If you’re from Tucson or have been here a while, and you have spent any significant time in Phoenix, you know that Tucson sucks way less than our bigger neighbor to the north. The reasons are numerous, and I won’t go into them here.

But it seems medical marijuana has offered the Valley a chance to suck a little less—to level the smoking field, so to speak. The Phoenix area has a budding MMJ cohesion and exuberance to be proud of, and I find myself in a rare position to say Tucson is starting to suck a little more than Phoenix, at least when it comes to MMJ.

The Valley has more organized clubs (we have none), more cannabis universities (we have none) and more cannabis superstores (how many do you think we have?). Granted, we’ve had Sea of Green on Fourth Avenue for years, but they aren’t exactly waving the MMJ flag. Their website (www.sea-of-green.com) is all about “indoor gardening.” The focus is food. Plus, there are Sea of Green stores in the Phoenix area, too.

The state didn’t sue anyone in Southern Arizona over medical marijuana, and no one from Southern Arizona has sued the state, so they are having all the legal fun up in The Great Strip Mall.

They have had TWO kinds of raids (federal and local), while down here in sleepy little Tucson, we have had none of any kind. It might be nice to have something worth raiding.

The Valley’s MMJ business community recently coalesced into the 203 Solidarity Council, which intends to foster the growth of MMJ businesses. The group of potential dispensary owners, clinics and other advocates (all from the Valley) recently gathered, appropriately, at a Comfort Inn to start forming committees.

Tucson’s MMJ business community is a little less, well, communified. We don’t really seem to have as many committees as Phoenix. We have the SW Arizona Patient Alliance, a nonprofit on Oracle Road that aims to help Southern Arizona MMJ patients any way it can. But the group’s website (www.myswapa.com) is pretty static. The email link for the president doesn’t work (returned undeliverable), and the event calendar lists twice as many board meetings as patient meetings.

The date on the home page reads July 23, 2011. Is that the day the website went live? The last time it was updated? Dunno. The home page includes a graphic—touting SWAPA Cannabis 101 classes that are coming soon. Soon, or sooner or later? To SWAPA’s credit, the group is pretty active on Facebook (www.facebook.com/MySWAPA).

CSA Advocates, which has a clinic at 131 E. Speedway Blvd., bills itself as Arizona’s premier MMJ certification and education center. Hmph. They aren’t calling themselves Southern Arizona’s premier MMJ certification and education center.

A call to the toll-free number on the website leads to a voicemail for CSA’s Phoenix clinic. One compassion-club link on the Tucson CSA website (csatucson.com) is for a Phoenix club, Patient 2 Patient (one of the groups that have opted out of opening a Tucson compassion club). The other link (www.arizonacompassionclub.com) leads to Go Daddy.

All of the Phoenix MMJ businesses in the 203 Solidarity Council would be glad to take your business. You don’t need to live in the Valley to be a member of one of the cannabis clubs there. You can shop at the Walmart of cannabis.

But wouldn’t it be nice to have a club or two here? Maybe a cannabis university, or at least a community college? I was thinking about going back to school, but the commute to Phoenix is a bit much.

So … until we get a few superstores and compassion clubs in Southern Arizona, until we have something worth a federal raid or a least a little chest-puffing from local police, I will have to say, maybe for the first time ever in my decades of memory here, that Tucson sucks more than Phoenix.

I think I just threw up a little.

This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2011.

More fun than FarmVille, more interesting than that Facebook friend you don't really remember from high school.

10 replies on “Phoenix Doesn’t Suck”

  2. Hey JM, if you look a bit closer, you will find a few of the Phx based ‘clubs’, do in fact have a Tucson ‘branch’, where the options offered in Phx are available to Tucsonans as well. I am a member of a few of them, one being the AZ Cannibis Society http://www.arizonacannabissociety.com/.
    Once you ‘join’ and prove you are ‘legal’ all resources are available. I have never used them myself, due to the expensive ‘donations’, however the legal options for obtaining MMJ in AZ, are few. My recent purchase of seeds (1/10 the price of AZ) from amsterdammarijuanaseeds.com, was seized and destroyed by USDA, at the Chicago customs station. Seems it is ‘illegal’ to transport “unknown seed material” via USPS. So we are stuck buying, er, I mean ‘donating’ here. There are other orgs too, some with actual Tucson web presence, one just has to look around. You are right however, that the ‘liberal bastion’ that Tucson is supposed to be, we are indeed sadly behind the curve, when we should be leading the charge! OBTW, Phoenix still SUX! :-/

  4. I am a caregiver here in Tucson. Your article is somewhat of a backhanded compliment to me and others who work in the medical marijuana field here. We service many patients daily without drawing attention to ourselves or those we provide medicine for. Unlike our counterparts up north, we are concerned with our patients needs and the safety of the caregivers helping them. Anonymity is the best way to do our jobs and not get robbed or raided. Those organizations got raided because they where greedy and not following the law. The patients I help have been through hell: cancer, AIDS, chemo and I don’t need to be on the evening news to do my job well.

  5. Agree with Cory. My experience (years ago, statewide ballot initiative campaign) is that there were two distinct styles, the “PHX way” and the “TUS way”. PHX’ians tended to be more flash and show, and to donate money. TUS’ans tended to roll up their sleeves, tuck in, and do the work. In that instance, it worked well (money without work, or vice versa, doesn’t get a campaign very far). So it appears similar holds true in the MMJ world: there is PLENTY of MMJ-related flashbang in PHX (it’s almost embarrassing, TBH), and TUS is quietly truckin’ on and getting the job done. Can’t say it’s a bad thing that the chains and other money-grubbing ops are more attracted to the giant buglight to the north.

  6. So poeple in Tucson won’t be rated as “non suckers” by the author of this until they get arrested by the federal government?
    Is this really what any business should feel obligated to strive for?
    Stores like Sea of Green or Tucson Hydroponics & Organics would be shut down and their owners would be arrested if they openly catered to MMJ- is this what we want?

  7. I hear what your saying Proud TucSsonan. Sounds like those that are interested in MMJ in Tucson are attempting to be a little more discrete than our neighbors to the North. I agree that is a good thing. We don’t need to push and advertise this new industry. Dispensaries that advertise seem to be causing a lot of animosity in the states and communities they spring up in. We don’t need to and shouldn’t flaunt MJ in other peoples faces in my opinion.

  8. We at SWAPA are doing just fine, although yes we do need help with our admittedly stale website ( are you offering to help?). We are volunteers who are working toward patient equality through education and advocacy. There are some truly compassionate advocates in Phoenix, but many are totally clueless and following the likes of Alan Sobel, who is a huge black eye to the cannabis movement. There are true advocates who want to help patients, and those that want to jump on the money wagon, patients be damned. I think Tucson has more of the former, while Phoenix has more of the latter. This is not a race with those who get in the fastest the winners, as Alan Sobel has said more than once. It is a journey to provide safe access to patients in a compassionate environment, while continuing to educate the public. While Phoenix is all flash and bang, many of us here in Tucson are doing what they should be doing, putting patients first. If you would like to talk to me about SWAPA and what we are doing, I would be happy to sit down with you. Please feel free to contact me at kdhaslett@myswapa.com or call 505-8252.

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