MEDICAL MARIJUANA HAS BECOME A GROWTH INDUSTRY IN COLORADO

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."

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."

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.

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."

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?"