Pubdate: Wed, 22 Aug 2012
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2012 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Vincent Carroll

WARPED IMAGES OF OUR CANNABIS INDUSTRY

Is the medical marijuana industry really shoveling the drug into the
black market with utter disdain for the law, as both the attorney
general and a recent report by the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area (HIDTA) suggest?

Or, as Governing magazine recently reported, has Colorado "produced a
tightly controlled approach" to medical marijuana regulation "that
more states are starting to emulate"?

Both images can't be accurate - and there is reason to believe neither
is.

In announcing the indictment this month of the owner of the Silver
Lizard dispensary for alleged involvement in a multistate
marijuana-distribution ring, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers
declared, "It is becoming clear that, as predicted in 2010 legislative
hearings, Colorado is becoming a significant exporter of marijuana to
the rest of the country."

And he cited the HIDTA report as further evidence for his
thesis.

It's worth noting, however, that the Silver Lizard was never licensed
by the state. Meanwhile, regional drug officials responsible for the
report are so hostile to the very concept of medical marijuana that
they resort repeatedly to the derisive use of quotes. By the 20th
encounter with "medical" marijuana, the reader wants to shout, "I get
it. I get it. You think the product is a fraud." (Actually, research
increasingly is providing evidence that cannabis does have useful
medicinal properties, but that's a subject for another day.)

To be sure, the report cites a number of incidents in which police in
various states arrested someone possessing marijuana and found
evidence of a link to a Colorado dispensary (such as packaging). But
the report also includes incidents in which the only link appears to
be the word of those stopped - who in a typical instance, for example,
tell the patrol officer "they had purchased the products from a
'store' in Colorado."

Do people arrested for drug possession invariably volunteer the truth
about their sources?

Unfortunately, Governing magazine also stretches plausibility in
portraying a virtually airtight system. "As required under the complex
regulatory scheme that state policymakers have crafted," Governing
says, camera feeds covering every inch of the RiverRock marijuana grow
facility "are transmitted to video screens at the offices of the
Colorado Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division a few miles away. No
part of RiverRock's cultivation and distribution escapes the eyes of
state regulators. Each of the hundreds of plants growing in the
dispensary is tagged with a radio frequency identification chip."

Actually, state regulators tell me, the overall marijuana plant
inventory system hasn't been completed. Moreover, while a system of
centrally monitored on-site cameras is both the ideal and the goal,
it's an expensive proposition for which the state has yet to locate
funds.

And in the meantime? "There are bad dispensaries and bad growers who
divert marijuana into the black market," says George Baker Thomson
Jr., the state's senior director of enforcement. "I don't think anyone
in this department would disagree with that. ... But medical marijuana
is not the only industry I regulate where we see diversion. We see
diversion to minors in the tobacco world all the time. We see
diversion to minors in the liquor world. This is not a problem
specific to medical marijuana."

Although he didn't mention it, we see diversion in the pharmaceutical
world, too. Just as no one can stop a marijuana patient from buying 2
ounces at a dispensary and sharing it with friends, no one can prevent
someone on oxycontin from sharing pills, either.

And don't forget, the marijuana industry remains in flux. Thomson and
division director Laura K. Harris told me the state received 2,700
applications for dispensaries, grow facilities and "infused product
manufacturers" by the August 2010 deadline. Eventually, Thomson
predicts, about 1,200 to 1,400 will be left - 500 to 600 dispensaries
and 700 to 800 associated grow centers.

A facility about to fail or have its application rejected is far more
likely to deal in the black market than those on the road to success,
he points out.

Still, if the state is going to maintain credibility as a regulator,
it's got to speed up the application process. Shockingly, so far it
has licensed only 288 facilities. Thomson says the state is ready to
act on many others but is waiting for approvals from local government.

And it's a vicious circle: Because the division relies on annual fees
paid by licensed facilities, its operating budget is on emergency
rations, supporting just 15 full-time employees - nowhere near enough
to inspect sales and grow facilities with the frequency lawmakers
seemingly expected.

"What the legislature thought we were doing is setting up a regulatory
framework to track medical marijuana from the seed to the point of
sale," state Sen. Pat Steadman, D-Denver, told me.

That system is clearly still a work in progress. We can throw up our
hands along with those who always opposed it, or we can give it
another year or two to fulfill its promise.
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MAP posted-by: Matt