POT LAWS PERPLEX CITIES

The Conflict Between Federal and State Rules Puts Medical-Marijuana
Clinics and Local Officials in a Legal Limbo.

Inside CannaMart, a Greenwood Village "wellness counseling" center
that connects medical-marijuana patients with the medicine they seek,
there are the usual posters of marijuana leaves and pro-pot messages.
But there is also something else: boxes in various states of packing.

CannaMart is moving, driven out by the difficulty of getting a
business license in Greenwood Village. Because the sale of marijuana
violates federal law -- even though Colorado voters approved a
medical-marijuana amendment to the state constitution in 2000 --
Greenwood Village considers the business to be in violation of its
public nuisance ordinance.

"I'm going to lose a lot of patients," Stan Zislis, CannaMart's
owner, said of the upcoming move. (He won't say where he's moving
to). "They're denying people's rights, basically."

In the months since the Obama administration said it would respect
state medical-marijuana laws when it comes to federal drug
enforcement, dispensaries have openly proliferated in the Colorado --
now numbering perhaps as many as 100.

But with state officials saying they have no authority to regulate
dispensaries, local governments across Colorado have been rushing to
fill the regulatory vacuum, creating a wildly varying patchwork of
rules for dispensaries.

On one end, for instance, Aurora has joined Greenwood Village in
arguing that dispensaries are not allowed in the city.

"For now, absent any direction from the court, we will be following
our long-standing business-licensing rules that require all
businesses to be lawful," said Aurora spokeswoman Kim Stuart.

At the other end are cities like Boulder, which has no regulations
for dispensaries and no plans to impose any.

"At this point, we don't have any proposals before council," city
spokesman Patrick von Keyserling said.

Dizzied by the tornadic confluence of federal and state law, a number
of other cities -- including Englewood, Northglenn and Breckenridge
- -- have placed moratoriums on new dispensaries so they can study
whether to impose zoning or licensing requirements. Officials in
Commerce City, Steamboat Springs and a number of other mountain
communities are also examining the issue.

"It's just difficult when there's a conflict between federal law and
a state constitutional amendment, and we're stuck in the middle
trying to reconcile those two," said Northglenn Mayor Kathleen Novak.

While Amendment 20 -- the 2000 voter-approved measure that legalized
medical marijuana in Colorado -- makes provisions for patients or
their "caregivers" to grow and possess marijuana, it says nothing
about dispensaries, many of which operate on a retail business model.
How dispensaries should obtain and sell marijuana is still a legal
gray area. Confidentiality rules surrounding the medical marijuana
registry add another layer of complexity.

"I don't think there's much debate over the fact that we don't have
any authority over dispensaries," said Jim Martin, the head of the
state Department of Public Health and Environment, which maintains
the registry.

So shabby is the regulatory vision for marijuana dispensaries that
some cannabis advocates have banded together to form a policy group
to propose regulations.

"I don't know how much the city governments, the county governments
have the patients' best interest at heart," said Laura Kriho, the
outreach director for the Cannabis Therapy Institute. "That's what we
want to do; we want to protect the patient."