RETURN SANITY TO MARIJUANA RULES

Lawmakers should take up state AG John Suthers' plan, which would
honor what voters in 2000 had in mind for medical pot.

As Colorado policymakers grapple with how to control what has become
a barely disguised effort to legalize marijuana, we think the state's
law enforcement community has come up with the best approach.

Broadly speaking, it would return the medical marijuana mess to the
more sane situation we had before this year's explosion of patients
and dispensaries.

The current lack of regulation has created a vacuum, which can be a
dangerous thing. All sorts of undesirable situations -- and proposed
remedies -- have arisen.

The main tenets of the law enforcement approach, put forward by
Attorney General John Suthers, would limit caregivers to five
patients and impose tighter controls on physicians who recommend
medical marijuana for patients.

It would require doctors recommending medical marijuana to be in good
standing, and it would give the state health department the ability
to sanction doctors who violate new rules. Under his approach, those
who actually need medical marijuana could contact the health
department to be put in touch with a provider.

We think it hews more closely to what voters approved in 2000 and is
a far cleaner approach than that suggested by state Sen. Chris Romer,
who has proposed a wide range of regulations that would legitimize
and license dispensaries that weren't even mentioned in the amendment
passed by voters.

Though we appreciate Romer's effort to gather input from interested
parties, we think his approach creates a need for an immense
bureaucratic response -- licensure, regulation and tax collection. We
are concerned it will devolve into the chaotic medical marijuana
situation that exists in California, where policy makers are
struggling to regulate dispensaries.

We hope Democratic lawmakers, who control both the state House and
Senate, think hard about the intent of the original medical marijuana
measure and the sentiments of their constituents before supporting
the bill being pushed by Romer, a fellow Democrat.

Communities all over the state have imposed moratoriums and
restrictive conditions on the proliferation of dispensaries. They're
making their feelings quite clear.

Gov. Bill Ritter, a career prosecutor, also should take a leadership
role on the issue as his fellow Democrats shape how medical marijuana
will be delivered in this state.

It's one of the biggest issues of the upcoming legislative session,
and we hope a bipartisan group of lawmakers will step forward to
champion the Suthers' position.

Or, quite frankly, voters should just legalize marijuana use, because
that's better than what we have now with people skirting the law to smoke pot.

Though voters approved medical marijuana in 2000, the problems didn't
begin until this year. The state Board of Health declined last summer
to formalize patient limits for medical marijuana caregivers. It also
failed to define what it meant to have "significant responsibility"
for a patient. That abdication gave enterprising marijuana peddlers
an opening, and a motivation for getting as many people as possible
medically certified to use marijuana.

It's time to nudge medical marijuana closer to what voters had in
mind nine years ago when they approved the small-scale use of
marijuana for desperately sick people.