COLORADANS 'JUST SAY NO' TO POT RESTRICTIONS

DENVER -- Hundreds of marijuana smokers stood up at a Colorado Board
of Health meeting Monday and dismantled the pothead image one
stereotype at a time.

For starters, they motivated off their couches and packed the Tivoli
Student Union on the Auraria campus to protest a proposal to limit
medical marijuana providers to five patients each. The audience was
made up of persons in wheelchairs and crutches, reefer-promoting
police officers, AIDS and cancer patients, and a woman who described
herself as a "pro-life Republican mother."

Another mom, Aspen attorney Lauren Maytin, who has a 16-month-old,
joined the chorus of cannabis crusaders who said changing the rules
would be bunk. There are currently no limits on how many patients a
provider can treat.

"If adopted, these changes would endanger Colorado's children. We
should be discouraging neighborhood drug operations and encouraging
safe, responsible dispensary choices outside of the home," she
testified before the board, arguing that legal dispensaries would
minimize youth exposure to illicit drugs.

Maytin, who has worked with the Colorado chapter of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said Amendment 20,
which Colorado voters passed in 2000, trumps the proposal that was on
the table. The amendment allows residents to alleviate certain
debilitating conditions with marijuana, but it has left law
enforcement grappling with how to enforce U.S. drug laws.

A medicinal marijuana dispensary is now operating in Carbondale,
another is opening in Glenwood Springs, and it might not be long
before Aspen has one too. Maytin said she has clients in Aspen who
were waiting to see what transpired at last night's Colorado Board of
Health meeting before deciding how to proceed.

After 12 hours of discussion, the board voted to make minor amendments
to the state's medical marijuana system, but it rejected the
five-patient rule. The audience members erupted into applause and
high-fives when the decision was made. There were only about 50 people
left from what had been a crowd of 500. Throughout the day,
earsplitting cheers and loud jeers showered the hall as the public
made it clear which decisions and speakers they did and did not favor.

Police, prosecutors and the state's chief medical officer turned out
to support the rule change, arguing it was needed to better define who
can legally grow marijuana and to prevent the existing system from
fraudulent claims.

Ron Hyman, registrar of vital statistics at the state health
department, said there has been "explosive growth" in the number of
registered pot patients. Colorado's registry has grown by almost 1,000
patients per month this year, he said, including 2,000 new patients
just last month. Hyman said he predicted that the state would have
15,000 registered patients by the time 2010 rolls around.

"We're doing the same amount of work in a day that we used to do in
over a month," he said.

But most the audience that came out Monday were cannabis
crusaders.

"When I came back from the war, I had real bad PTSD and torn
ligaments," said Jonathan Edens, an Iraq war vet and registered
medical-marijuana patient from Colorado Springs. "I was so addicted to
pills, I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror without being
disgusted. Now that I've started smoking marijuana, I've dropped 50
pounds and am off most of the medication I was on."

A lawyer from Summit County told the board he didn't want them to
"waste the taxpayers' money" in making a decision he said would later
lose in court. He also said regulators failed to take into account the
small businesses that have answered the demand for medical marijuana,
and that limiting caregivers to five patients each would be especially
bad for Colorado's rural communities, where access to the plant can be
more difficult than in more populated locales.

Others warned that if medical marijuana is too difficult to obtain,
people will buy it on the streets, where drug transactions can get a
lot more dicey.

"More regulation drives people to the black market, and that means
patient care suffers," said Dr. Paul Bregman.

"If this law passes, patients will lose their access to safe medicine
and some will die. Please be compassionate," warned a Colorado
dispensary owner.

When a board member asked the dispensary owner how many patients he
thinks would be reasonable for his operation, he set the bar high.
"I'd like to be under the same standards as Walgreens or a Wal-Mart
pharmacy," the man said.

Others played on the "just say no" to drugs slogan championed by the
Reagan administration, as they asked the board to "just say no" to the
rule change.

In the end, that's what happened. Additionally, the board rejected a
proposal that would have required caregivers to help patients with
daily activities and it better defined medical marijuana terms
outlined in state law.