MEDICAL MARIJUANA SLUGFEST

Brian Vicente of Sensible Colorado - that would be the pro-cannabis
lobby - isn't letting his pleasure with a House committee vote this
week dull his sense of realism.

Yes, the medical-marijuana industry is generally happy with
regulations approved by the Judiciary Committee in a party-line vote,
but Vicente knows the legislative terrain will only get steeper.

"I feel like we're in a 12-round fight and the first round may turn
out to be our best," he told me.

For spectators to the slugfest over medical marijuana, it probably
feels like the 10th or 11th round, given how long the conflict has
raged. But those rounds were fought mostly in other arenas - before
the Denver City Council, for example. This legislative dustup is the
main event, and will determine whether dispensaries survive or are
driven to extinction.

If you're like me and hope dispensaries in some form survive in the
interest of genuine patients who were poorly served by the previous
caregiver model - and believe me, some were - the prospect of the
industry taking a few lumps is not so terrible. Why? Because the
amended bill overreaches, and because Colorado has a chance to get
its regulatory model right.

Among other things, the Judiciary Committee loosened rules on whether
dispensary owners could have criminal drug records. But why? Is it
really too much to expect that owners of businesses whose product on
the black market props up a brutal network of thugs and assassins
come to the table with clean hands? If they merely made a mistake
earlier in their lives, fine. We all understand. But find another career.

Sen. Chris Romer, a Denver Democrat and a sponsor of House Bill 1284,
says a clean record is "non-negotiable" with him. He'll turn on the
bill if it's not included. He's also determined to remove an
amendment allowing the consumption of edible products on a
dispensary's premises (its rationale being that residents of
federally subsidized housing can't take medical marijuana to their
homes). "We're all sympathetic to the folks in VA housing," Romer
says, "but we're not doing Amsterdam hash bars. We're doing wellness clinics."

Romer remains committed to regulatory standards that squeeze out what
he calls "the knucklehead retail model" run by people with no
expertise and not enough capital, and recounts a recent evening spent
with Denver vice cops who responded to a crime at a low-rent
dispensary. "Every employee was high," he told me, and "a 21-year-old
guy was running the place."

He foresees dispensaries as sophisticated "wellness" centers
regulated as thoroughly as casinos, where "every transaction is
videotaped." No riffraff owners or employees. The life cycle of every
plant tracked and documented. And, for that matter, a local option:
If cities and counties want to ban dispensaries altogether, so be it,
Romer says. Those are fighting words, though, since the House
committee removed that provision, too.

Even Romer's Senate co-sponsor, Republican Nancy Spence of
Centennial, isn't prepared to go so far. She's fine with granting
wide latitude to communities in imposing zoning restrictions, but
worries that Colorado could end up with just a few towns - Denver and
Boulder in the metro area, for example - opening their doors to
dispensaries. Where would that leave patients with serious ailments
in remote locales who can't find a caregiver to supply medical marijuana?

It's a good argument, but the opposing one is better: that the
original medical-marijuana law approved by voters, Amendment 20,
never contemplated a single retail dispensary. If the legislature is
going to expand the scope of the law by allowing dispensaries, it
should also give local voters the ability to opt out of such a
dramatic departure - particularly given the passionate disputes over
whether dispensaries promote crime and recreational drug use.

Even with a local option, after all, many dispensaries will no doubt
survive. If they're well run, meticulously regulated and prove over
time that they're good neighbors that don't cater to potheads, as the
current free-for-all system does, then other communities will
gradually let them in, too.

And if that's the case, the medical-marijuana industry will someday
be able to declare uncontested victory, no matter how badly a few of
the next rounds go.