sponsored by the Montana Caregivers Network brought doctors to a recent clinic  in Kalispell. Attendees consulted with the doctors who then issued the state-required letter stating the medical benefits of marijuana exceed the risks involved.

Armed with the letter and the proper forms, patients then can get a state-issued medical marijuana card, renewable at $25 and an updated letter annually. Each patient can have one “caregiver” who then can grow up to six plants and keep one ounce on hand for that patient’s use.

“The clinic was a cattle call … They get $150 a pop” and caregivers with the network stand to make serious money from such clinics, board member Rick Hull said. Another clinic is scheduled at the Outlaw Inn today.

“I think … it was meant to be your personal physician who would write the letter,” Hull continued, “not some doctor from out of town.”

Jentz outlined what other Montana cities have done — from Billings abandoning its intent to pass a medical marijuana law when it learned 30 businesses already were operating to Helena’s banning it altogether because of a long-standing policy to comply with federal law. The federal government recognizes no legal uses of marijuana.

Jentz also suggested approaches for Kalispell:

Define medical marijuana establishments as general retail and allow them in all business zones;

Categorize them with adult book stores and limit them to industrial zones no closer than 1,000 feet to a school, church, park or residential zone;

Make them a conditional use in all or some business or industrial zones, much like casinos;

Prohibit them on thoroughfares such as Main Street, U.S. 2 and U.S. 93;

Prohibit them as a home occupation;

Admit them as a home occupation in all residential zones and limit the number of patients as with other home occupations;

Follow Helena’s lead and prohibit medical marijuana altogether.

What grew out of the board’s discussion was a hybrid of these ideas. Classify them with pharmacies, they suggested, or put them in the same category as physicians, chiropractors and other professional offices.

Board member Chad Graham’s suggestion to allow them in H-1, hospital zoning caught on with several of his colleagues. C.M. “Butch” Clark, however, doesn’t want to limit them to hospital zoning because of the stigma that could become attached.

Board chairman Brian Schutt liked the idea of keeping them off the main thoroughfares in an effort to avoid the shock factor when visitors come to town.

But wherever they go, board member Richard Griffin gave a caution. He researched cases in other states and discovered crime rates generally rise in areas where dispensaries and grow operations are allowed.

Whether the operation is clearly marked or well-concealed, Jentz agreed that people “in the industry” know where they are located and the temptation to break in leads to crimes.

That fueled Graham’s uneasiness about allowing them in residential areas.

Although Kalispell does not require a business license to do business in the city, city planner P.J. Sorensen located three medical marijuana businesses that have set up shop openly — The Golden Leaf in the former Kay’s Bridal Boutique on Conrad Drive, The Healing Center of Kalispell on South Main, and a third on in the KM Building on Second Street East. They’re grandfathered in as businesses established before the moratorium took effect.

Next up is a March 8 joint work session of the city council and Planning Board to discuss the zoning proposal.

March 9 tentatively is scheduled for a public hearing before the Planning Board, the first of what could be two or more hearings before it goes back to the City Council for a final decision.