POT HAZE CLOUDING LEVEL OF DIALOGUE

It is just pot, people.

Yes, weed, reefer, ganja, a little sticky icky-icky - call it what
you will - but trust me, it is in Colorado to stay.

So can we all please grow up now?

I swore I'd never keep breakfast down if I read one more medical-
marijuana story. And yet, here I find myself writing one. We have all
lost our minds on this.

City and state officials from across Colorado continue to virtually
lose their minds fighting against the smoky haze of medical
marijuana, made legal in 2000 by Amendment 20, flailing away with
short-sighted rules, moratoriums and outright bans in increasingly
silly-looking attempts to rebottle the dope genie.

It is not entirely their fault. When an estimated 400 people a week
are getting doctors' permission to buy medical marijuana, and
dispensaries are popping up like dandelions, there should maybe be
cause for concern or, at least, a little regulation.

I have been a believer in the medicinal properties of marijuana since
the day nearly 20 years ago that I interviewed a 50-ish man who told
of going out every night after work to the roughest part of town to
buy weed for his ailing, elderly mother.

She could barely move from her pain - until he began bringing home
nickel and dime bags of marijuana. I still remember her walking
around and laughing, likely stoned out of her mind, when she brought
us tea during that interview.

This is why I had planned to just savage Charlie Brown this morning.
Maybe you have read of the Denver city councilman's ordinance
proposal on dispensaries.

Some of it, I assumed, was simply more lunatic ideas by a politician
terrified of the mere thought of marijuana, that if he flung around
enough red tape, it would all go away.

There were rules on prior convictions, of what can and cannot be done
inside a dispensary, plus a laundry list of other requirements that
no sane businessman would tolerate, much less a weed purveyor.

But it is hard to jump and savage Brown. The guy does his homework.
And he takes more self-inflicted shots than I could ever dream of
landing.

"I'll bet you 20 to 25 percent of what I put out there the other
night was stuff I really don't believe in," he says, laughing loudly.
"It was like sausage making, a discussion starter to feel out my
colleagues, to see where they are on this."

The last thing he wants, he said, is to shut down
dispensaries.

"We in Denver are pioneers in this area!" Brown says. "There are
certainly some in public office, law enforcement and the legislature
who want (dispensaries) all shut down. I'm not one of them.

"But I know we have to do something because the federal government
could change its mind on enforcement. And I know we, as a city, have
a right and the duty to regulate a unregulated business inside our
borders."

He says he has visited and chatted with operators of about dozen
dispensaries in his district. Most crave the regulation he is calling
for. They don't mind, he says, paying the 3.62 percent sales tax he
is calling for.

"They want reasonable, rational legislation too. They'll tell you
that. They know that some dispensaries are run by drug dealers,
stoners. You regulate them, you make them pay taxes, you regulate the
stoners right out of business."

He wants, he says, to bring rational change to the dispensary system,
what he calls "the wild, wild West" in Denver now.

"I simply want it licensed like every other business in this city. I
want it regulated because once you do it, that will legitimize it."

Now that is grown-up talk.