Colorado

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Medical Marijuana Activist Ken Gorman's Homicide Remains Unsolved in Denver

For Immediate Release

DENVER/EWORLDWIRE/Feb. 20, 2008 --- A year has just passed since the night in February when well-known medical marijuana activist Ken Gorman was shot and killed in his west Denver home. Family and friends including Charles Alvis continue to await word from the Denver Police Department that progress in identifying his murderer is being made. The case remains unsolved.

According to Alvis, Gorman was something of a paradox in his community. Described as an outspoken advocate for legalizing marijuana, he attracted a great deal of attention from people on both sides of the issue. Gorman's activities made him something of a local celebrity. In fact, only days before he was murdered, local television station CBS4 Denver aired a piece on Gorman and his medical marijuana operations. "Many people who support the legalization of marijuana identify Gorman as a caring and compassionate individual who supported their cause," said Alvis. "At the time of his death, Gorman served as the primary caregiver for several patients whose physicians recommended the use of medical marijuana to alleviate certain debilitating medical conditions. In that role, he grew marijuana plants in his home."

Gorman had reported being robbed several times in the months before he died. "Apparently, he feared more trouble because he purchased a gun to protect himself, which turned out to be insufficient protection to keep him safe," added Alvis. On the night of February 17, 2007, he was found murdered in his home.

At the time, police did not say if the killing was related to drugs or money, although Denver police spokeswoman Virginia Qui Nones reported that the killer or killers did not take any of Gorman's marijuana plants. To date, police officers have not made an arrest, and they have reported that there are no suspects in the case.

In 2000, Colorado voters approved a constitutional amendment that allows patients suffering from certain diseases to treat their illness with marijuana if their physician recommends it. Some Colorado law enforcement officials, however, are skeptical about the use of medical marijuana, including State Attorney General John Suthers who has publicly expressed his concern that people will take advantage of the medical marijuana law to acquire or distribute the drug for reasons other than to treat an illness.

Gorman's story and Colorado state's medical marijuana program have attracted widespread attention including a recent article in March, 2008, Playboy magazine.

Media Contact:
Charles Allen / Itechgroup Media
Friends of Ken Gorman
Phone: 206-755-2503 / Fax 206-299-9989
friends@kengorman.org
http://www.kengorman.org

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Colorado medical marijuana program working


By Steven Wells
The Rocky Mountain News
Thursday, February 21, 2008

Election day November 2000 was monumental for many who suffer debilitating pain, cancer, nausea, seizures and glaucoma, HIV/AIDs, and persistent muscle spasms. Why? The electorate of Colorado voted to allow the medicinal use of cannabis by a vote of 53 to 47 percent. Many patients who have needlessly suffered from these conditions were allowed to exercise their own course of care outside the realm of analgesics, NSAIDs, narcotics and other means the institutional medical field may prescribe.

This was by no means a free pass to just puff away in public, no smoke shops opened and entertained hordes of folks sampling their wares. In fact the state has established specific rules about all aspects of the law. The atmosphere of a black market has not engulfed the state, cannabis is not sold in vending machines and the entire program has the oversight of the state of Colorado Department of Health and Environment.

Currently more than 1,700 patients legally have the right to use and grow marijuana for their own medicinal use. The ages range from 18 to 90 and the average age is 43. For those who are unable to grow their own they may choose to access their medicine from a caregiver. Patients may have no more than two ounces of useable marijuana, they may grow up to six plants of which three or fewer can be flowering. The state of Colorado maintains a confidential database of patients and caregivers.

The state will only verify that a patient is on the registry when approached by law enforcement officials. The application process is streamlined and cards must be renewed annually. A MD or OD must fill out the forms stating the diagnosis for the need and recommend that the use of cannabis is a legitimate medicine for these conditions. These forms are then sent to the Department of Public Health and Environment along with the annual $90 fee.

Typically the patient will receive the card within 15 days. But there are concerns — local law enforcement in several jurisdictions have chosen to ignore the law, when they have arrested patients and caregivers, confiscated medicine and private documents of those who possessed the legal documentation. In this regard, it is unfortunate that the state’s attorney general and the local sheriffs have decided upon their own to neglect and ignore their duty. This has resulted in a number of cases being dismissed, yet the medicine was ruined. This of course may be lead to civil suits to recover costs for the unwarranted and illegal seizure and loss. We have yet to see. Scientific studies have been provided from many reputable labs and schools of study that clearly indicate the medicinal properties of cannabis.

These are available from many sources. Throughout Colorado there are a number of support groups and clinics that have risen to provide the facts so that patients can approach their physicians regarding the use of cannabis for their condition(s). Twelve states now allow the medicinal use of cannabis and during this legislative session it appears Michigan, Arizona, New York and Illinois may join those ranks.

Though none of these states has a reciprocal agreement to allow the use by patients from one state in another, as more states come online with this legitimate medical practice we can hope that will come to fruition. As a patient myself this has proved to be a non-addictive means by which to control chronic pain and the often nasty side effects of narcotics. For further information regarding the use of medical cannabis I would suggest you visit the following Web sites: http://conorml.org http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/hs/medical ... sheet.html http://www.safeaccessnow.org/index.php http://www.mpp.org/ These are but a few of the sites that could educate the public on the responsible use of medical cannabis.

Steven Wells is a resident of Longmont.

© Rocky Mountain News

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Medical marijuana has become a growth industry in Colorado

Denver WestWrold
By Joel Warner
published: February 05, 2009

<table class=posttable align=right><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/lee_michael.jpg alt="Michael Lee tends to his latest crop of medical marijuana."></td></tr></table>Behind a locked, unmarked door in a Colorado Springs strip mall, the state's largest marijuana dispensary is open for business.

The operation's aromatic showroom is packed floor to ceiling with pot and anything and everything related to it. "Welcome to Cannabis Therapeutics. Intended for prescribed medical use only!" announces a large sign on the wall.

Glass cases display Baggie upon Baggie of pot — 35 varieties in all. Those looking for cheap medicine can go for the $250-an-ounce, bargain-basement Holland's Hope or upgrade to $300-an-ounce Thunderstruck or $400-an-ounce Purple Haze. Big spenders can opt for top-shelf meds such as a crop of Chocolate Chunk priced at $500 an ounce. It's all available to buy loose or ready to smoke in pre-rolled blunts. And, for green thumbs, cloned marijuana seedlings sit in a bubbling tray of water, waiting for the right buyer.

Today an older woman is here buying some Silver Skunk to help ease lingering pain from a shattered right femur she suffered in a car accident, as well as recurring migraines and fibromyalgia. "I don't like marijuana, but I have no choice," she says as she pays part of her $136 bill in cash and puts the rest on a debit card.

A mother in a track suit leaves her teenage daughter pouting in the lobby while she shops; a younger fellow in baggy jeans and a hoodie samples some Mexican True Blue.

A staffer is ready to help newbies who've just coughed up their $25 annual membership fee establish what mixture of sativa and indica, the two core strains of medical marijuana, is appropriate for their particular illness. For multiple sclerosis, it's best to go with a cross breed that's at least 65 percent indica, known for its relaxing physical high. Sufferers of debilitating stress, on the other hand, typically opt for sativa, which provides more of a mental high.

To administer the medicine, there is a smorgasbord of colorful glass pipes and bongs available, courtesy of a Manitou Springs glass blower. For those who don't want to smoke their determined dosage, there are vaporizers to help clients inhale it, as well as THC pills, THC oils, THC butter, THC fudge, ice cream, bubble gum, hot chocolate mix, cheese, fountain drinks, roll-on pain relievers and bubble bath. Stashed away in a cabinet are jars filled with marijuana marinating in Don Julio and Cazadores tequila.

"It's not about getting high," says Michael Lee, the owner of Cannabis Therapeutics. "It's about getting medicated." Lee founded the operation three years ago under the auspices of Colorado's Amendment 20. The constitutional amendment — approved by voters in 2000 — allows people with cancer, glaucoma, HIV, AIDS, muscle spasms, severe pain, severe nausea and other medical conditions to use marijuana.

With a recommendation from a licensed Colorado doctor, patients can obtain a state-issued Medical Marijuana Registry identification card to show to police — though it does nothing to change the fact that the federal government still considers marijuana illegal. Patients may cultivate their own medicine or designate a primary caregiver to provide it for them. Lee and his colleagues at Cannabis Therapeutics, for example, are designated caregivers to more than 600 patients around the state.

This arrangement has proved lucrative: Lee, 44, says his dispensary earns about $105,000 a month, $75,000 of which he says goes back out the door for more monthly product. This onetime owner of a Colorado Springs flooring company insists, however, that his current occupation is more than a business.

"I clinically died. I can't lie. I won't lie," he declares, gesturing to a faded news clipping on the wall. It describes a car crash years ago in Santa Barbara, California, in which a young passenger was killed, and notes that "the driver, Michael Lee, 19, suffered head and internal injuries, and his condition is listed as critical."

After being clinically dead for 41 minutes and spending eleven days in a coma, he turned to marijuana for healing. Years later, lingering pain and muscle spasms led Lee, who is also a member of local mega-churches New Life and Radiant, to become one of Colorado's first certified medical marijuana patients, and he soon found himself helping other people who used marijuana for pain and illness. Now there's no more established operation around for getting medicated.

Lee has signed contracts with seven Colorado growers — all legal under Amendment 20, he promises, because they're registered caregivers for some of his patients. Each grower provides him with roughly a pound and a half of dried marijuana per month. Cannabis Therapeutics is also insured, says Lee, who convinced his insurance agency to design a dispensary policy just for him.

He also has a good relationship with the Colorado Springs police, having invited them in for a tour in 2006 after the cops caught wind of the operation.

"It was very educational," says Lieutenant Catherine Buckley of the visit. "It was not something the officers see on a daily basis."

When the Environmental Protection Agency poked around in response to a complaint about alleged chemical dumping, they couldn't find a single health or safety violation. All in all, says Lee, who goes by the nickname "the Herbologist" on websites like www.rollitup.org and www.weedtracker.com, everything here is square with Amendment 20. After all, his lawyer, Warren Edson, co-authored the law.

That leaves Lee in the center of a booming state industry. The number of patients who've received a medical marijuana ID card recently crested 5,000, twice what it was a year ago. And while it's hard to determine the absolute number of active dispensaries, there are at least two dozen, along with clinics dedicated to helping people obtain marijuana ID cards, lawyers and tax attorneys hanging shingles as authorities in pot law, even an ad hoc university churning out potential new dispensary owners and employees.

"In the last year, it is my understanding that the number of dispensaries in Colorado has grown from two to about thirty," says Keith Stroup, founder of the national pot lobbying group NORML. "Without question, there are more medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado than in any state other than California."

But the cottage industry is fraught with problems. Many doctors refuse to recommend marijuana, in part because possessing and smoking pot is still a federal offense, while a bad few could be exploiting the medical marijuana laws for financial gain. As an unregulated and gray-area industry, there are also inconsistent practices, high prices, oversized egos, safety concerns and possible black-market involvement — not to mention disregard, if not outright hostility, from law enforcement and city officials.

A major change could be on the way. On March 18, the Colorado Board of Health — the advisory board for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment — will consider new medical marijuana regulations.

Along with expanding Medical Marijuana Registry application requirements, the proposal would require caregivers to offer additional services to their patients besides providing them with pot. Most significant would be the reinstatement of a five-patient-per-caregiver limit the state health board put in place after Amendment 20's passage, a restriction that deterred the growth of Colorado dispensaries until it was overturned in Denver District Court in 2007.

The new rules "could have an impact on the large-scale operations," says Ron Hyman, registrar of vital statistics for the CDPHE. "I would say it probably will."

The changes could make business more difficult for Lee — but by that point, he may have already moved on. When an anonymous caller threatened to kidnap his young son several months ago, it was one frustration too many. Lee moved his family, got a German shepherd to guard his son and started thinking about selling his dispensary.

"I'm done. I don't care anymore. I've seen a dark side to this," fumes Lee. "I clinically died. I demand life to be fair!" His face turns crimson and his temper bubbles to the surface. Exasperated, he decides to let off some steam. Excusing himself for a minute, he gestures to an employee to fetch him his foot-long Technicolor pipe.

"I'm gonna go medicate."

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For a bunch of supposedly lazy stoners, Colorado's marijuana activists are a committed bunch. At 9 a.m. on a recent Saturday, hundreds of people gathered at Regis University in northwest Denver for the Colorado Marijuana Reform Seminar and Activist Boot Camp.

"I think this speaks volumes about our movement," Brian Vicente, executive director of the drug-policy reform organization Sensible Colorado, told the group.

There were nicely dressed middle-aged folks, older couples in knitted sweaters and younger guys wearing backpacks decorated with Grateful Dead patches. A full day of activities lay ahead: sessions on lobbying strategies and media relations, plus panels featuring Denver City Councilman Chris Nevitt, Colorado State Representative Paul Weissmann and Colorado ACLU Legal Director Mark Silverstein. Lunch would feature sandwiches donated by Cheba Hut, a restaurant chain offering its signature "'Toasted' Subs" in Boulder and Fort Collins.

And just so everybody knows, Vicente reminded the group, "This is a non-smoking workshop. We are here to change the laws, not break the laws."

Vicente and his colleagues have big plans for Colorado, building on years of victories. In 2005, Denver became one of the first cities in the country to have its voters "decriminalize" marijuana by making it legal for people over 21 to possess up to an ounce of it. Two years later, the city's voters agreed that law enforcement should make adult marijuana possession its lowest priority. Part of the plan today is to strategize about ways to pass similar initiatives in other Colorado communities. While an attempt to pass a state law decriminalizing up to an ounce of marijuana failed in 2006, activists here believe it's only a matter of time before such legislation passes.

"This will be the nail in the coffin of the drug war," Vicente continued. "Colorado will be seen as the place that ended the government's ninety-year prohibition of marijuana."

It all started with Amendment 20. The law allows a person suffering from certain illnesses or that individual's caregiver to possess up to two ounces of marijuana or six marijuana plants, but it doesn't specify much about the relationship between patients and caregivers. To help fill in the holes, in 2004 the CDPHE developed a five-patient maximum for caregivers, says Hyman. "We were trying to determine how many patients a caregiver could provide for that would be significant and reasonable," he explains.

But when Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves suspended that limit in 2007 because it lacked public input, caregivers were allowed to take on as many patients — and their marijuana quotients — as they liked, even make a business out of it.

That, it turns out, was part of the plan all along for Amendment 20, the only medical marijuana law in the nation that's a constitutional amendment.

"The plan was to write it into our constitution so it couldn't be tweaked," says Edson, the law's co-author. "There is a reason there are no limits to the number of people you can be a caregiver for. There is a reason a caregiver isn't specifically designated as a doctor or a nurse. It is left open to a broad range of individuals."

For one thing, if doctors were responsible for actually providing patients with marijuana, the federal government might retaliate by revoking their Drug Enforcement Administration-issued licenses, which allow them to prescribe narcotics.

Furthermore, Edson had noticed the inklings of a dispensary industry developing in California, whose open-ended 1996 medical marijuana law led to an industry there that now boasts hundreds of such businesses. He decided that an entrepreneurial take on medical marijuana would encourage product diversity, innovative practices and competitive prices, all to the benefit of patients.

"I like to see some of these places where a patient has some options," he says. "Where it's not just one guy in his basement with one type of medicine."

So while other states included impediments to dispensaries in their medical marijuana laws or eventually had lawmakers implement such restrictions, in Colorado the free-market approach was allowed to flourish.

The results were evident at the activist boot camp. In a side room, staffers in vendor booths handed out brochures and business cards for dispensary operations, not to mention marijuana-friendly medical clinics and drug-law-savvy lawyers.

Denver real-estate broker Michael Griffin says he's recently picked up three clients, all looking to open 1,500- to 3,000-square-foot dispensaries in the area: "People are noticing it as a viable business. Once it's legal, I think it's no different than a liquor store."

Michelle LaMay has also found a niche. Last fall, the longtime Denver activist launched "Cannabis University," a day-long, $250 program that gives students a run-down on marijuana laws and growing practices. It's for patients wanting to produce their own medicine, and a mini-MBA for those wishing to break into the business.

"I'm hoping the vast number of caregivers and dispensaries will have to hire some people. And maybe they will hire our students," she says.

While they go by different names, dispensaries or caregiver cooperatives operate under roughly the same model. Patients who wish to buy pot must designate that operation as their primary caregiver on their medical marijuana license by filling out a state health department application. Since the law doesn't say where the pot has to come from, dispensaries can theoretically pick it up anywhere: indoor grow rooms overseen by a dispensary's owner or employees; out-of-sight backyard gardens tended by patients; middlemen hawking stuff from large, clandestine outfits squirreled away in the mountains or in networks of fluorescent-lit basements.

According to Amendment 20, the marijuana is legal as soon as it gets into a patient or caregiver's hands, so no need to ask too much about its provenance.

Many dispensaries operate quietly, relying on word of mouth, while a few advertise openly. If Edson's predictions are correct, local dispensary owners could eventually be servicing a statewide client base of 50,000 registered patients.

"It's a full-on gold rush," says Paul Saurini, producer of Marijuana Radio, a weekly pot-themed radio podcast recorded in a slick studio in the Santa Fe Arts District and broadcast in many a dispensary. "People are rushing here to make a buck. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but I think it's a fascinating moment for the movement."

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<table class=posttable align=right><tr><td classs=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/carr_scott.jpg alt="Scott Carr (above) is the THC Foundation's regional manager in Colorado"></td></tr></table>To get a Colorado Medical Marijuana ID card, Colorado residents first need a doctor who will recommend them for the confidential state registry. And to get that recommendation, many patients turn to the Hemp and Cannabis Foundation in Wheat Ridge. Of the 5,000 people on the registry, about 2,700 relied on its services.

One of those is Sandra, who's been on the registry since 2005, but who, like all medical marijuana patients, has to go through the state's annual renewal process. That means another visit to the foundation's 1,500-square-foot, third-floor office in a professional building on Wadsworth Boulevard.

Sandra, her pigtails streaked with gray, sits in a solemn, bare-walled waiting room surrounded by people filling out paperwork or watching a marijuana video on TV. It's a scene that's playing out in similar waiting rooms across the country: the nonprofit, known as the THC Foundation, also has clinics in medical marijuana-friendly states like Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Montana, California, Nevada and Michigan.

Eventually, Sandra is called into the office of Eric Eisenbud, a lanky Colorado ophthalmologist. Before Eisenbud has a chance to review Sandra's history — her multiple sclerosis diagnosis in 1995, her MS-related leg spasms that qualify her for medical marijuana, and the recent discovery that she has degenerative disc disease in her spine — Sandra blurts out, "Thank you for being here for us." She's well aware how hard it is to find a doctor who will recommend patients for the registry. Before she found the THC Foundation in 2006, she asked her primary care physician to recommend her for medical marijuana — and says the doctor nearly threw her out.

Eisenbud's heard hard-luck stories like this before. "My feeling is that a large number of doctors in Colorado are open-minded, but they've been misinformed," he says later. Much of the confusion and apprehension in the medical community stems from the fact that after Amendment 20 passed, then-attorney general Ken Salazar warned doctors that they could face federal charges if they participated in the program. It doesn't help that the Colorado Medical Society hasn't taken a stance and that the American Medical Association has said it won't recognize the medical use of marijuana without further studies. (Other prominent medical groups, such as the American College of Physicians and the British Medical Association, have endorsed the idea of medical marijuana.)

Many doctors play it safe by not dabbling in marijuana at all. At Denver Health Medical Center, physicians are allowed to write letters to help patients get registered, says hospital spokeswoman Dee Martinez. But patient Eric Easter counters that notion, saying his doctors refused to recommend him for the state registry: "They said they don't do this even if you were dying of AIDS."

"That's where we come in," says Paul Stanford, the Portland-based founder of the THC Foundation. "When we first moved into Colorado, in 2006, there were only 700 medical marijuana cards statewide." Now, three years later, the Wheat Ridge clinic sees about seventy new patients a week, says Scott Carr, the foundation's regional manager in Colorado. Carr also believes the foundation has helped the medical community warm up to medical marijuana. According to the state, more than 500 doctors have now signed for patients here, and some insurance carriers cover THC Foundation visits. "I've had HMO nurses call and ask what the best vaporizer is for patients to buy," says Carr. The clinic even has a competitor — an operation called CannaMed that opened in Denver offering similar services. CannaMed representatives did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.

But the THC Foundation also has at least one critic: its former doctor on duty, Shawn Elke Glazer. "They're all about making as much money as possible until marijuana gets legalized," says Glazer, a former Libertarian candidate for state representative who now runs the Colorado Green Cross medical clinic in Wheat Ridge.

She believes the THC Foundation signs up as many people as possible so they'll fork over the $200 visit fee, whether they warrant medical marijuana or not. The fact that a marijuana dispensary now operates in the same building as the foundation raises red flags as well, since it could put the clinic in violation of a 2003 Supreme Court ruling saying that doctors can't assist patients in obtaining marijuana.

Stanford calls that nonsense, but Glazer isn't the only one who has questioned the foundation's motives. In 2005, the Oregon justice department began looking into the Portland-based nonprofit for potential IRS violations, such as a $100,000 reimbursement it made to Stanford. "It's an ongoing thing. It has caused a little extra scrutiny, but it hasn't caused any problems whatsoever," Stanford says.

Carr notes that the Wheat Ridge clinic only works with patients who have medical records proving they qualify for the state law and turns away those who don't. He also adamantly denies association with any dispensary, including the one that operates in the same building. The owners of that business, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, concur that there's no connection.

Sandra has no complaints about the THC Foundation, and she'll follow it when it relocates to bigger digs near Speer Boulevard and I-25. Yes, the cost of the visit on top of the $90 annual state registration fee isn't easy on her budget, especially since she spends about $300 a month on marijuana. Still, she's grateful for its existence: "Thank goodness the service is here and it's helping me. This place is safe."

In the past, she didn't feel so safe obtaining her medicine. In 2005, before the THC Foundation opened, she went to a Loveland doctor who charged her more than $400 for the service. Then, to get marijuana, she relied on an operation run out of a former Denver church called the Colorado Compassion Club. The club operated at night and had armed guards at the doors, Sandra says. "There were all these people, and I didn't feel safe at all. It was like being in a bread line."

After that, Sandra was referred to Ken Gorman, a well-known Denver pot activist and one-time write-in candidate for governor.

"I don't have my medical certification up to date," she remembers telling Gorman when she reached him by phone. "Are you sick?" he replied. "That's all I need to know."

"Here was someone I'd never met, and he was so kind to me," says Sandra, who decided to make him her caregiver. She never got a chance to follow through. That weekend, on February 17, 2007, Gorman was shot and killed in his home.

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Gorman's death, which is still unsolved, sent shockwaves through the medical marijuana community. It also created a vacuum that permanently changed the industry in Colorado.

Today there are storefront operations like Cannabis Medical, the Healing Center, North Reasonable Access Denver, Denver Patients Caregivers Cooperative and the Kind Room, and delivery services like Confidential Caregivers Unlimited and the Organic Medicine Club. Among them are settings to suit every taste, from dorm-room-like operations with mismatched thrift-store furniture and mega-sized posters of killer kind bud to dentist-office-like venues complete with cushy couches and bubbling aquariums.

Because state law doesn't explicitly sanction dispensaries, the businesses try to protect themselves by making sure that everyone involved is either a patient or a caregiver. "Most of their employees are patients themselves and are listed caregivers for some of these people," Edson says. "And most of the dispensary owners are listed as caregivers for some of the people. But the equivalent of a pharmacy just doesn't exist under the amendment." That's why dispensary owners typically consult with a cadre of lawyers, squirrel away documentation listing their patients and are reluctant to talk to the press.

"We hate to be this evasive," says Daniel Tsirlin, co-owner of Alternative Medicine of Southeast Denver, a newly opened dispensary. "Why not let people know? On the other hand, you don't want to be the first to do anything. Be the second."

That's a good approach, judging by the comments of Jeff Sweetin, special agent in charge of the Rocky Mountain field division of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

"We are investigating some dispensaries throughout this region," Sweetin says, without giving specifics. "The DEA investigates large, well-organized, well-funded organizations. Some of these dispensaries rise to that level." Sweetin is concerned that elements of the medical marijuana scene are tied up with organized crime, in part because Amendment 20 doesn't include rules about where dispensaries can buy their pot.

Early last year, authorities busted a multimillion-dollar marijuana ring involving dozens of indoor grow operations in the north metro region — and Sweetin believes there's a connection to the medical marijuana scene. "It's the largest, most organized indoor grow operation I have ever seen," he says. "I don't believe that's coincidence. I believe they purposely moved that operation to Colorado."

For the most part, however, he says the dispensaries are the problem of local and state agencies — and so far, no one seems to know exactly what to do about them.

Police officers are frustrated by trying to differentiate between illegal drug users and state-certified patients and caregivers, says Captain William Nagle of Denver's Vice and Drug Control Bureau, especially since the only time state health employees can verify certifications is during weekday business hours — not the most conducive time for drug cops. When mistaken raids have occurred, judges have sometimes demanded that law enforcement return the confiscated marijuana and paraphernalia — though police say that by doing so, they could be breaking federal law themselves.

Dispensary owners have grievances, too. While they operate without problem in Denver, other cities haven't been as welcoming. Former Aurora dispensary owner John Chipman says he was hardly up and running before he was run out of town because a city ordinance there didn't allow businesses to operate in violation of federal law. "They said they don't have pit bulls, they don't have massage parlors and they don't want any dispensaries," he says.

Others have problems with crime. Last November, Fort Collins dispensary owner James Masters told reporters that his operation had been burglarized or vandalized nine times in a month. While Masters couldn't be reached for comment, several sources claim these crimes were part of a rash of medical marijuana robberies — including, according to Carr, an attempted break-in at the THC Foundation.

Patients have their own complaints, grumbling that the current business climate is filled with grandstanding and ego clashes, slapdash practices and exorbitant prices. There's no easy way for them to shop around to find better options, however, since they're required to designate only one caregiver.

Officials, law enforcement, caregivers and patients can agree on one thing: The industry should be regulated. They say they'd like to see consistent health standards and better communication between police, government agencies and medical marijuana operations, not to mention dispensary-specific rules and licenses. But since Amendment 20 is written into the Constitution, there's no easy way to tweak the law without a vote of the people, not to mention courting antagonism from either the state's growing medical marijuana community or the federal government.

"The reason you don't have clear and positive regulatory enforcement is that a lot of entities are afraid to piss off the feds by setting up any kind of regulatory environment," says Matthew Kumin, a San Francisco attorney who consults for numerous California dispensaries. "You have something that should be happening more but isn't because of fear."

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Michael Lee runs his soil-dusted hands under the faucet at Cannabis Therapeutics. He's spent the morning planting new strains of marijuana seedlings in a grow room, preparing for his next big endeavor. He just got a call finalizing his purchase of $20,000 worth of dirt that he'll use to fill a 30-foot-by-97-foot plot of land he's obtained at an undisclosed spot along the Front Range. Eventually, he says, he'll ask United States Department of Agriculture officials to inspect the site, since his plan is to grow certified organic marijuana.

That way, even if he does sell Cannabis Therapeutics, he'll still be involved with producing medicine for it and other dispensaries. He'll also continue to operate Genovations Laboratories, the research-and-development company for marijuana-infused products that he runs out of a secure warehouse space near Cannabis Therapeutics. There, thanks to an expensive extraction machine and a full-scale chemistry lab, he's pulling THC out of plants and inserting it into tinctures, foods, maybe someday into self-replicating yeast. "I can medicate your hot dogs," he says. "I can medicate your hamburgers."

And while Lee may shift his business focus away from his dispensary, he and other owners say the proposed new regulations won't go through without a fight.

"We're probably going to rent buses. We are going to try to get 1,000 patients there," says Edson of the March 18 Colorado Board of Health hearing. "I've been dealing with these [medical marijuana] folks for ten-plus years. I don't think the attorney general's office and the health department appreciates what is about to happen."

The health department's Hyman understands that the meeting will be "energetic." The point, he says, is to include as many people as possible in the process, which is what Judge Naves said the department didn't do when he struck down the five-person-per caregiver rule in 2007.

Lee believes it will take another vote to make changes to Amendment 20, and despite his talk of selling Cannabis Therapeutics, he has many more plans. A few doors down from the dispensary, he's opened a patient activity resource center, where, amid a pool table, a massage chair and a cappuccino machine, patients meet with caregivers and receive alternative treatments for their conditions.

"It can't just be about weed," he says. "You're going to see more places like this once the bar is set, because the state will say places like this can stay open while others have to close."

And he has even bigger dreams for the day marijuana becomes legal for everyone: A gentlemen's club, ready from day one, with prices starting at $500 an ounce. After all, he says with a grin as he reaches for his bowl, "Why shouldn't I be a household name?"

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Medical-marijuana hearing gets delayed as pot-fueled opposition grows

By Joel Warner in Follow That Story
Friday, Mar. 13 2009 @ 7:58AM


In the game of bureaucratic chicken between state officials and medical marijuana advocates, chalk one up for the stoners.

In response to a growing Colorado medical marijuana community, and reports of abuses in the unregulated industry, state health officials proposed new regulations last month that could put a stranglehold on the local medical-pot business. Among other things, the rules would limit each medical marijuana "caregiver" to a max of five patients -- a constraint that would seem to disallow the state's growing number of marijuana dispensaries.

At the time Ron Hyman, state registrar of vital statistics, said he expected the March 18 Colorado Board of Health hearing on the regulations to be "energetic," but even he wasn't prepared for the subsequent backlash by those who believed the state was trying to take away their voter-sanctioned marijuana (not to mention dispensary owners who believed the state was torpedoing their voter-sanctioned livelihood). After more than a hundred people swamped a minor logistical meeting on the matter last week, officials decided to delay the March 18 hearing so they could find a larger meeting room. Now Hyman says they're expecting to hold the hearing in June.

"I think we put a little fear in them," says Brian Vicente, Executive Director of the drug policy reform group Sensible Colorado.

The state's pot movement is growing stronger all the time. Medical marijuana advocates have been emboldened by new attorney general Eric Holder's announcement that the Justice Department will stop raiding marijuana dispensaries, not to mention President Barack Obama's recent decision to fill his drug czar position with Gil Kerlikowske, police chief in Seattle, where the medical marijuana and "decriminalization" laws are similar to Denver's. An unnamed source notes that an entrepreneur is looking to open a medical marijuana dispensary around the Highlands neighborhood, and word has it that dispensaries are starting to open up on the Western Slope. While most Colorado dispensaries so far are small-scale operations, it's likely only be a matter of time before a large-scale enterprise -- think the Walgreens of ganja -- rolls into town.

But even Vicente believes the state's medical marijuana scene could use additional regulating. Instead of the new rules proposed by the state, though, he'd like to see a task force involving health administrators, law enforcement patients, caregivers and advocates come together to consider new dispensary rules such as advertising and location restrictions, sales tax obligations and quality control measures.

Hyman isn't opposed to such a working group -- but that doesn't mean the state will put the kibosh on its proposed regulations. "Once we are able to confirm exactly where we are going to hold the hearing and have an exact date, we will send out another notice," says Hyman. "I'm guessing we need room for at least several hundred. We are trying to find a place that can handle that size crowd and has adequate parking and handicapped access."

Considering those prerequisites, here's a possibility: Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Maybe even Widespread Panic would play. For lots of the marijuana advocates in attendance, it'll be just like old times.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment (CDPHE), at the behest of the DEA, and with the connivance of John Suthers, seeks to overturn the Amendment the people of Colorado enacted to permit those who need it to use marijuana upon a doctor's recommendation. The CDPHE proposes to limit caregivers to five patients (imagine them limiting Walgreens' pharmacies to five patients apiece), to require that medical marijuana providers (i.e caregivers) take patients shopping; provide them with hot meals; take them to unrelated medical appointments; etc. have signatures on on documents notarized, and that patients "must notify the department [when they change their information] within ten days BY SUBMITTING A COMPLETED AND NOTARIZED CHANGE OF ADDRESS OR CAREGIVER FORM AS PROSCRIBED [sic] BY THE DEPARTMENT." The first two changes are a transparent attempt to undo the Amendment by bureaucratic fiat, the third would impose an additional and unnecessary burden on patients, and, amusingly, the last change states that patients will be required to do something prohibited by the Department (illiterate staff, including lawyers working for the CDPHE and for Suthers failed to distinguish the word "proscribed" from "prescribed"). Visit the CDPHE's website (at http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/ ) to read their outrageous proposals, submit public comment on them, and find out when and where they will schedule the public hearing on them.

<small>Posted On: Friday, Mar. 13 2009 @ 11:49AM </small>

[palmspringsbum]

NOREEN: State officials undermining medical marijuana

March 13, 2009 - 8:32 PM
BARRY NOREEN
THE GAZETTE


There they go, stepping on the grass again.

More than eight years after Colorado voters legalized medicinal marijuana, the state's bureaucracy is dragging its feet, making it difficult for patients, doctors and suppliers to do what a constitutional amendment allows.

In June, the Colorado Board of Health will meet to discuss proposed rules that would limit the number of patients an individual supplier can serve to just five. That means the few medicinal pot stores that have opened, including one on Fillmore Street in Colorado Springs, would be out of business.

"They're undermining the referendum," said Dr. Randall Bjork, a Colorado Springs neurologist. "From a medical perspective, it works well."

Bjork said medical marijuana can help patients with frequent seizures, muscle spasms and pain from spinal cord injuries. He said he's recently read of a doctor's research in using medical pot on patients with Parkinson's disease.

Bjork is impressed with Cannabis Therapeutics at 907 E. Fillmore St., operated by Michael Lee.

Lee "is absolutely doing it by the letter of the law. He's doing it right," Bjork said.

Lee, who serves customers from all over Colorado, said if you want to know what kind of people use medicinal marijuana, "look in the mirror. You wouldn't know them passing them in a grocery store."

Lee's store has many non-smokable products for patients who either shouldn't inhale smoke or simply don't want to. But to buy anything there, a patient must show proof of belonging to Colorado's medicinal marijuana registry, which has more than 5,000 names on it.

Medicinal pot can be prescribed for AIDS/HIV, cancer, glaucoma, cachexia, severe pain or nausea, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, or other conditions as long as a doctor thinks marijuana will help. Patients must pay $90 to get on the registry maintained by the state, but they don't get much for their money.

The state won't tell people which doctors will recommend medicinal marijuana, but it acknowledges there are more than 500 in Colorado who are doing it. The state also won't tell patients where they can get medical marijuana.

Ned Calonge, who runs the medical pot program for the Colorado Department of Health an Environment, said "We're trying to walk the line" between state and federal laws and that "we've seen more abuse and illegal activity."

But Brian Vicente, an attorney for Sensible Colorado, said the state's proposal is "tantamount to saying to a Walgreen's that you can only serve five patients a year." He pledged a lawsuit if new regulations weaken the constitutional amendment.

State officials may feel like they are in a bind, but it's our constitution, too. It would be nice if they got around to acknowledging that.

Read my blog updates at gazette.com/blogs/barrysblog/

[palmspringsbum]

Medical pot grower files housing complaint

The Montrose Daily Press
By Katharhynn Heidelberg, Daily Press Senior Writer
Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, April 1, 2009 4:13 AM MDT

MONTROSE — The Montrose County Housing Authority knew months before William Hewitt went public that he was a medical marijuana patient, a housing discrimination complaint alleges.

The complaint, which Hewitt signed Friday, accuses the housing authority, its director and the Colorado Division of Housing, of failing to reasonably accommodate Hewitt’s disability and of terminating his housing because he kept and used medical marijuana.

“All I want is to help people,” Hewitt said Tuesday.

“I hope they restore my housing voucher and not do this to people anymore. Stop doing this to medical patients in states that are legal (for medical marijuana). I want to maybe open some eyes and let them know what they’re doing to disabled people.”

Hewitt went public as a medical marijuana provider in February.

A muscular dystrophy sufferer, Hewitt has a medical marijuana card through the state of Colorado and can act as a “caregiver” for other licensed medical marijuana patients.

People can obtain licenses under limited circumstances with the approval of physicians. Caregivers like Hewitt are not physicians.

The Montrose County Housing Authority, which administers Section 8 housing choice voucher programs for the federal Housing and Urban Development agency, decided to terminate Hewitt’s voucher because drug use, even of medical marijuana, conflicts with federal rules. The federal government does not recognize medical marijuana.

Hewitt’s March 10 appeal was unsuccessful. He cannot pay his rent without the voucher, and stands to lose his home April 5.

He said the medical marijuana patients he helps fear being pushed to the street along with him, if in another way — to illicit dealers.

Hewitt’s complaint through the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity could put the housing authority in a similar Catch-22. The authority was reportedly relying on federal rules when it suspended Hewitt’s voucher and now faces investigation by the FHEO within HUD.

Montrose County Housing Authority Director Tim Heavers was out of the office Tuesday, as was the housing authority’s attorney. The state housing division referred questions to Heavers.

Heavers previously said privacy rules prohibit him from discussing specific cases.

Hewitt’s complaint specifically accuses the respondents of denying him “reasonable accommodation to his physical disability by terminating his housing assistance because he kept and used medical marijuana in his dwelling unit.”

Hewitt said, too, that the housing authority knew full well he had medical marijuana, and as early as one day before yanking the voucher, told him he was going to receive a greater rent subsidy.

The complaint states Hewitt told the housing authority three months ago that he used medical marijuana for his disability, and he was asked for his state-issued ID card.

“Complainant asserts that there appeared to be no problem and that a reasonable accommodation had been granted,” the complaint stated.

Evelyn Meininger, Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity regional director in Denver, said HUD cannot comment on specific cases.

But in general, if a person feels housing discrimination took place for certain reasons — in Hewitt’s case, his assertion it was his disability — he or she can file a complaint. If the complaint falls within the type of discrimination over which the FHEO has authority, that body will accept the complaint, then forward it to the enforcement branch for investigation.

“They essentially look at the facts, prepare and make a recommendation of reasonable cause (as to whether discrimination occurred),” Meininger said.

If the investigation leads to discrimination charges, cases go before federal court or an administrative law judge. Meininger said the goal was to resolve complaints as quickly as possible, and at the lowest level possible.

Hewitt still has to address his immediate housing predicament.

“I don’t know where to go. I don’t have a place to go. I’m just going to try to stay here,” he said.

“You’re punished for it, even if you have a license. It’s very confusing. I shouldn’t be punished for having a (medical marijuana) license. They (housing authority) were aware of this before.”

[palmspringsbum]

Eviction leaves resident without hope

The Durango Herald
Article Last Updated; Friday, April 03, 2009

I am a resident of Durango with multiple sclerosis and I am also legally blind. I was recently evicted from my HUD supplemented, low income, disability apartment at Tamarin Square for the reason of associating with another tenant who legally smokes medical marijuana. This person was also evicted. I was given a 30-day notice to evict but was told it probably would be worked out and not to worry.

Two days ago I was met at my door by the manager and six sheriff's deputies there to physically remove me. All my belongings were dropped outside on the curb and I was told I was not allowed on the property anymore. This was nine days before I was scheduled to receive my next disability check. I have no idea of where I am to go. I am in a motel today that was paid for by my friends. Where the justice is in this? While I was watching the presidential debates and speeches during the election I was filled with hope that Obama spoke of. Now I really don't have any.

Michael Barbour, Durango

[palmspringsbum]

It’s medicinal – but it’s not strictly legal

The National / Gretchen Peters, Foreign Correspondent
Last Updated: April 07. 2009 8:30AM UAE / April 7. 2009 4:30AM GMT


COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO // Polly Watson, 34, used to pop 14 prescription pills a day, including powerful painkillers such as morphine, methadone and Vicodin, to treat her fibromyalgia, a chronic muscle and tissue disorder that locks its victims in sleeplessness and widespread agony.

She could not work, rarely left the house and spent much of her time laid up in bed.

“I was strung out on pills,” Mrs Watson said, “and I felt like such a burden to my family.”

Almost three months ago, her doctor suggested she try medicinal marijuana. Now Mrs Watson comes several times a week to the Patient Activity and Resource Center, where she and other patients recuperating from chronic illness inhale marijuana vapour pumped through a volcano-shaped electric vaporiser, or munch on snacks baked with cannabis.

At a nearby legal dispensary for medicinal marijuana products, they can also purchase pills, ointments, tinctures and powders to treat a wide array of ailments ranging from eczema to depression to migraine headaches.
Mrs Watson said two months of marijuana use have got her back on her feet and running her household again. “It gave me my life back,” she said, breaking down into tears.

Although federal US law bans marijuana use, more than a dozen states including Colorado and California now permit its legal distribution for the treatment of certain chronic ailments.

Medicinal marijuana bills are making their way through state legislatures in four other states, and some US residents hope the president, Barack Obama, will go further by legalising the sale and taxation of medicinal marijuana nationwide.

Advocates argue cannabis is far less costly as a pain remedy than pharmaceutical painkillers, and safer than many pills, which can be addictive.

They say millions of Americans self-medicate anyway by purchasing marijuana on the street, thus contributing to the yawning global trade in illegal drugs and costing the federal government billions in lost tax dollars.

Cloud Fowler, who supervises the patient resource centre in Colorado Springs, argues that the legal vapour product her centre serves patients is 97 per cent pure tetrahydrocannabinol carboxylic, or THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. Illegal users, on the other hand, tend to smoke marijuana cigarettes, inhaling smoke that is 65 per cent carcinogenic and only one-quarter THC.

Moreover, she says, many of her patients have been able to reduce the amount of overall medicine they were taking once they started using medicinal marijuana.

“That is the way it should be,” she said.

But not everyone is keen on the idea of legalisation. The administration of George W Bush maintained that federal anti-drug regulations trumped state laws, and in 2005 the Supreme Court upheld that decision. Federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration raided and closed a number of state-licensed marijuana dispensaries, most of them in California.

Critics say marijuana is a gateway to stronger drugs, citing a rash of studies in the 1980s that indicated marijuana users were as much as 60 times more likely to try cocaine. Other studies since have questioned that finding, and many medical marijuana proponents cite people such as Polly Watson as an indication that cannabis can help patients with chronic ailments end their dependency on addictive pain pills.

In Colorado, medicinal marijuana users must obtain a licence from the state by providing paperwork from their physician – similar to a prescription for pharmaceutical medicine – that asserts they suffer from one of the maladies qualifying them for marijuana treatment.

Yet some state officials find the numbers worrisome. Colorado’s medicinal marijuana registry doubled to nearly 5,000 patients last year, and has grown 800 per cent since 2004. Licensed caregivers now advertise on the internet and in classified newspaper listings, with some juggling as many as 200 patients.

“I’m not sure how they can do that, even with the best of intentions,” Ron Hyman, the state’s registrar of vital statistics, was cited as saying in January in the now defunct Rocky Mountain News.

This month, the US attorney general, Eric Holder, handed medicinal marijuana advocates a victory when he announced there would be no more federal raids on dispensaries located in states that have voted to permit medicinal marijuana use.

“The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law,” he said.

But Washington shows no signs of easing up on marijuana sales. Just a week after Mr Holder’s remarks, Drug Enforcement Administration agents in San Francisco raided Emmalyn’s California Cannabis Clinic, confiscating marijuana plants, lights and other cultivation equipment, claiming the centre was operating on a temporary permit in violation of state and federal law.

Andreas Rivera, who helps run the Cannabis Theraputics dispensary in Colorado Springs, said he supports strict regulation of the industry. “We maintain a close relationship with law enforcement here,” he said in the dispensary, where hydroponic marijuana plants grow under ultraviolet bulbs inside a shop closed to the general public.

“That is the only way we have been able to keep this place running for four years now.”

Mrs Watson, the fibromyalgia patient, said she was also supportive of strict regulation.

“I am opposed to people smoking drugs,” she said. “I have three kids.”

gpeters@thenational.ae

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Published on Aspen Daily News Online | April 8, 2009

Police return medical marijuana to homeless man

Writer: Andrew Travers
Byline: Aspen Daily News Staff Writer


A four-day mini-saga concluded Tuesday afternoon, as the Aspen Police Department handed over a small amount of marijuana to a local homeless state-certified medical marijuana user. They had confiscated the drug from his backpack, which he misplaced over the weekend.

On Saturday, Matthew Franzen, 48, accidentally left a backpack containing his personal effects at the Thrift Shop in Aspen. Workers at the used clothing store found the lost bag and gave it to the police.

Per their policy on lost property, the APD went through the backpack to catalog its contents. In the process, they found a small bag of marijuana. They placed the drugs in their evidence locker, and returned everything else to Franzen on Monday.

“They took away my pot,” Franzen said Monday, sitting outside of the district courtroom at the Pitkin County Courthouse. He had come to the courthouse to speak with members of the district attorney’s office about returning his drugs, but Aspen’s two prosecutors were both in court proceedings from the early morning through the evening.

“That is prescribed medicine for me, and they’re keeping it,” Franzen said. “They’re just harassing me because I’m suing them.”

Franzen stated he believed authorities were holding onto his marijuana because he currently has a civil lawsuit pending against a slew of local law enforcement officials — including the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office and district attorney’s office — for $150,000 in damages. The suit stems from his arrest and imprisonment on burglary charges in November 2007.

He was jailed for four months before the case against him was dropped.

On Tuesday morning, the APD confirmed that Franzen was a legally registered medical marijuana user. Police Chief Richard Pryor conferred with the district attorney’s office on the Colorado medical marijuana laws before agreeing to give the drugs back to Franzen.

“The police have given it back to him and as far as I know he’s entitled to it,” said Chief Deputy District Attorney Arnold Mordkin.

APD Sgt. Rob Fabrocini handed the marijuana over to Franzen yesterday. He said the department’s officers had previously been unfamiliar with the particulars of state medical marijuana laws.

“We just want to make sure we do everything by the book,” Sgt. Fabrocini said.

Statewide, patients registered with the Department of Health and Environment can legally smoke marijuana, so long as their use does not endanger others and they do not use it in public. They can legally hold up to 2 ounces of a usable form of the drug, and up to six marijuana plants. Doctors cannot legally write prescriptions for marijuana in Colorado, but can recommend it and have patients registered as medicinal users.

The amendment to the state Constitution legalizing medical marijuana was voted in in November 2000. Twelve other states have some form of legal medical marijuana use, but under federal law the drug remains illegal.

Franzen said the local police confiscated marijuana from him once before and returned it to him after they found him on the state’s medical user registry.

“They knew I had a certificate months ago,” a frustrated Franzen said.

Lauren Maytin, an Aspen-based criminal defense attorney who is on the Colorado board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), offered to help educate the APD on current medical marijuana law yesterday.

“It’s been on the books for more than eight years,” she said. “We respect the fact that they wanted to check it out, but [Franzen] was without his medicine for some time and that is just wrong.”

NORML is coincidentally holding a fundraiser in Aspen this weekend for their Hunter S. Thompson Scholarship, which pays for an attorney to attend their annual Aspen Legal Seminar in June.

Franzen has been invited as a guest at this weekend’s NORML party, Maytin said.

The APD did not arrest or summons Franzen, who says he uses the drug to treat glaucoma.

“I’m still a little angry,” Franzen said yesterday after getting his medical marijuana back. “But at least I can see again.”

andrew@aspendailynews.com

[palmspringsbum]

Pre-4/20 marijuana forum set for CU next weekend

<span class=postbigbold>Pro-pot student group examines issues prior to campus celebration</span>

The Daily Camera | By Lance Vaillancourt
Originally published 09:40 p.m., April 9, 2009
Updated 12:22 p.m., April 10, 2009



<table class=posttable align=left width=160><tr><td class=postcell>IF YOU GO

What: National Forum on Marijuana

When: April 17-19

Where: University of Colorado campus, Boulder

Cost: Free

www.normlcu.com
</td></tr></table>BOULDER, Colo. — A pro-pot student group at the University of Colorado has finalized preparations for a three-day symposium on all things marijuana-related that will precede the annual 4/20 campus smoke-out session on April 20.

Senior Alex Douglas, director of the CU Boulder chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, NORML@CU, announced Thursday afternoon that the schedule for next weekend's event is set.

"We're really excited to be bringing in speakers from all over the country for this," Douglas said. "Anyone that goes will be informed, enlightened, and empowered by this unbiased forum where every side of the issue is presented."

The National Forum on Marijuana will open informally on April 17 with the National Marijuana Teach-In, in which students and faculty will have the opportunity to have an open forum on marijuana issues during regularly scheduled classes. The rest of the weekend will include guest speakers ranging from marijuana-movement icons like founding editor of High Times magazine Steve Bloom to anti-drug activists like Cmdr. Tom Sloan of the Boulder Country Drug Task Force.

"For us it makes it more of a whole-sided issue when people who disagree with us come in to share their opinions," said senior Mike West, the campus group's medical marijuana director. "We're actually hoping to discover a common ground where we can eliminate any of the harms that could come from (decriminalization) while gaining all of the benefits."

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wQeEG7803JA&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wQeEG7803JA&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" align="right" height="344"></embed></object>The speaker selected to deliver the event's keynote address is outspoken conservative political strategist Jessica Peck Corry, who gained notoriety during last year's elections as the executive director of the failed Republican-supported, anti-affirmative action Colorado Civil Rights Initiative.

"We've proven in this country that Prohibition doesn't work," Corry said in an interview. "I don't want kids to smoke, but keeping it illegal is not the best way to make that happen. The best way to keep kids from doing drugs is by having a good relationship with their parents -- and I would politely request the government to stop trying to play that role."

Nearly a dozen panel discussions held over the weekend will include such topics as health, politics, science, history, reform and enforcement.

Sloan, of the drug task force, will speak at an April 19 discussion covering federal and state laws.

"I'm open to discussion -- I don't have a problem having a civil conversation with anybody," he said. "(Enforcement officers) have thoughts on these issues the same as everybody else does, but the bottom line is that we've signed and stated an oath to defend state laws."

According to NORML@CU members, the university has been supportive of their efforts to put on the forum, but CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard said that support comes with a caveat.

"These kinds of debates and discussions are perfectly appropriate for a college campus, but we are unilaterally opposed to a smoke-out as some kind of pretext for a symbolic demonstration about drug laws," Hilliard said.

He encouraged the student group to join the university in denouncing the massive April 20 smoking session that takes place on Norlin Quad each year.


<center><small>© 2006 Daily Camera and Boulder Publishing, LLC.</small></center>

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The Coloradoan | April 10, 2009

Loveland shop to offer medical pot

BY DOUGLAS CROWL
Loveland Connection

LOVELAND - Loveland's first medicinal marijuana dispensary will open this week - more than eight years after Colorado voters legalized the drug for such use.

Rich Present, 37, and Drew McNeil, 33, plan to open Nature's Medicine today at 843 Cleveland Ave.

Along with selling marijuana, Nature's Medicine will provide a variety of alternative health-related services, such as low-cost acupuncture and massage, meditation, and a variety of herbs and supplements.

The business will also contract out for more intensive home care; and in August, a certified nursing assistant will join the staff.

"This will be a totally on-site thing," Present said, adding that the business will have professionals on hand for walk-in services aimed at patient care.

The store will sell smoking accessories and some clothing as well.

McNeil would like to see the business as a place people can visit for a variety of things, even for tea or fresh-squeezed juice, he said.

Still, the business likely will be best known as a marijuana dispensary, featuring a locked room where state-registered patients may purchase marijuana in a variety of forms, including budding plants, baked goods and in liquid form.

Present would like to create a cooperative of legal marijuana growers through Nature's Medicine to drive down the drug's price for medicinal users, he said.

"If we are not beating the street (value) for $300 (an ounce), then why should they come to us," Present said.

One ounce of marijuana at Nature's Medicine will cost between $250 and $300 and one-eighth of an ounce will cost $50, plus standard sales tax, Present said.

Colorado medical marijuana laws state that anyone registered to use the drug can grow six plants for personal use.

However, they also can designate someone as a caregiver to grow those plants for them.

As of February, about 6,800 Colorado residents have registered as medical marijuana users; 569 of them are from Larimer County, according to information from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Larimer County comes in as the region with the fourth-largest number of people on the registry, behind Denver, Jefferson and El Paso counties.

Present and McNeil are registered users and caregivers for 20 patients.

Loveland police Sgt. Benjamin Hurr said police were consulted and this type of operation is a legal business as long as the business owners follow state and municipal laws.

Nature's Medicine is at least the second dispensary to open in Larimer County.

One year ago, Enerchi Healing Center opened in Fort Collins providing similar services.

"We've seen phenomenal success with our community," Enerchi owner Pam Fleming said, adding she has not had any problems with the Fort Collins police.

<hr class="postrule">

[palmspringsbum]

Medical pot shop opens in Grand Junction

By INDenverTimes | 17 Jun 2009
newsroom@indenvertimes.com

A new medical pot shop has opened in Grand Junction, and it’s the first to serve both medical marijuana users and the general public.

Nature’s Medicine on Patterson Road offers medical marijuana to those with a state license, and natural remedies and treatments to the general public, according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

Voters in Colorado agreed to allow marijuana for medical uses under Amendment 20 in 2000. It allows patients with debilitating medical condition to get a medical marijuana card from their doctor.

The Sentinel reported there are three other dispensaries in Grand Junction, but Nature’s Medicine is the first business with a storefront open to both medical marijuana users and the general public. Only marijuana users with a card are allowed into a locked room off the lobby where marijuana is stored.

Nature’s Medicine also operates a location in Loveland and aims to open a storefront soon in Boulder.

As of April 30, 166 people in Mesa County had medical marijuana cards, according to the Colorado Department of Health and Environment. An additional 177 people hold cards in the surrounding counties of Garfield, Delta and Montrose.

[palmspringsbum]

KDVR

Colo. medical marijuana users surge in number

Charlie Brennan | July 1, 2009


Colorado saw a record number of people register with the state as users of medical marijuana, which many attribute to the Obama administration's statement earlier this year that it did not intend to continue with federal raids on some marijuana dispensaries.

Even though states have approved the use of medical marijuana, it does not change the fact that pot use remains prohibited by federal law.

In May, 1,230 Coloradans were approved as "patients" who could obtain marijuana from a designated caregiver, providing they have a documentation of a diagnosis from a physician who is recommending marijuana for a debilitating medical condition.

The May figure represents a significant surge from the 1,022 new patients in April, and is more than double the number for March, which was 602. The total number of patients who currently possess valid registry cards is 7,630.

The average age of all patients is 24, and 72 percent of approved applicants are male.

Those numbers are in-line with a similarly strong surge in the number of storefront clinics that dispense the drug, for complaints ranging from the effects of cancer to a category simply labeled "severe pain." Although the state does not license - nor does it keep track of - medical marijuana clinics, it is estimated that there are now at least 35 in the Denver metro area, where a year ago there were roughly a half dozen.

"The rate of increase appears to be growing," said Ron Hyman, state register of vital statistics for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. "The fact that the federal government has, in the last six months, indicated that they aren't going to be doing significant law enforcement activity with these individuals, may be a factor."

Diana McKindley, who with her husband is opening the NatuRx clinic in Wheat Ridge on Saturday, agreed.

"Most people that I dealt with for many, many years were very scared that the feds would still come in and raid, like they did in California," she said. "When the federal government said they would back off, and they would let the states control it, people felt more comfortable to be able to do what they felt was right for themselves, instead of being scared.

"We had a lot of closet patients back then, and now they are able to come out and do this publicly, and be normal citizens and pay taxes on it, just like the rest of us. The word is out that it's safer now. It's just safer. They no longer have to worry about being raided, as long as they follow state laws."

But laws could be changing in Colorado.

A public hearing is set for July 20 before the Colorado Board of Health, at the Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria Campus in Denver. Prominent among the changes under consideration is a provision that would limit the number of patients a provider, or "care-giver" could serve, to five. Supporters of setting such a limit say it's being proposed in the spirit of ensuring that there is truly a "care-giver"-patient relationship between the person providing the medical marijuana, and the person receiving it.

McKindley said such a limit would be "awful."

Prior to opening a dispensary - which also promotes other healing services such as massage, herbology and meditation - McKindley was providing medical marijuana on a smaller scale.

However, she said, "Five patients would call me in a day. The demand is so high, there is no way I could have taken care of the demand that was calling me, and I was just one person and doing minimal advertising. We have too many patients and not enough caregivers. I had to turn into a dispensary, because my demand became so high, that I couldn't take care of them all myself, so I grew into a dispensary.

"There numbers are going to continue to grow. And to stop us is only going to hurt the patient. It's going to devastate the patient."

Asked if she could run a viable storefront clinic, limited to five medical marijuana patients, she said, "Absolutely no way. Absolutely no way." With only five, she said, "I would be doing it still at home, out of my garage, like I was before."

Hyman said that, in considering an adjustment of the state rules implementing Amendment 20, passed in 2000, state officials were not focusing on the commercial viability of the clinics that have cropped up to supplement the services of private growers providing just a handful of patients.

"Amendment 20 and the laws and regulations that were put in place to support amendment 20, do not refer to dispensaries or clinics at all," Hyman said. "They are not mentioned whatsoever, and we have no relation with those entities."

Copyright © 2009, KDVR-TV

[palmspringsbum]

$80 million scheme the focus of FBI raids

posted by: Sara Gandy, Deborah Sherman
written by: Jeffrey Wolf, Nicole Vap, Kyle Clark, Dave Delozier
Date last updated: 8/16/2009 12:15:25 PM | 9News.com | click for video


AURORA - Four people charged during FBI raids on Friday morning could be just a few of 700 people nationwide involved in a scheme to steal more than $80 million from credit card companies and banks, according to court records obtained by 9Wants to Know.

Law enforcement officers arrested four people Friday morning, all of whom are identified in court documents as from the former Soviet Union republics.

FBI agents also served search warrants at more than a dozen locations, including personal residences, auto dealerships and CannaMed, where people can apply to get medical marijuana. A medical marijuana business called Alternative Medicine of Southeast Denver (AMSD), which is in the same building as CannaMed, on Leetsdale Drive in Denver, was also raided after federal agents spotted marijuana plants.

"The search of these 15 locations was based on probable cause that thee addresses involved were involved in bank fraud and credit card fraud," said Jeff Dorschner, spokesperson with the U.S. Attorney's office.

Two of the four people who were charged in the bust appeared in court on Friday. Natallia Vishnevskaya, 26, and Nadezda Nikitina, 23, appeared in federal court on Friday afternoon. Both are charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of submitting a false and fraudulent application.

Susan Ghardashyan, 69, of Denver was also arrested Friday and is hospitalized. Seda Sahakyan, 77, of Denver was also charged and has a medical issue. She was issued a summons to appear.

The FBI says more arrests are expected.

According to court records, the four people were allegedly involved in what's described as a "bust out" scheme. In it, criminals use the name and credit line of a business to rack up purchases on credit cards. But they have no intention of paying for the purchases and the credit line goes into non-payment.

The alleged scheme exposed on Friday used "straw buyers," who, in this case, were originally from the former Soviet Union republics. Often they were young people on visas, recruited by the alleged criminal group to participate.

According to court records, the investigation identified 700 straw buyers who have made more than $80 million in purchases which are now losses for the financial institutions that issued the credit cards.

The court records show one way they would do this is to register businesses with the Colorado Secretary of State and then, within weeks, obtain a line of credit claiming years of high income from that business. It appears few if any of these were functional businesses.

The court records show they bought cars, electronics, home improvements, airplane tickets to Las Vegas, got cash advances on credit lines and had cosmetic surgery.

Investigators flagged several large purchases made on one of Ghardashyan's credit cards at Maaliki Motors (three purchases for a total of $20,300), Discount Tire ($1,000), The Center for Cosmetic Surgery in Golden ($4,437), and Global Construction ($12,400). These charges were all between February and April of this year. On a different credit card, she is alleged to have spent $10,000 at Maaliki and bought $2,700 worth of Nordstrom gift cards.

The banks involved included JP Morgan Chase Bank, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo and Bank of America.

A half dozen of the 14 people listed in the affidavit have left the U.S.

FBI agents raided CannaMed and apparently seized records.

Charlie Cross, spokesman for CannaMed, said, "CannaMed has no connection whatsoever with the individuals that were the target of the [search] warrants."

FBI agents seized records out of Maaliki Motors in Aurora Friday morning. Neither the dealership's owners nor any of its employees were arrested. Owner Walid Maaliki tells 9Wants to Know FBI agents were looking for customer information, including copies of their driver's licenses and credit cards, which are maintained by the dealership.

Maaliki says the dealership was a victim of the fraud and suspects that several customers purchased as many as six cars from the dealership using the stolen or forged credit cards.

"We didn't do anything wrong. It's just that we have records and copies of all of the credit cards that were used, the people's identities and their pictures," Maaliki said.

The used auto dealership buys and sells cars ranging from Fords for $4,000 to Bentleys for $90,000. Maaliki, who's fond of higher quality cars, says he sells BMW, Lexus and mostly foreign cars.

The dealership was closed Friday morning as the investigation continued.

The FBI also raided AMSD on Friday morning after finding a little less than 100 marijuana plants. The FBI's primary focus was CannaMed, but entered AMSD after seeing the marijuana.

Because marijuana is not legal under federal law, the agents confiscated all the plants.

The two owners of AMSD tell 9NEWS the plants were worth tens of thousands of dollars and were used to treat more than 100 clients.

The seizure effectively shuts the business down.

"It is going to be very difficult for them to stay in business here today. They have hundreds of patients that they assist. You guys have seen them pulling into the parking lot one after another, after another this morning and those people are no longer going to be able to get medical marijuana here," Warren C. Edson, an attorney for AMSD, said.

Colorado law allows for the use and sale of medical marijuana, but federal law does not. In this situation the federal agents were obligated to confiscate the marijuana.

Maaliki told 9NEWS before the arrests he hopes agents catch the customers who defrauded the credit card companies.

"I hope they arrest them if they're defrauding the banks. And the banks should go after them too," Maaliki said.

Dorschner says the search warrants are "part of an ongoing criminal investigation."

<small><center>If you want to Blow the Whistle, please e-mail 9Wants to Know Investigative Reporter Deborah Sherman at Deborah.Sherman@9NEWS.com.
(Copyright KUSA*TV, All Rights Reserved)</center></small>

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Medical Marijuana plant-stash lands patient in court

The Colorado Independent
By John Tomasic 8/4/09 7:24 AM

In today’s chapter in the unfolding story of Colorado’s expanding medical marijuana industry, we find that a patient has been arrested and charged and will now have his day in a Boulder County court. He is not one of the state’s young-man patients, the class of surprising chronic pain sufferers drawing the attention of state medical authorities. He is, like so many of the new patients, a Boulder-area resident, but he is a man over thirty. He is a man more than thirty who had more than thirty plants in his home– in garbage bags in the garage. Um, okay.

Authorities said Jason Lauve, 38, technically a Louisville resident, just had too much of the drug.

But no, Lauve said. He is allowed under the law to have six plants and maybe more depending on his condition. The problem, Lauve said, was just that he was a bad grower.

According to the Denver Post, Lauve said he “kept the plants in trash bags in his garage because he didn’t want to leave them outside for trash pickup…”

The jury was selected Monday. Opening statements are set for Tuesday.

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Jury acquits Colorado medical marijuana patient

Examiner.com | August 6, 9:30 PM
NORML Examiner Angela Macdonald


A Colorado medical marijuana patient is free to live his life for the second time. Jason Lauve of Louisville has been acquitted by 12 of his peers after his home was raided in 2008, and police say two pounds of medicine and 20 plants were found.

Colorado medical marijuana laws allow a patient to possess up to two ounces of usable marijuana, as well as six plants (three can be in flowering stage, while the other three must not be). However, Lauve argued the weight of the plant matter taken by police was not all usable medicine. Lauve had also requested to have an increased number of plants available, because he requires more than the typical allowed amount.

Jason Lauve has a state issue medical marijuana permit, which he obtained after a serious accident involving a snowboarder colliding into the man in 2004. Since the accident, Lauve has suffered from severe back pain that has left him dependent upon a cane and sometimes wheelchair. Lauve stated he uses his medicine three times a day and eats marijuana food products once a day. Lauve has been able to stop using opiate-based medications since starting his medical marijuana regiment.

Robert Corry, Lauve’s attorney, argued that the constitution amendment passed by the voters of Colorado in 2000, contained a clause that allows for a patient to possess over the state limits if found necessary by the patient, caregiver, and/or patient’s physician.

Early today, after just over three hours of deliberation the jury acquitted Lauve on all charges, which included a felony drug possession charge, and misdemeanor charges of possession of marijuana concentrate. The court room was elated when the verdict was read, and Lauve began crying.

[palmspringsbum]

<small>Aug 26 2009, 3:00PM</small>

Day 77: Nederland, CO
Colorado's Marijuana Economy: An Explosion of Ganjapreneurship

The Atlantic | 26 Aug 09


<table class="posttable" align="right"><tr><td class="postcell"><img class="postimg" src="bin/kathleen.jpg"></td></tr></table>At first glance, the One Brown Mouse Boutique looks like a typical hippie artisan shop--its ceiling festooned with tie dye, stained glass tributes to Bob Marley and post-Sgt. Pepper Beatles hanging in the window, racks of handmade jewelry, crocheted hats, and silk-screen T-shirts for sale. Only the sweet stank of high-grade marijuana permeating the room distinguishes the Brown Mouse of Nederland, Colorado from such patchouli-infused boutiques across the country. Proprietress Kathleen Chippi's shop nearly fell victim to the recession's retail stagnation earlier this year, until she altered her business plan to become the small mountain community's first medicinal marijuana dispensary.

What can only be rightly described as an explosion of ganjapreneurship is currently underway in Colorado, sparked by the Obama Administration's new policy announcement in February, which directed federal agencies to defer to state law enforcement on the issue of medical marijuana.

Medical marijuana has been technically legal in Colorado since 2000, when residents voted to add Amendment 20 to the state's constitution. The Bush Administration, however, always maintained a rigid stance that federal anti-drug laws took precedence over state rights. Regular DEA raids on medical marijuana distributors in states that legally permit such commerce effectively intimidated citizens who would have otherwise officially registered as patients or caregivers.

At the beginning of this year, only 2000 people had applied for Colorado's Medical Marijuana Registry since the system was established on 2001. In the past six months, the registry has grown to nearly 10,000. The registry card is actually optional under Colorado law--a doctor's note is sufficient--so it's difficult to determine the precise number of medicinal users. About thirty dispensaries currently operate to provide verified patients with locally-grown kind bud, up from just a handful in previous years. And the number of dispensaries is expected to double to 60 by the end of 2009.

Even though it passed the medical marijuana amendment nearly a decade ago, Colorado is just now entering a phase of transition that embraces that legal reality. The longtime lucrative blackmarket in a forbidden agricultural product is being legitimized--all the financial transactions that used to flow underground are now being raised to the taxable surface, creating a new era for an ancient industry, and fertile ground for ganjapreneurial start-ups to sprout like new shoots of Cannabis sativa.

Kathleen Chippi has been a proponent of hemp and pro-medicinal marijuana activist for over twenty years, but had never considered opening a dispensary until the recession hit her boutique. With sales down 75% early this year, Kathleen faced financial probabilities of losing her business. After Attorney General Eric Holder announced there would be no more federal raids on legal medical marijuana dispensaries, Kathleen decided to look into the requirements for starting one. "Our law is so gray and open," she explains, "there are no guidelines about dispensaries except that you have to collect sales tax." After procuring a business license identifying the new product she would sell, on June 26 Kathleen's modest artisan shop transformed into the One Brown Mouse Cannabis Healing Arts Center.... and Boutique.

The success of her new venture has been nothing short of astounding, with implications that reverberate far beyond the four walls of her tiny shop. From the micro-view of her own personal experience, Kathleen suggests, "Marijuana is the only thing pulling Colorado out of the recession right now." Not only has her own small business been saved, but whereas her previous sales tax bill would run about $500 per quarter, Nederland will be getting a $5000 check out of her first few months as a dispensary.

Most of the farmers Kathleen works with have been cultivating their product illegally for many years--the oldest has been in the illicit business for 35, more than half have grown marijuana for over two decades. Now that they sell their product to a legal commercial enterprise, weed farmers will have to register their income and pay taxes on it, just like anyone growing tomatoes or tobacco. "To have these people coming out of the closet after so many years, that's the really heartening thing about what's happening right now," Kathleen says.

Since marijuana farmers have begun selling exclusively to legitimate dispensaries, the underground market for illegal weed has been quashed, putting drug dealers out of business for lack of available stock. One such dealer I talked to in Boulder, who I will call Quark at his request, told me that with the supply of high-quality Colorado hydroponic weed redirected to dispensaries, he has only been able to procure cheap Mexican schwag for the past few months. Since the implications of indirect association with brutal Mexican cartels unsettles him, Quark is currently seeking a regular job so he will have money to pay tuition this year. Though it has negatively impacted his own solvency, Quark has nothing but praise for the new phase in Colorado's marijuana industry. His only concern is that the change in employment status will burden his study time as he nears completion of his advanced degree in astrophysics.

Opponents of legalization/decriminalization of marijuana--medicinal or otherwise--argue that legitimizing the industry will lead to increased usage by young people, though rational analysis and official statistics indicate otherwise. California examined the issue a decade after their 1996 legalization of medicinal marijuana. The state attorney general discovered that over the previous ten years, teen usage had declined dramatically, at a rate much faster than the national trend. As compared to California statistics pre-1996, different teen age groups evidenced 25 to nearly 50% fewer numbers reporting that they'd used marijuana in the previous month.

I would bet that one could find their way to a pot dealer on any college campus in this country by asking the first three people you meet where to procure ganja. Considering the prevalence of the underground market, legitimizing the business has the effect of tightening controls over it, regulating who can legally purchase, sell, or grow it, which puts unscrupulous drug dealers out of business, this reducing the availability of product through any but official channels. The controls that come with legalization effectively reduces its availability, rather than the contrary.

Kathleen acknowledges that the cultivation and sale of marijuana has been a thriving underground industry for decades in her tiny mountain town about 15 miles west of Boulder. "It's always been happening; it's just not been taxed until now," she says. The massive blackmarket is emerging into the light, though the Colorado Department of the Revenue says they have no plans to keep track of how much money the rapidly growing legitimate industry will be feeding into state coffers. The largest dispensary in the state, serving 1400 patients in Colorado Springs, generates $30,000 per month in sales tax revenue for the state. "And now that the legal dispensaries have killed the underground market, it will only get bigger," Kathleen predicts.

For her own ambition, that is most certainly the case. One Brown Mouse currently corners the medicinal marijuana market in Nederland, though half a dozen more dispensaries are preparing to open there in the coming months. Kathleen represents the leading edge of a growing movement of ganjapreneurs, and wants to carve out a substantial market share before the field becomes crowded with ambitious latecomers. Her fine-tuned business acumen, clearly unharmed by decades of casual marijuana use, recognizes the much larger market for her goods lies thirty minutes east in Boulder.

So Kathleen now has a business partner, with whom she has secured a 3-story 7,000 square foot building zoned for retail in Boulder. The opening of her new medicinal marijuana megastore is slated for October. Much more than simply a dispensary, Kathleen says her new "cannabis center" will sell growing equipment and art created by her patients. It will also offer a schedule of classes on cultivation techniques, and a club where those with the right paperwork can hang out, have a coffee, and smoke a joint or eat a "space cake" with friends. She even got a florist license so she can display and sell live marijuana plants, which will be a first for Colorado when she opens her doors.

Not only will Kathleen's cannabis center be feeding state coffers with tax revenue, but it will directly create jobs for those employees she will have to hire to run the complex operation. Further, the economic ripple from such an operation will generate business for gardeners talented in the delicate process of nurturing baby marijuana clones and bakers specialized in creating snacks infused with cannabis.

[palmspringsbum]

<small>Aug 27 2009, 12:00PM</small>

Day 78: Ward, CO
Meet the Marijuana Snack Kings of the Future

The Atlantic | Christina Davidson


"I want to be like the Nabisco of ganja," Shaz Swartz announces, as we're sitting on the front porch of his rustic wood cabin perched on the side of a mountain above the minuscule town of Ward, Colorado. The 43-year-old ex-Marine has sole custody of his two young sons, and wants to provide a more comfortable future for them than he ever could in his job as a construction inspector, particularly now that the recession has been leaving him with increasingly fewer sites to inspect.

So Shaz and his business partner Garrett Miller are joining the ganjapreneurship boom, readying to launch their new business "Ganja Goods." The explosion of legitimate medicinal marijuana dispensaries I wrote about yesterday is being closely trailed by a concomitant wave of entrepreneurial start-ups that tap into the rapidly growing market for reefer-related goods and services.

There are consultants, like Garrett, teaching people how to set up grow lights and an irrigation system for growing marijuana inside their house. Gardeners are propagating baby clones of high-grade strains. Herbalists process weed into a potent tincture. Candymakers are infusing lollipops and lozenges with cannabis. Bakers concoct space cakes, cosmic brownies, and various Scooby snacks.

Shaz has recently been making the rounds of dispensaries handing out samples of his cookies and chocolates. When he asks if the dispensary would like to become a paying customer when Ganja Goods goes into full production, the answer is invariably along the lines of: 'Yes, we will buy it as fast as you can make it.' "There's a huge and growing demand right now, but not sufficient supply," Shaz says.

Like good all-American capitalist thinkers, Shaz and Garrett recognized this gap in the market, where demand far exceeds supply, and they're looking to exploit the imbalance for their own success. The business license for Ganja Goods just arrived last week, and they expect to receive their Tax ID any day. They've been looking at industrial kitchen spaces to rent and trying to find an unemployed baker to hire. Shaz does all the sample baking right now, but he wants to hire someone so he can focus his creative efforts on more intense research and development to improve the quality, measurable dosage intensity, and shelf-life of his cannabis consumables.

The problem with homemade cannabis goods currently being sold through dispensaries is that they don't have any standardized dosage. "Digesting cannabis gives a different kind of buzz than smoking it," Shaz says. "It's much more mellow." That's why Shaz eats his own treats to ease the chronic pain of an old back injury. He understands the ameliorative strength of his own homemade goods, so, for example, if he eats one of his chocolate macadamia coconut truffles in the morning, he knows it will ease his pain, but not make him blotto stoned like smoking a joint would, or mentally groggy and physically tired like a pharmaceutical pain killer.

Pharmaceuticals have established dosages to inform physicians and consumers how much they need to take for their particular ailment, but the scientific research to develop a conveniently identifiable strength for medicinal marijuana is still in infancy. For a patient who smokes cannabis, specific dosing information is not particularly relevant--they can generally tell by examining the THC crystals on a bud. But for someone who does not want to inhale smoke, it can be impossible to judge in advance how much of a cannabis product they should consume. "From one baker, maybe you'd need to eat three cookies. But from another, maybe more than one would leave you completely high for hours," Shaz explains.

Shaz and Garrett wants customers of Ganja Goods to be able to tell how their product will affect their mind and body before they put anything in their mouths. So Shaz has been working to develop the precise recipe for a potent ganja butter, which he can cut with regular butter in order to vary the strength of the finished baked goods. The large canister or vibrantly green and faintly pine scented butter he shows me had simmered at just under 115 degrees for four days.

In addition to straight ganja butter, Shaz made honey butter and is thinking about garlic butter. The cannabis needs the animal fat for potent effectiveness, but Shaz and Garrett have a mind to produce any kind of food that can be prepared with butter. Shaz has already been creating his own recipes for the standard fare: various chocolate truffles, brownies, cookies, cake, banana bread. But they're also also thinking he can work his magic butter into wide range of food products, like pesto, hummus, pizza, ice cream, croissants, granola bars.

Despite their obvious business ambition, Garrett and Shaz don't aspire to become particularly wealthy off their venture. They want to earn enough to live comfortably, but also view the profit potential as an opportunity to financially support a meaningful cause. They haven't yet settled on what organization to fund with their profits, but are thinking they might like it to be one that promotes educational resources and opportunities for children in Colorado.

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Council puts a hold on medical pot

By Collin Smith
The Craig Daily Press
August 26, 2009


The Craig City Council unanimously approved, 6-0, an emergency moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries Tuesday night, after a public discussion about the issue turned into a shouting match and the mayor closed proceedings.

Councilor Jennifer Riley was the only official absent.

The moratorium will last for 60 days and preclude all operations of medical marijuana dispensaries, as well as prevent city staff from accepting development documents for any such business.

Councilors said the time will give city officials an opportunity to craft specific zoning ordinances for marijuana dispensaries, such as required distances from schools and public parks.

However, the moratorium will not apply to the Craig Apothecary, owned and operated by Craig resident Shaun Hadley and Larry Hill, who owns a separate dispensary in Longmont.

The Craig Apothecary opened Saturday at 611 Breeze St., which means the city cannot force on it any regulations not already approved.

The owners said the business will operate by appointment only, from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.

There will be minimal outside signage, and they said they plan to install heavy security.

They also said marijuana will not be grown there, but that is a possibility for the future.

Hadley said he would voluntarily comply with any potential regulations the city develops for dispensaries, with the exception of changing his location.

“Any other rules and regulations the council sets forth, we’d be more than happy to comply with,” he said.

His location on Breeze Street, however, came under fire from residents opposing a medical marijuana dispensary in Craig. They said it was too near Breeze Park and child day cares.

Several people spoke for and against medical marijuana and dispensaries, which are essentially commercial storefronts for people who serve a large number of registered marijuana patients.

Frank Hadley, Shaun’s father and a man who has spent several decades working in drug and alcohol counseling in Craig, said he chose not to consume marijuana after being diagnosed with lymphoma because of his exposure to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War.

However, Frank said the pain was so incredible, he could not tell anyone with cancer they wouldn’t be allowed to find the best possible medication for their treatment.

Craig resident John Lawton said, however, those who sell medical marijuana are little more than drug dealers who found a loophole in the law, referring to the constitutional amendment in Colorado approved by voters in 2000.

It is still a dangerous drug, Lawton said.

“There are three reasons I quit smoking marijuana,” he said. “It made me stupid, lazy and paranoid. … It has not been studied enough so we know what it does and what doses are required.”

The meeting became heated when resident Patrick Ger­mond intimated that Shaun opened Craig Apothecary because he couldn’t pass a drug test at his former job as an electrician.

“You’re getting … personal,” Frank said loudly.

After the tension escalated further, Mayor Don Jones banged his gavel, closed the proceeding and would not let anyone else speak about the issue.

Jessica Asplund, Shaun’s girlfriend, said Germond’s statement was public slander and asked if she could receive a written transcript of the meeting, to which city staff said she could.

Asplund said she is “strongly considering” filing a civil suit against Germond for his statement.

The two sides continued arguing outside City Hall after the mayor closed public comments.

Collin Smith can be reached at 875-1794 or cesmith@craigdailypress.com

[palmspringsbum]

<table align="right" width="200" class="posttable"><tr><td class="postcell"><span class="postbold">By the numbers</span>

The latest (July 31, 2009) Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment report on medical marijuana shows:

•Since June 1, 2001, when it began operation, the Medical Marijuana Registry has received 13,102 applications for identification cards to buy or grow marijuana for medicinal use. Twenty-nine applications were denied, 18 cards have been revoked, 1,751 cards have expired and 210 cardholders have died, leaving 11,094 holders of valid identification.

• More than 800 physicians have signed certifications of need for applicants.

•Seventy-three percent of applicants are men, and the average age of all applicants is 41. Six card holders are minors (younger than 18).

•Fifty-five percent of cardholders live in the Denver metro and Boulder areas.

• In Southwest Colorado counties, there are 111 cardholders in La Plata, 25 in Archuleta, 31 in Montezuma and eight in Dolores. San Juan County is one of five in which there are fewer than three card holders.

•Ninety percent of applicants say severe pain is one of the reasons they need marijuana. Twenty-seven percent – the second-most cited reason – said they have muscle spasms. Severe nausea – No. 3 – was cited by 23 percent.

•The health department has refused to add Parkinson’s disease, anxiety, asthma and bipolar disorder to the list of debilitating illnesses that can qualify a patient to use marijuana.
Three identification–cardholders have been convicted of marijuana-related offenses.

– Dale Rodebaugh</td></tr></table>Colorado, California leading the way in pot-reform laws

by Dale Rodebaugh | The Durango Herald
Article Last Updated; Sunday, October 04, 2009 12:39AM

Colorado has joined California to become one of only two states that have a semblance of a medical-marijuana distribution system, the executive director of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) said this week.

“But the difference is stark and profound,” Allen St. Pierre said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C. “We fought for the rights in California, but the rise in Colorado was immediate.”

Thirteen states allow the use of marijuana medicinally, but except for Colorado and California, the others operate on what St. Pierre called a “self-preservation system.” Authorized users are on their own to grow or buy their cannabis, he said.

Reform of marijuana laws is coming – slowly but inexorably, St. Pierre said. He cited the Obama administration’s decision to sic federal agents on marijuana distributors only when they violate state as well as federal law. The sale of marijuana for medical purposes remains against federal law.

Two states, New Mexico and Rhode Island, have approved laws sanctioning the sale of medical marijuana, St. Pierre said. These winds of change could sweep California, Massachusetts and Texas into following suit to regulate and tax the substance, he said.

“In past administrations, such action would have triggered a rocket ride straight to the U.S. Supreme Court,” St. Pierre said.

The change in official attitude mirrors public opinion, St. Pierre said. Polls find 75 percent of people favor the use of marijuana for medical purposes and, by almost the same margin, the decriminalization of marijuana use.

The wide acceptance of cannabis by the public is reflected in the Showtime television series “Weeds” – which just ended its fifth season – that follows the adventures of a widowed California housewife who is the neighborhood source for marijuana.

It’s no wonder the show takes place in California – where 2.5 million to 3 million people use marijuana medicinally, St. Pierre said.

The state has 1,400 to 1,800 marijuana dispensaries, including kiosks in the Los Angeles Basin that operate 24 hours a day, he said.

Oregon has cashed in on marijuana, charging 24,000 to 26,000 medical pot users $150 a year for an identification card, St. Pierre said.

daler@durangoherald.com

[palmspringsbum]

Wanted: Pot Critic With Shrewd Taste and Medical Need

RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA | The Gainsville Sun

Published: Monday, October 5, 2009 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Monday, October 5, 2009 at 6:49 a.m.


Don’t look for phrases like “insouciant yet skunky.” At least, not yet.

Westword, an alternative weekly newspaper in Denver, has the standard lineup of film, food and music critics. But in what may be a first for American journalism, the paper is shopping around for a medical marijuana critic.

The idea is not to assess the green stuff itself, but to review the dispensaries that have sprouted like, um, weeds in Denver this year.

“We want to see what kind of place it is, how well they care for you and also how sketchy the place is,” said Patricia Calhoun, editor of Westword. “Do they actually look at your medical marijuana card? Do they let you slip some cash under the counter and bypass the rules?”

Last week, the paper published a call for a regular freelance reviewer with a real, doctor-certified medical need — asking each candidate to send a résumé and an essay on “What Marijuana Means to Me” — and received several dozen applications within a few days.

“Every time an application comes in, it’s like opening a little birthday present, because most of them are quite hilarious,” Ms. Calhoun said.

Coloradans voted in 2000 to legalize medical marijuana, but the dispensaries boomed this year, after the state decided against taking a restrictive view of the law and the Obama administration decided to end federal raids on state-sanctioned businesses.

“It is the wild west of medical marijuana out here,” Ms. Calhoun said. “There were a couple of dozen dispensaries this spring, and now it’s over 100. We just heard there’s going to be a drive-through dispensary.”

Dispensaries promote different strains with distinctive flavors — there are, after all, marijuana snobs just as there are wine snobs — and some mix their wares into foods like hummus, pesto and chocolate. So why not critique the cannabis, too?

“It could well be that we will be reviewing the product itself, eventually,” she said.

The job posting has drawn national attention, to which she said dryly, “This is our dream, to be known as the pothead paper.” In the alt-weekly world, competition for that title would be fierce.

RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

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Colorado medical marijuana dispensers consider alliance

By John Ingold | The Denver Post
Posted: 10/04/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT
Updated: 10/04/2009 09:00:26 AM MDT


LONGMONT — Even for a roomful of people in the nascent medical marijuana industry, what Larry Hill was proposing was a little unusual.

Standing before a meeting of cannabis dispensary owners here last week, Hill said the time has come to form a trade association.

"People, let's help ourselves," said Hill, who operates The Apothecary dispensary in Longmont. "It's time we become the shining light in the community, so that people aren't afraid of us anymore."

Across the state — as the number of medical marijuana dispensaries surges and local officials rush to enact laws governing them — cannabis business people have banded together so as to have a louder voice in the debate.

More than 100 people attended the meeting in Longmont last week at the VFW hall, which Hill hosted. A day before, medical marijuana attorney Rob Corry hosted a similar meeting in Denver. Corry said he is talking with around 50 dispensary owners about forming a statewide association.

The idea, the medical marijuana supporters say, is to find a way for the burgeoning industry to fill the current regulatory vacuum and perhaps stave off further governmental rules by regulating itself.

"If you wait for something to happen to you, it's going to happen to you," medical marijuana attorney Jeff Gard told the crowd in Longmont. "If you take control over something yourself, you have some ability to direct it."

But getting consensus on a public, self-governing structure among dispensary owners — some of whom are accustomed to operating quietly and have a well-honed wariness of authority — is no sure thing.

During the meeting in Longmont, Gard read a list of rules recently negotiated in Frisco that he said could serve as a start for the cannabis community's proposals for self-regulation. Those laws include things such as standard operating hours, uniform security measures and prescribed buffer zones between dispensaries and schools or day-care facilities.

A number of the regulations elicited grumbles in the crowd.

"When you start talking about regulations," said Kathleen Chippi, who operates Cannabis Healing Arts in Nederland, "you're continuing to buy into reefer madness lies. We don't need to be afraid of a dispensary."

Other advocates, while conceding the need for some self-government, took issue with particular proposals.

George Thomas, who operates a small caregiver business for about a dozen patients out of his Longmont home, said the buffer-zone regulations could force providers to constantly move.

"I don't want some day-care center operated by some mom down the street to kick me out of my house," he said.

No one knows exactly how many dispensaries operate in Colorado because they are neither licensed nor tracked by the state. Estimates put the number of dispensaries at as many as 100.

Hill said he thinks the threat of regulation facing dispensary owners will encourage them to get on the same page — but he also concedes it will be difficult to keep them there.

It's unclear how interested state lawmakers are in taking up the issue. Democratic and Republican aides at the Capitol said they haven't heard of any proposed bills to clarify medical marijuana regulations.

"In the giant scheme of things, with all the budget-cutting that's been taking place, it's really moved to a back-seat position," said state Sen. Betty Boyd, D-Lakewood.

Gov. Bill Ritter, meanwhile, has put state lawyers and health department officials to work examining how to handle the proliferation of dispensaries, Ritter's spokesman wrote in an e-mail.

While Ritter intends to uphold the state's constitutional protection of medical marijuana, he also "has an obligation to ensure the program is not being abused, not operating outside the law and not going unregulated," Evan Dreyer wrote.

All of that's fine by Hill, as long as those who run the dispensaries get a say.

"We want to remove the gray area from the medical marijuana industry," Hill told the dispensary owners last week. "It's up to us."

John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com

[palmspringsbum]

Can municipalities get away with regulating medical marijuana?

Denver Westworld | By Joel Warner
Mon., Oct. 26 2009 @ 10:55AM


​With the Justice Department's announcement last week that it won't be prosecuting medical marijuana cases in states where the practice is legal, the feds loudly and officially passed the buck on the subject. That leaves it up to medical-marijuana states and their municipalities to determine just how to handle all that weed. And there's no other place in the country where the issue's more pressing than Colorado, where vague medical marijuana laws entombed in the constitution have led to a pot gold-rush of mammoth proportions, with hundreds of people a day applying for state marijuana IDs and dispensaries popping up in nearly every storefront imaginable.

Senator Chris Romer plans to introduce a bill in the next legislative session that could impose some new statewide regulations, but in the meantime local governments are taking matters into their own hands. Some cities have passed outright bans on dispensaries, as Greeley's city council did last week. Here in Denver, City Councilman Charlie Brown is considering rules that would regulate them in the city and maybe generate more tax revenue for municipal coffers.

But a major question remains: Are Colorado cities and towns actually allowed to regulate weed?

After all, Colorado's medical marijuana law stipulates that a state department must implement its provisions, and the legislature has long designated the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment with the task. Therefore, as a Colorado Municipal League newsletter sent to cities and towns last July notes, "local government business regulations may be preempted" by the CDPHE.

Some civic boosters may point out that Colorado communities by law are home-rule municipalities, meaning their ordinances can supersede state law. But savvy marijuana activists could argue that home-rule status didn't seem to hold much water here in Denver a few years ago, when city voters decriminalized small amounts of pot. At that point, many city and law enforcement officials hemmed and hawed, explaining weed was still illegal under state and federal law.

Either way, it's an issue that will likely be sorted out in court. All it's going to take is one aggrieved dispensary owner who's lost out on his or her business in Greeley or one of the other cities, like Broomfield and Superior, that recently banned the business. A lawsuit will follow, leaving it up to a judge to determine who, exactly, gets to manage the state's pot biz. In the meantime, that business will keep growing -- and much, much faster than municipalities can hope to regulate it.

[palmspringsbum]

City aims to outlaw pot growers

MARIA ST.LOUIS-SANCHEZ
The Gazette | 2009-10-26 10:29:10


In a move that would effectively shut down medical marijuana dispensaries in the city, the Colorado Springs City Council advised code enforcement officers Monday to start enforcing the land use regulations that make them illegal.

It remains to be seen, however, if the city has the ability to carry that out with just three code enforcement officers and looming budget cuts that could reduce that to one next year.

According to Deputy City Attorney Wynetta Massey, the city code doesn’t allow businesses that are in violation of the law. Since marijuana growing is against federal law, the dispensaries are technically violating city codes.

The direction from the council followed a briefing by 4th Judicial Attorney Dan May and Colorado Springs Police Chief Richard Myers and comes on the heels of last week’s announcement by the U.S. Department of Justice that federal agencies will not prosecute people using marijuana in compliance with state laws.

Colorado voters in 2001 approved a law making it legal to grow and possess small amounts of marijuana for medical purposes. It also allows “caregivers” to grow marijuana for other patients. Out of the “caregivers” term, an industry of legally selling marijuana has blossomed throughout the state. In the Colorado Springs area, there are 14 known marijuana dispensaries, 34 growers supplying dispensaries, 12 individual caregivers growing marijuana and nine people growing for personal use, according to the presentation to the council.

May told council members he doesn’t condemn marijuana use for legitimate medical reasons, but the dispensaries and growers popping up around the city have been causing havoc for law enforcement officials. He said they have led to an increase in home invasions of residences where marijuana is being grown — one in which a 3-year-old was pistol-whipped — and caused a fire in another from overloaded electrical circuits from grow lights.

With no zoning laws governing them, dispensaries are popping up in residential areas and near schools — one is less than 80 yards from Palmer High School.

“I couldn’t open a liquor store there and I couldn’t open up a dirty book shop there, but they are dispensing marijuana there,” May said of the dispensary near the downtown high school.

Councilmen Sean Paige, Tom Gallagher and Randy Purvis suggested working with medical marijuana advocates to create regulations for the dispensaries, including zoning, building codes and possibly taxation. Paige said voters passed the law and it was up to the city to learn to adapt and deal with it by creating the regulations to keep the dispensaries safe.

“We need to accept that it’s the will of the people,” he said. “In terms of taxing, it may be the most viable industry we have in Colorado Springs right now.”

In the short term, even those three council members sided with the rest of the council that code officers need to enforce the law as it stands.

Dick Anderwald, the city’s land use review manager, told the council he doesn’t have enough code enforcement officers to do anything more then respond to complaints, and there have been none, so far.

“Council’s direction was clear that they intend for this to be a priority enforcement issue, so we’ll follow that direction,” he said, adding that his office will pay particular attention to dispensaries near schools, churches and residential areas.

He said if and when complaints are received, enforcement officers would follow normal enforcement policy and give the dispensaries time to close shop.

After the meeting, several medial marijuana advocates questioned whether the city had the authority to shut down the dispensaries and vowed to challenge the code.

“Every patient who buys marijuana from a dispensary is taking a dollar away from street gangs and thugs,” said Bob Wiley of Sensible Colorado, the state’s largest pro-medical marijuana organization. “We should be embracing these businesses.”

The issue of dispensaries has been a nagging sore spot for law enforcement and state health officials, who contend the cottage industry has exploited the vague wording of the constitutional amendment.

In July, both groups appealed unsuccessfully to the Colorado Board of Health to tighten regulations in a way that would have put dispensaries out of business. The Board of Health, which oversees the medical marijuana program, declined to limit “caregivers,” the term for dispensaries under the law, to five patients.

Shortly after the board’s decision, the state health department released new numbers on the status of the medical marijuana registry and the flood of applications from young men.

Applications rose from 3,302 in July 2008 to nearly 9,000 earlier this summer, with nearly half of them coming from April through June. About 1,800 were for men under 30 diagnosed with severe pain.

“This dramatic increase in an age group that is not expected to suffer from a chronic debilitating condition is concerning,” said Colorado Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ned Calonge, in a news release at the time.

—

Call the writer at 636-0274.

Gazette reporters Daniel Chacón and Brian Newsome contributed to this report

[palmspringsbum]

Court says medical-marijuana growers must have close patient contact

By Felisa Cardona | The Denver Post

Posted: 10/30/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT
Updated: 10/30/2009 06:25:41 AM MDT


The Colorado Court of Appeals redefined the role of medical-marijuana caregivers Thursday in a ruling that says growers must have more meaningful contact with patients than simply providing the drug.

The court upheld the conviction of Stacy Clendenin, who in 2006 was charged with cultivation of marijuana in her Longmont home, which is a felony.

Clendenin argued that the marijuana she grew was distributed to authorized medical-marijuana patients through dispensaries. The court found that Clendenin needed to know the patients.

In a special concurring opinion, Judge Alan Loeb wrote that Colorado's Amendment 20, which legalized medical marijuana, "cries out for legislative action" because it is vague in regulating the roles of caregivers.

Clendenin's attorney, Robert Corry, said he plans to appeal the ruling to the Colorado Supreme Court and said the decision has only a narrow impact.

"The ruling only applies to those who went to trial before July when the state medical board agreed that caregivers could simply provide marijuana," Corry said. "This ruling does not affect people that are in business right now. That being said, I represent a number of clients, and I will be advising people to meet their patients in person, in the abundance of caution."

Mike Saccone, a spokesman for Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, disputed Corry's statement that the decision is limited to Clendenin and a few others charged before July. He said that the attorney general believes the court's interpretation of the state's constitution trumps any actions by the state medical board.

"The decision speaks for itself," Saccone said.

Suthers applauded the court's decision. "I am pleased to see the Court of Appeals has provided legal support for our case that a caregiver, under Amendment 20, must do more than simply provide marijuana to a patient," Suthers said in a statement. "I also was pleased to see the assertion in the special concurrence that Amendment 20 'cries out for legislative action.' I could not agree more. I hope the legislature will act and create a regulatory framework that gives substance to the Court of Appeals' findings."

Clendenin wants to get the felony removed from her record and already has served a probationary sentence.

Thursday's ruling, if upheld on appeal, could change the process now in place to supply the burgeoning medical-marijuana industry in Colorado — if the Colorado legislature doesn't restrict it first.

State Sen. Chris Romer plans to introduce some medical-marijuana restrictions when the legislature convenes in January.

"The state needs to issue clear, bright lines and needs to define medical marijuana with a meaningful-caregiver relationship," Romer said.

Romer said some caregivers are operating like convenience stores without knowing whom they are serving. He believes caregivers should provide other services to patients, such as acupuncture, pain management, counseling and nutrition.

The Court of Appeals agreed but didn't define what would constitute an acceptable relationship between patient and caregiver.

"If you are a dispensary simply selling marijuana and acting like a 7-Eleven, you will now be prosecuted based on this decision," Romer said. "My hope is that this will slow or stop the gold rush of dispensaries that are growing like weeds, no pun intended."

Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com

[palmspringsbum]

Health department changes pot "caregiver" rule

By Tom McGhee | The Denver Post
Posted: 11/03/2009 03:30:36 PM MST
Updated: 11/03/2009 06:39:07 PM MST


Colorado health officials on Tuesday temporarily revised rules governing medical marijuana in order to comply with a court decision that said a supplier must do more than give patients marijuana to qualify as a caregiver.

Last summer, the Board of Health defined a list of duties that could be considered "significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient," for someone to qualify as a caregiver entitled to provide marijuana. But the language made it possible to qualify even if the only thing they did was provide marijuana to a patient.

The board removed the entire definition, intending to take up the issue on Dec. 16 at a public meeting.

Colorado Department of Public Health Executive Director Jim Martin said a Colorado Court of Appeals opinion released last week forced the board to take quick action.

"I don't believe this leaves the board any leeway," he said of the ruling made Thursday in the case of Stacy Clendenin.

In 2006, Clendenin was charged with cultivation of marijuana in her Longmont home, which is a felony.

Clendenin argued that the marijuana she grew was distributed to authorized medical-marijuana patients through dispensaries. The court found that Clendenin needed to know the patients.

By changing the rule, the state Board of Health has given itself time to consider whether to repeal the language permanently.

But it could force dispensaries and growers to offer other care as well, said attorney Warren Edson, who represents dispensaries and growers.

While many dispensaries offer other services to those buying their marijuana, it would be impossible for growers who supply the dispensaries to offer anything but the drug, said Edson.

The rule change exposes grow operations to crimial prosecution, he said.

"They told us in July, you don't have to do anything but (provide) pot," Edson said. "We have a whole industry that has grown up that is screwed."

It isn't the intention of the board to throw a kink in business plans of those selling medical marijuana, said health department spokesman Mark Salley. "I think it is the Court of Appeals decision that might have changed the game. All this board did was make sure it was not in contradiction with the court."

At its December meeting the board will decide whether or not to permanently repeal the language, Salley added.

Roger Ronas, 51, a legally blind diabetic who suffered renal failure and uses marijuana to control nausea and pain, said the decision "drives a wedge between me and my caregiver.

"This will force me out on the black market. It is quite scary because I don't know where to go."

While the board posted notice of the meeting on websites maintained by the Colorado Department of Health and Environment, and the state's marijuana registry, it did little to alert the public, said Robert J. Corry Jr., who represented the Clendenin in the case that led to the appellate court decision.

More than 100 people showed up for the meeting, but it was held in a room with a capacity of 60 or so. Most board members participated by phone, and lines were open to the public, as well.

But there weren't enough lines open for all those who wanted to participate, said Corry.

"This is a secret meeting, people can't get into the room," he told the board.

Salley said the board complied with state open meetings laws, posting notice of the meeting to the web at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, and contacting Corry and others who represent caregivers and patients.

After Board Chair Glenn H. Schlabs, who participated by phone, refused to allow Corry to speak about the court decision, he promised to sue the board.

"I will see you in court," Corry said.

Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com

[palmspringsbum]

Medical-marijuana caregiver dispute goes to court

By Mike McPhee | The Denver Post

Posted: 11/06/2009 01:00:00 AM MST
Updated: 11/06/2009 08:25:17 AM MST


Attorneys for medical-marijuana advocates filed a motion Thursday asking the court to invalidate the state Board of Health's decision to drop a portion of the definition of caregivers.

In filings in Denver District Court, attorney Rob Corry argued that the board did not properly notify all state-registered medical-marijuana patients and caregivers about attending the meeting.

Corry said the board had agreed two years ago that it would notify all registered medical-marijuana users and caregivers about board meetings on policy.

Attorneys for the board hadn't seen the motion Thursday evening and declined to comment. But board spokesman Mark Salley said the meeting had been "duly noticed."

Corry said "no way was it duly noticed because an e-mail was sent to only four lawyers the afternoon before the meeting."

The board convened an emergency meeting by teleconference Tuesday with the purpose of striking a portion of the definition of a medical-marijuana caregiver in order to fall in line with a ruling by the Colorado Court of Appeals a week earlier.

That ruling stated that caregivers should provide more services than selling marijuana to registered patients. By dropping the definition, the board hoped to erase confusion for people attempting to comply with state rules for who is legally allowed to sell marijuana.

But advocates for the hundreds of growers and dispensaries that have sprouted since the definition was issued in July say the move threatens their business operations and opens them to prosecution.

During or just prior to the meeting, Corry presented a petition for the board to consider. The petition would have added to the definition the words "if such non-medical marijuana products or services are needed, requested and purchased by the patient."

But board chairman Glenn Schlabs refused to consider it, said Corry, who represented the medical-marijuana grower whose case resulted in the Court of Appeals decision.

[palmspringsbum]

Attorney seeks to stop state health department from changing medical marijuana rules

The Daily Camera | Erica Meltzer
Posted: 11/05/2009 11:50:24 PM MST

A Denver attorney who specializes in medical marijuana cases has filed an injunction seeking to block to the state health department from changing its rules around the provision of cannabis.

Earlier this year, after a lengthy meeting with patients, caregivers and advocates, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment adopted a definition of caregiver that allowed someone to qualify even if the only care they provided was medical marijuana.

But last month, the Colorado Court of Appeals found that a caregiver must do more than just provide pot. That decision is likely to be appealed.

In response to the court of appeals ruling, the Board of Health held an emergency meeting Tuesday and repealed its entire definition of caregiver so that it wouldn't conflict with the court ruling.

Corry complained then that the meeting wasn't properly noticed, people couldn't get in, phone lines set up to allow people to listen to the meeting didn't work and the board didn't hear any testimony from the public.

In a petition filed Thursday with the Denver District Court, Corry said the decision creates confusion for caregivers about their legal status and could make it harder for patients to get medical marijuana.

He asked the court to prevent the Board of Health from changing its rules or definitions without holding a meeting with more advance notice and more opportunity for input.

[palmspringsbum]

Marijuana lawyers file injunction against Board of Health pot hearing

WestWorld | By Joel Warner | Thu., Nov. 5 2009 @ 5:43PM


​During the emergency Colorado Board of Health hearing Tuesday that struck from state rules what, exactly, it means to be a marijuana caregiver and sent the state's medical marijuana community into turmoil, prominent pot lawyer Rob Corry told board chairman Glenn Schlabs that "I'll see you in court" when Schlabs wouldn't let him or other members or the public speak. Turns out Corry wasn't joking.

According to a press release sent out by the Boulder-based Cannabis Therapy Institute, Corry, along with his colleagues Lauren Davis, Brian Vicente and Sean McAllister (the later two fresh from their recent victory at the polls in Breckenridge) filed a petition in Denver District Court this afternoon to throw out the Board of Health's recent decision. Noting that the meeting was not sufficiently open to the public and that the board misinterpreted a recent Court of Appeals decision that triggered the emergency board meeting, the thirteen-page motion demands that the state health department "cease and desist from enforcement of the regulatory change."

According to the press release, the plaintiffs expect a court hearing on the matter in one to two days. In other words, let the pot wars begin.

Click here to read the full injunction.

[palmspringsbum]

Should Colorado marijuana dispensaries follow the New Mexico model?

WestWorld | By Joel Warner | Thu., Nov. 5 2009 @ 3:59PM


​As a recent Court of Appeals decision and a Board of Health brouhaha made clear, Colorado's medical marijuana is in desperate need of an overhaul. While officials and dispensary owners tussle over ridiculously vague pot laws, the state's marijuana patients are stuck in between -- a population that continues to grow by leaps and bounds.

So how do we fix this mess? One option might be to copy New Mexico's new medical marijuana system, in which state-licensed nonprofit dispensaries grow and distribute pot to card-carrying marijuana patients. Rhode Island launched a similar model, and Maine voters followed suit this week, voting to expand their ten-year-old marijuana law to include state-regulated dispensaries.

Could the New Mexico model work here? Possibly -- or possibly not.

On one hand, the state-sanctioned nonprofit system could solve many of the headaches currently plaguing the local medical-marijuana scene. State oversight of the dispensaries could help calm concerns that these operations are essentially unregulated (they're probably the only place in the state where you can legally buy processed food products that involve no inspections whatsoever). Furthermore, by requiring dispensaries to be nonprofits, regulators would force their owners to prove, once and for all, that they are "in it for the patients." Those working for the right reasons would stick around -- and those in it just to make a buck (and all the side businesses tagging along) will slink away.

If only the solution were so simple. In reality, New Mexico's system, which was instituted by the state health department late last year, hasn't worked perfectly. According to a recent New York Times story, nearly two dozen nonprofit groups have applied for the new state license, but the health department refuses to release any information about them. That means other regulatory agencies have no access to the facilities and the community is still largely in the shadows.

There's also the conundrum of how to transplant this model wholesale onto a large and mature dispensary industry like Colorado's. Would the current for-profit shops, which now number in the three digits, be able to turn into nonprofits, or would everybody have to shut down and start again? Either way, it would be a long and arduous process, leaving marijuana patients in the lurch. According to a Santa Fe Reporter story, it's taken New Mexico authorities months to consider the handful of applications so far received. Imagine how long it would take the already-strapped Colorado health department to sign off on all the operations needed to satisfy the 15,000 or so Colorado patients clamoring for their meds.

There are legal conundrums, too. Colorado is the only state where medical marijuana laws are enshrined as a constitutional amendment -- meaning it's very difficult to change them. The New Mexico model would be such a drastic change to what's in place here that it's possible the only way to institute it would be through another constitutional amendment. While state legislators could try to institute the system, they better be ready for dispensary owners, many of whom are doing quite well for themselves under the for-profit system, to fight them every step of the way.

And finally, even the New Mexico system would do nothing to solve the worrying situation that Colorado's medical-marijuana program is, at its heart, illegal. As the state Court of Appeals made clear last week, those who supply medical marijuana must do more than just provide pot to ensure the well-being of their patients. Even if the state begins licensing nonprofit dispensaries here, those operations still need to obtain marijuana -- either as seeds, clones or full-grown plants -- from somewhere else. In essence, there's no way everybody in the supply chain can provide for the well-being of every single patient. So does that mean the state, by condoning these dispensaries, would be involved in a crime? No one, it seems, knows the answer.

So there you go. The New Mexico model might help sooth some of Colorado's medical marijuana troubles -- but don't expect a magic bullet.

[palmspringsbum]

A heady debate on medical pot

The Denver Post | By Alicia Caldwell
Posted: 11/08/2009 01:00:00 AM MST


If you were trying to be diplomatic, you might say the teleconferenced state meeting last week on medical marijuana was chaotic.

Anonymous participants who had called in to the proceedings dropped F-bombs, talked about a barbecue and a stolen car, and at one point hijacked the call for five minutes by playing loud music.

This was supposed to be an emergency meeting of the state Board of Health to consider the definition of a medical marijuana caregiver. Instead, it sounded like a frat party.

Welcome to the medical marijuana policymaking process.

As momentum builds for the state legislature to address problems that have emerged due to the growth in the medical marijuana business in recent months, expect this cacophony to grow louder and uglier.

"The problem with the legalization crew is that they don't understand that the voters didn't approve legalization in 2000," said state Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver.

Be that as it may, it's important that spectacle not get in the way of substance.

Romer is at the forefront of a group of policymakers who are determined, as Romer put it, to put a "robust regulatory framework" on the state's exploding medical marijuana industry.

The major concerns that have emerged since this summer, when the Board of Health gave up on the idea of limiting caregiver patient loads, involve the vast expansion of dispensaries and new patients.

The suspicion is the system is being gamed by those who see an opportunity for de facto legalization and big profits that go along with catering to marijuana users.

"It's like somebody ripped up the cattle guard and the livestock is out," said Denver City Council member Charlie Brown, who is moving forward with city regulations on medical marijuana.

Before legislators dive into the nitty gritty of regulation proposals, they will have to make an important public policy decision that will set the stage for the remainder of the debate, and determine the definition of a caregiver. A state appeals court recently said a caregiver had to be more than someone who just supplied marijuana for medical use.

The key question for legislators is whether they think the 2000 constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana would accommodate the recognition of dispensaries as caregivers, keeping in mind the amendment makes no mention of dispensaries. Or, whether they want to define a caregiver — who is supposed to have significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient — as someone with a limited patient load.

The latter route seems more in keeping with how Amendment 20 was written, mentioning caregivers would be able to keep six plants on behalf of a patient. That decision will profoundly shape the delivery of medical marijuana in Colorado.

Limiting caregivers to a relative handful of patients would keep the enterprise small-time and grassroots, which is how it had been until the state Board of Health abandoned the idea of limiting the number of patients a caregiver could have. Allowing dispensaries would provide for commercialization and, some would say, the professionalization of the business.

Romer wants to go the route of dispensaries — licensing them and closely regulating them. He is exploring a range of ideas that are designed to shape the industry in a "medical model," as opposed to the convenience store model. His ideas include disqualifying people with criminal backgrounds from working in dispensaries or owning them, prohibiting them from targeting advertisements to people less than 21 years old, and requiring the product be grown in Colorado by licensed farmers.

But you might expect that people who believe in the medicinal powers of medical marijuana probably used it before. And if they're regular users, it's not unlikely they've been busted. A criminal screen would have to be carefully thought through, and not just applied as a blanket excluder.

Requiring medical pot to be grown in Colorado by licensed producers could help with quality control and cut down on illegal imports. It's probably worth considering if legislators went the dispensary route.

As for a ban on advertising targeted to those younger than 21, that would seem awfully tough to enforce. And at this point, is it really a problem? Sticking to a clean set of justifiable regulations would seem the best course.

Some, including Denver Council member Brown, want to explore taxing medical marijuana. That is something state Attorney General John Suthers plans to issue an opinion on.

If lawmakers wanted to impose something above the normal sales tax, like a liquor tax, that would have to go to a vote of the people, according to the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights.

Beyond the fiscal implications, medical marijuana poses zoning and land use issues, too, which will be largely local matters. Next to a school? Probably not a good idea.

It won't be long before the debate in Colorado once again shifts to whether marijuana ought to be legalized in the state. Voters shot down the idea in 2006. But just last week, Breckenridge voters overwhelmingly decided to legalize possession of an ounce or less. Denver voters did the same in 2005.

It very well may be that those in the medical marijuana business are shaping public opinion about legalization, for better or worse, by how they handle the loosening of the legal leash afforded by medical marijuana.

That's something to think about the next time medical marijuana proponents descend in droves on a public meeting.

Denver Post editorial writer Alicia Caldwell can be reached at acaldwell@denverpost.com or at 303-954-1930.

[palmspringsbum]

Should cities tax marijuana?

<span class="postbigbold">Though it's yet to be determined whether pot is a medical or herbal remedy, it's time to consider tax-generating structures.</span>

By The Denver Post
Posted: 11/08/2009 01:00:00 AM MST


Taxing medical marijuana sales is an idea worth considering, not because it is a potential cash cow for fiscally constrained governments, but because it could raise revenue needed to cover the services the flourishing businesses will require.

But caution is in order. There are some dominoes that need to fall first.

The topic came up again last week, as Denver City Council members Chris Nevitt and Charlie Brown publicly expressed support for imposing a city sales tax on medical marijuana sales. "We've got to tax this damn thing at the city rate, which is 3.62 percent," Brown told us. "We're talking millions of dollars here."

And that may be. But some questions about legality of taxation and the future of medical marijuana have to be answered first. And we think that overall, cities such as Denver ought not look to the emerging industry as a windfall that could close budget gaps.

First, the legality of taxing the commodity is up in the air.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers is researching the issue, and his decision will turn on whether the substance is deemed a prescription or something more like an herbal remedy.

The latter seems more likely, since marijuana isn't a drug that has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And herbal remedies are already taxed.

Second, we don't think governments ought to take advantage of the medical marijuana laws in the way that so-called "ganjapreneurs" have been doing.

Meaning, governments would be just as wrong to reap great wads of cash from back-door legalization efforts as are the mass dispensaries, some of which are just barely pretending to be serving the most infirm among us.

Amendment 20, which passed in 2000, did not approve the legalization of marijuana in Colorado, despite the wishful thinking of some.

Furthermore, legislators are poised to address the medical marijuana issue in the upcoming session, which begins in January, and their decisions could seriously affect how medical marijuana is delivered in Colorado. (See Alicia Caldwell's article from today's Perspective section.)

If their decisions shrink the number and reach of distributors, then a basic sales tax should be enough.

But if lawmakers create a structure that encourages a broader distribution model — with attendant regulatory and service requirements — then other fees and taxes would be worth contemplating.

It would seem prudent, we think, to wait until the shape of medical marijuana is more clearly defined before settling on a taxing structure.

It's smart to get ahead of the game and contemplate the tax and revenue-generating alternatives. But we hope governments will exhibit some foresight and restraint before they make decisions they might have to revise once the medical marijuana landscape is clearly defined.

[palmspringsbum]

Abuse of medicinal drug laws did not start with marijuana

November 09, 2009 9:02 AM | DAVE PHILIPPS | THE GAZETTE


Seemingly healthy young men are asking for intoxicating pain medication with a wink, a nod and suspiciously vague symptoms. Sympathetic physicians are making good money writing them prescriptions. New dispensaries are springing up all over Colorado Springs to capitalize on the legal gray area. Local officials and police are outraged.

The city promises a crackdown.

The brouhaha makes headlines in ’09.

1909.

The drug in question was not medical marijuana, which has been in the news so much lately. It was medical whiskey, and the similarities to today’s prescription pot predicament are remarkable.

A century ago, drinking alcohol for enjoyment was illegal in Colorado Springs, as recreational pot smoking is today. City founder Gen. William Jackson Palmer had forbidden liquor from being made or sold anywhere in the city.

“Palmer wanted to create an attractive, orderly city that would appeal to new settlers, as opposed to some of the wilder communities in the West with their saloons,” said Matt Mayberry, director of the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum. “But, people still want their alcohol and will come up with inventive ways to get around the law.”

In Palmer’s town, the way around the law was through the doors of the local pharmacy.

City law granted an exception for medicinal liquor. With a doctor’s prescription, a patient could buy a quart of whiskey at one of several local pharmacies and take it home. Shots were forbidden. So were pints of beer. It seemed to be a compassionate compromise. In an era when local doctors still sometimes prescribed heroin to treat tuberculosis, alcohol was seen as legitimate medicine.

But locals could not help but notice that a surprising number of healthy men were showing up at the pharmacy counter with doctor’s notes. Their most common malady, which required a stiff dose of whiskey, was “snakebite.”
“More people are bitten by snakes than in any town of this size that I know of,” a correspondent from the Pueblo Chieftain wryly noted in the 1880s. “It is a little remarkable with what facility a man can get a prescription for snakebite in such a temperance town.”

The same shenanigans seem to be back in style.

Marijuana is illegal in Colorado, but under a constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2000, people with “debilitating medical conditions” can register with the state to use the plant. The law says “primary care givers” can legally supply patients with their prescription pot.

State and local governments are struggling to define what the language really means. In the meantime, some people are treating it like medical whiskey all over again. About 400 people a day were signing up for the state’s medical marijuana registry during a rush in October, according to the Department of Public Health and Environment, which oversees the registry. Almost a quarter of them are men under age 30. They are the fastest growing group of medical marijuana users, and the majority say they need to smoke pot because of “severe pain.”

Public health officials think it may just be a new version of an old excuse — snakebite 2.0.

To serve this new group of patients, almost 100 dispensaries have opened in Colorado, including at least a dozen in the Pikes Peak region.

“Is it really all a sham? Were they getting the whiskey just for recreation? And are they doing the same thing with marijuana now?” asked Dan Zook, Assistant District Attorney for the Fourth Judicial District Attorney’s Office. “I don’t know. There are legitimate patients out there. But let’s face it, we have a lot of recreational users.”

At the turn of the century, the sham was pretty obvious.

Most of the pharmacies up and down Tejon Street dispensed with the formalities of fake illness and just began quietly pouring drinks.

Samuel Le Nord Caldwell, a local doctor, wrote in 1901 in a letter to future residents of the city that, although Colorado Springs was officially a dry town, all pharmacies “serve drinks to their patrons from their soda water fountains and one who 'knows the ropes' can get almost any kind of a drink.”

A chap just had to sidle up to the counter at the back, according to the editor of the Colorado City Iris, and “ask for ‘a nectar’ at one establishment or ‘a wild strawberry’ at another.”

There were crackdowns, of course. Police raided offending druggists and courts hit them with heavy fines in 1895, 1898, 1900, 1904, 1905, 1907, 1910 and 1911, according to newspapers.

But crackdowns never stemmed the flow of drink.

One flabbergasted editor wrote, “There are several druggists in town who have violated the liquor laws almost every day and the profits from their illegal business is so great that they can well afford to spend thousands of dollars evading conviction.”

The big profits spawned robberies and fights. In 1908, the wildly prosperous owner of the South End Pharmacy, who liked to wear huge diamond rings, was lured to the edge of town, robbed and shot dead.
The D.A.’s office says the modern-day medical marijuana situation has spawned a similar increase in violence and theft.

“We’ve seen home invasions. Three murders directly stem from marijuana. We haven’t seen this much crime associated with marijuana in years,” Zook said.

The city of Colorado Springs, like many towns in the state, is considering strict regulations for marijuana sellers. The days of the dispensary boom may be numbered. But keeping a lid on abuse of the law may prove tricky, if history is any indication.

The Springs never figured out how to stem the flow of medicinal whiskey.

In 1911, Colorado Springs Mayor Henry Hall pushed the city to get rid of the anti-alcohol laws, saying it was better to have saloons than back room pharmacy hypocrisy.

“Colorado Springs is living a lie in the pretense of prohibition — and it is not wholesome to live a lie,” he warned.

But prohibition, and the swift business of drugstore spirits, remained the status quo in the city until national Prohibition was repealed in 1933.

[palmspringsbum]

White seeks marijuana change

The Steamboat Pilot
By Zach Fridell Tuesday, November 10, 2009


Steamboat Springs — State Sen. Al White wants to change the way medical marijuana is grown and distributed in Colorado, but federal law is standing in the way of his plans.

White, R-Hay den, last week iss ued a news release stating that he wanted the state to create a mono poly on medi cal marijuana to prevent what he described as a “free-for-all.” It went on to say that White was drafting legislation that would have the state grow marijuana that would then be dispensed by licensed pharmacies.

But White has since learned that although the federal government has signaled it will not focus on prosecuting medical marijuana cases in states where medicinal marijuana has been legalized, the drug cannot be distributed by pharmacies. Marijuana remains a Schedule 1 controlled substance. Pharmacies are licensed to distribute only substances classified as Schedule 2 and lower.

On Monday, White said he wanted the state to grow and distribute the drug to ensure that dispensaries don’t turn to the black market to meet demand.

“What I have heard anecdotally from consumers is the prices are shooting up 200 to 300 percent,” White said. “What we’re seeing happen is demand outpacing supply, and when that happens, a dispensary owner, while having the best intentions, is not going to leave his shelf spaces empty with no product to sell.”

White said that could mean turning to drug dealers, but he said he has not heard of that happening at any dispensary yet.

Charlie Magnuson, co-owner of D and C Medical Marijuana, LLC and Therapeutic Massage in Steamboat Springs, said his business has not had any trouble meeting demand, and he emphasized that his business follows the law. He also said he realizes medical marijuana is more expensive than illegally purchased drugs, but he hopes that will change as the market matures.

“I’m hoping it will come down where legal medical marijuana is lower than anything on the black market, and that will discourage people from using the black market,” he said.

Magnuson declined to give the prices of marijuana sold at his dispensary.

White said the intention for his planned legislation was to bring more reliability to the medical marijuana market, not to discourage it.

“I’m trying to bring reliable quality review and consistent quality to the program, and also some professional respectability to the dispensation of it,” he said. “The federal government seems to be the biggest stumbling block in that.”

White said he is now stumped about how to create the change he would like to see in medical marijuana law, and he’s leaving future legislation up to other lawmakers.

“I honestly couldn’t come up with anything other than this that resolved the problem,” he said.

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Did the Boulder City Council accidentally define illegal weed dealers as medical-marijuana businesses?

By Michael Roberts | WestWorld | Nov. 11 2009 @ 10:53AM


The Boulder City Council pushed forward emergency rules about medical-marijuana businesses. Wonder how closely they read them.
​Update below:

Last night, the Boulder City Council considered imposing a temporary moratorium on new medical-marijuana operations -- and while members stopped short of putting an outright ban into place, they did establish a slew of restrictions. Through March 31, 2010, new dispensaries that didn't file before November 6 can't open in residential areas, or within 500 feet of primary or secondary schools or licensed daycare centers. Likewise, three dispensaries can't be 500 feet or less from each other.

Cannabis Therapy Institute outreach director Laura Kriho, who was at the marathon session, calls these restrictions "an effective moratorium on dispensaries in Boulder. With the retail and rental situation in the city being what it is, people were having a hard enough time finding a landlord to rent to them as it was. Now it will be effectively impossible because of the way the ordinance is written."

The haste with which these rules were assembled -- in "emergency" fashion, just like the Board of Health ruling about the description of caregivers that Denver District Court Judge Larry Naves threw out yesterday -- may have had other unintended consequences, too. Kriho thinks language adopted by the council might have established that anyone selling marijuana in the city, whether for medical purposes or not, now qualifies as a medical-marijuana business.

According to Kriho, the council-validated passage describes a medical-marijuana business as "(a) any establishment that makes available marijuana in any form to any other person in exchange for money, goods or services, or (b) possession of more than six marijuana plants or more than two ounces of a usable form of marijuana, unless the possession is by a patient or primary caregiver as defined in Article XVIII, Section 14 of the Colorado Constitution."

The first part of this text uses the word "marijuana," not "medical marijuana," as well as the phrase "any other person" as opposed to "patient" or something along those lines. "To me, it seems like they made all marijuana dealers in the city legitimate medical-marijuana businesses," Kriho says. As for the second part of the definition, she says, "Who has six plants who's not a patient or a medical-marijuana business? A drug dealer."

Another potential difficulty: What happens to the 500 feet restriction if a husband and a wife are caregivers for each other? Wouldn't that now be illegal, at least through March 31? Kriho pigeonholed councilmember Angelique Espinoza after the meeting broke up to ask that question and claims to have been told the measure wouldn't be enforced in such an instance -- a thin reed to cling to for a couple in such a situation.

Other potential problems, in Kriho's view, involve the 500-foot dispensary saturation limit. "That will effectively eliminate any kind of wellness center, where one or more caregivers want to get together or people want to incorporate medical cannabis into their holistic practice. This is something we were going to give a seminar on. Now, if you're a message therapist and you want to incorporate medical cannabis into your practice, you might not be able to do it if someone else in your building already is doing it. These are ridiculous standards.

"This is what they've done by ramming this through as an emergency measure," Kriho continues. "And why was it such an emergency? There's a new city council coming in. It was the last meeting of at least one of the council members. Why couldn't they wait for the new city council to address a law that's been on the books for nine years? Why they felt compelled to deal with it in a lame-duck session is beyond me."

By Kriho's estimate, nearly 200 people attended the council meeting, which lasted until well after midnight, with approximately 43 of 45 people who spoke supporting medical marijuana and dispensaries in general. Nonetheless, the council made its move by a 4-2 vote, and there wasn't a big hubbub about it because, in Kriho's opinion, most people didn't understand that the regulations were something of a stealth moratorium.

Then again, there may have been some things the council didn't understand, either.

Update: 10:52 a.m.: Just had a conversation with medical-marijuana attorney Jeffrey Gard, and while he believes the definition of a medical-marijuana business in Boulder printed above was perhaps inelegantly written, and would have been clearer had the term "medical marijuana" been used in lieu of plain ol' garden-variety "marijuana," the City Council has a safety net. A passage in the document reads: "Nothing herein is intended to legalize any medical-marijuana business that is not legal under existing applicable Colorado law."

In addition, Gard offers praise for council language that appears to differentiate between a medical-marijuana business and a primary caregiver. The way he reads it, primary caregivers will not be burdened by the 500-feet restrictions involving schools and residential areas the way a business would.

As for Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett, he hasn't had a chance to study the passage in question. However, he says, "I can't imagine anything the Boulder City Council did would make non-medical marijuana any more or less legal than it already is. So whatever they're trying to do is fine. It's not going to change anything about state law and what can be prosecuted."

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Colorado medical-pot backers form trade group

By John Ingold | The Denver Post

Posted: 11/12/2009 01:00:00 AM MST
Updated: 11/12/2009 02:24:29 AM MST


A group of medical-marijuana advocates — striving for legitimacy for their still-nascent industry — announced the formation of a new trade group Wednesday.

The Colorado Wellness Association, its founders said, will formulate regulations for the state's booming medical- marijuana dispensary business, develop quality-control guidelines to protect patients, produce a regular magazine and perhaps even start an online medical-marijuana commodities market for dispensary owners to purchase their product.

"This industry is growing up," said medical-marijuana attorney Rob Corry, the new group's chairman.

The founding of the association is another step by members of Colorado's broad medical-cannabis community in recent months to cast a mainstream light on what had for years been an in-the-shadows business. A group of medical-marijuana patients and dispensary owners in Boulder County have formed a similar group. Advocates have begun to lobby state lawmakers for regulations to better define and protect the industry.

Wednesday's announcement came at the offices of Full Spectrum Laboratories, a recently opened Denver company that tests samples of medical-marijuana products and quantifies their potency. The lab not only provides quality-control assurances but also helps patients determine their needed dosage of the drug, lab founder Bob Winnicki said.

"We're just bringing stuff that is already being done in other industries and focusing it on this industry," said Winnicki, who dropped out during his third year of medical school to start the lab.

The lab will charge dispensaries about $60 per test and will provide the dispensary with a certification that can be shown to patients. Understanding the potency of an item of medical marijuana — which can vary widely based on the plant strain, growing technique and how the drug is consumed — is another step toward mainstreaming the industry, Winnicki said.

"Doctors are not going to write prescriptions for things that are not a given dosage," he said. "No doctor is ever going to say, 'Take two hits off a joint and call it good.' "

The new association also is working with former state Sen. Bob Hagedorn, a one-time head of the Senate's health committee, to craft policy proposals for the upcoming legislative session.

John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com

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<i>See Religion</i>: Oh Heavenly Weed; Boulder ministry lets you buy, smoke marijuana - 12 Nov 09, Fox 31 KDVR