Pubdate: Tue, 18 Mar 2014
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2014 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Eric Gorski
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?420 (Cannabis - Popular)

SHOPS BALANCE PRIVACY, PROMOTIONS, SECURITY

Josh Boucher guards his privacy, especially when he goes shopping at 
a place selling NYC Diesel and East Coast Alien.

The 34-year-old is fine with showing his driver's license before 
entering the Bud Med recreational pot store in Edgewater - as he did 
one afternoon recently - but is relieved no record of it will be kept.

If a sales clerk tried to coax his cellphone number from him in 
exchange for joining a rewards program that would net him free joints 
or a T-shirt, he said he would respectfully decline.

"We have so many violations of privacy in our lives already," he 
said. "We don't have a Fourth Amendment anymore. So anytime you have 
a chance to exercise that right, it's a good feeling."

Colorado's constitutional amendment that legalized recreational weed 
does not require stores to keep records on customers, as medical 
marijuana dispensaries must. But retail stores aren't prohibited from 
recording personal information, either.

Store owners say they're taking a cautious approach, prioritizing 
customer privacy while weighing security concerns and a desire to 
know who their customers are and which strains of marijuana they like.

"You have to find a healthy balance," said Brooke Gehring, co-owner 
of Bud Med and a chain of recreational and medical marijuana outlets. 
"How do we capture information that is pertinent to the success of 
our new retail business, versus the privacy of adults who now have 
this right and are able to shop at our stores?"

At Gehring's stores, the answer for now is to go no further than 
inviting customers to punch their cellphone numbers or e-mails into 
tablet computers at the counter to receive promotional offers, she said.

For all the efforts by Amendment 64 proponents to portray marijuana 
as deserving the same treatment as alcohol, few people look over 
their shoulder when walking into a liquor store.

The text of the amendment makes personal privacy paramount. State 
officials may not require consumers to provide a store with any 
personal information other than a government-issued ID to confirm their age.

Stores are not required to acquire and record personal information 
about consumers "other than information typically acquired in a 
financial transaction conducted at a retail liquor store."

"It's heading in a way of more traditional commerce, but there is 
real hesitancy on the part of consumers and businesses to get too 
involved in the collection of consumer data," said Denver lawyer 
Brian Vicente, a co-author of Amendment 64. "It's really the dawn of 
a new industry, figuring out how far you can push without consumers 
being wary."

Recreational marijuana customers are captured on camera. Images 
caught on the mandatory video cameras in stores must be preserved for 
40 days and can be inspected by state enforcement agents.

Mark Slaugh, CEO of Colorado Springs-based iCom-ply, which trains 
marijuana companies on rules and regulations, said he recommends 
against businesses making sales contingent on the collection of 
consumer information. Doing so would go against the spirit of the 
amendment and could expose a business to a civil liability, he said.

"We say you are welcome to keep an eye out for suspicious behavior, 
like shoulder tapping outside the business, or how to spot a fake ID, 
or writing down a license plate if you see something suspicious," he said.

Tim Cullen, co-owner of Evergreen Apothecary and Colorado Harvest 
Co., said some recreational shoppers after showing their ID give a 
name like "John Smith" at check-in so not even their first names are 
spoken by staff. Customers are invited to provide cellphone numbers 
to receive monthly texts with coupons and news, he said.

The businesses also collect phone numbers from customers who use 
credit cards "because people occasionally dispute credit card 
charges, and we need to get ahold of them," he said.

At Medicine Man in northeast Denver, co-owner Andy Williams initially 
planned to take video snapshots of IDs from recreational customers 
and store them for 40 days. He said he was considering it as "a way 
to encourage people to behave" and to give Medicine Man evidence if 
it were accused of failing to properly check identification.

Williams said he believed destroying the records after 40 days would 
prevent them from being subject to subpoena.

Williams never followed through on the idea. He said the store's 
armed private guards-many of them former Special Forces personnel - 
make him confident about security.

Some retail pot buyers- and they are probably in the minority - 
simply don't care what the government or businesses know. Among them 
is 21-year-old Rodolfo Garcia, who explained his position while 
lounging on a couch at Bud Med waiting to make his purchase.

"If cannabis is legal, then why do you have to stress on what anybody 
thinks?" Garcia said. "Come on, bro. There is no reason to be 
stressing out over a little bit of weed."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom