Pubdate: Fri, 29 Mar 2013
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2013 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: John Ingold
Page: 1A

SCATHING AUDIT CASTS DOUBT ON AGENCY FITNESS

The Report on the State's Inability to Monitor Medicinal Pot Prompts 
Concern Over Recreational Oversight.

Colorado's under-construction plan for regulating recreational 
marijuana nearly came unglued Thursday, when lawmakers questioned 
whether the agency that would enforce the rules is up to the task.

The plan called for the state's Medical Marijuana Enforcement 
Division - which regulates medical-marijuana businesses-to transition 
to the Marijuana Enforcement Division and be in charge of all pot 
enterprises in the state. But a scathing audit released thisweek cast 
doubt on the division's fitness for handling the massive job. And it 
threw into chaos what was scheduled to be the final meeting of a 
legislative committee drafting a bill on recreational marijuana regulations.

"It's tough for me to vote to give them one ounce more of regulatory 
responsibility," Rep. Brian DelGrosso, R-Loveland, said at the 
meeting Thursday.

"If they couldn't handle the little piece they have now," he said 
later, "there's no way we can trust them to handle more."

DelGrosso's comments at the start of the meeting - which were soon 
echoed by others on the committee-sent the Jenga stack of proposed 
rules teetering.

For the past four months, everybody - from lawmakers to state 
officials to members of a special task force - who has suggested 
ideas for recreational pot regulations has assumed they would look 
somewhat like medical-marijuana regulations, with a Medical Marijuana 
Enforcement Division-type agency riding herd.

The audit, released during a two-day meeting Tuesday and Wednesday, 
found the division rife with wasteful spending, shoddy enforcement 
and unfulfilled expectations. Systems that were supposed to track 
marijuana plants from seed to sale were incomplete. Measures that 
were supposed to prevent criminals from getting involved in the 
industry had failed.

After DelGrosso's comments Thursday, committee chair Rep. Dan Pabon, 
D-Denver, abruptly called a recess, and committee members moved to an 
adjacent room to vent their frustrations.

"They need to tell us how they will do things differently," Sen. 
Cheri Jahn, D-Wheat Ridge, said of marijuana regulators.

"If you're in the real world, all these flipping people are gone," 
DelGrosso said.

"Heads should roll," said Sen. Vicki Marble, R-Fort Collins.

Pabon, who said he was reluctant to rehash the audit, hastily 
arranged for the director of the state Department of Revenue, which 
oversees the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division, to address the committee.

"We have control"

Director Barbara Brohl said many of the problems found in the audit 
occurred before she took her position and assured committee members 
that the issues had been fixed. The division has a new leader, she 
said, and is now "pretty fiscally frugal."

"We have control over this division at this point and will continue 
to have control," she said.

That seemed to steady the teetering column, although the committee 
set a meeting for April 4 for Brohl to explain better. The committee 
then postponed several votes on the recreational marijuana regulatory 
structure until it can resolve its questions.

Few options

But, if the committee decides to abandon the plan to give 
medical-marijuana regulators authority over recreational pot, there 
are fewother options, Pabon pointed out. Amendment 64, the measure 
that legalized recreational marijuana, says the Department of Revenue 
will enforce the rules.

Creating a new division for recreational marijuana "doesn't seem 
likely," Pabon said after the meeting. "But I think we need to hear 
from the department on how they're going to move forward and solve 
these issues."

The committee did take several votes on recreational marijuana rules. 
It approved one proposal that only Colorado residents be allowed to 
own pot shops and adopted several others that set up educational 
programs and safety standards for marijuana.

Pabon also announced that the committee, which had planned to finish 
its work by the end of March, will now have until April 8. If it 
finalizes the ideas for a bill by then, the full state legislature 
will have exactly one month to pass the bill before the end of the session.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom