Pubdate: Sat, 27 Mar 2010
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2010 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Vincent Carroll

MEDICAL MARIJUANA SLUGFEST

Brian Vicente of Sensible Colorado - that would be the pro-cannabis 
lobby - isn't letting his pleasure with a House committee vote this 
week dull his sense of realism.

Yes, the medical-marijuana industry is generally happy with 
regulations approved by the Judiciary Committee in a party-line vote, 
but Vicente knows the legislative terrain will only get steeper.

"I feel like we're in a 12-round fight and the first round may turn 
out to be our best," he told me.

For spectators to the slugfest over medical marijuana, it probably 
feels like the 10th or 11th round, given how long the conflict has 
raged. But those rounds were fought mostly in other arenas - before 
the Denver City Council, for example. This legislative dustup is the 
main event, and will determine whether dispensaries survive or are 
driven to extinction.

If you're like me and hope dispensaries in some form survive in the 
interest of genuine patients who were poorly served by the previous 
caregiver model - and believe me, some were - the prospect of the 
industry taking a few lumps is not so terrible. Why? Because the 
amended bill overreaches, and because Colorado has a chance to get 
its regulatory model right.

Among other things, the Judiciary Committee loosened rules on whether 
dispensary owners could have criminal drug records. But why? Is it 
really too much to expect that owners of businesses whose product on 
the black market props up a brutal network of thugs and assassins 
come to the table with clean hands? If they merely made a mistake 
earlier in their lives, fine. We all understand. But find another career.

Sen. Chris Romer, a Denver Democrat and a sponsor of House Bill 1284, 
says a clean record is "non-negotiable" with him. He'll turn on the 
bill if it's not included. He's also determined to remove an 
amendment allowing the consumption of edible products on a 
dispensary's premises (its rationale being that residents of 
federally subsidized housing can't take medical marijuana to their 
homes). "We're all sympathetic to the folks in VA housing," Romer 
says, "but we're not doing Amsterdam hash bars. We're doing wellness clinics."

Romer remains committed to regulatory standards that squeeze out what 
he calls "the knucklehead retail model" run by people with no 
expertise and not enough capital, and recounts a recent evening spent 
with Denver vice cops who responded to a crime at a low-rent 
dispensary. "Every employee was high," he told me, and "a 21-year-old 
guy was running the place."

He foresees dispensaries as sophisticated "wellness" centers 
regulated as thoroughly as casinos, where "every transaction is 
videotaped." No riffraff owners or employees. The life cycle of every 
plant tracked and documented. And, for that matter, a local option: 
If cities and counties want to ban dispensaries altogether, so be it, 
Romer says. Those are fighting words, though, since the House 
committee removed that provision, too.

Even Romer's Senate co-sponsor, Republican Nancy Spence of 
Centennial, isn't prepared to go so far. She's fine with granting 
wide latitude to communities in imposing zoning restrictions, but 
worries that Colorado could end up with just a few towns - Denver and 
Boulder in the metro area, for example - opening their doors to 
dispensaries. Where would that leave patients with serious ailments 
in remote locales who can't find a caregiver to supply medical marijuana?

It's a good argument, but the opposing one is better: that the 
original medical-marijuana law approved by voters, Amendment 20, 
never contemplated a single retail dispensary. If the legislature is 
going to expand the scope of the law by allowing dispensaries, it 
should also give local voters the ability to opt out of such a 
dramatic departure - particularly given the passionate disputes over 
whether dispensaries promote crime and recreational drug use.

Even with a local option, after all, many dispensaries will no doubt 
survive. If they're well run, meticulously regulated and prove over 
time that they're good neighbors that don't cater to potheads, as the 
current free-for-all system does, then other communities will 
gradually let them in, too.

And if that's the case, the medical-marijuana industry will someday 
be able to declare uncontested victory, no matter how badly a few of 
the next rounds go. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake