A PLACE FOR POT GROWERS

The e-mail landed in my inbox last Saturday morning, shortly after
Coloradans learned of a federal raid in Highlands Ranch on a medical
marijuana growing operation. It was a plea from another growera
fellow whose operation I'd visited a few days before.

"Please don't use my name or our location," my correspondent wrote.
"I don't believe it is a good idea to rub what we are doing in the
feds' faces."

No kidding. Jeffrey Sweetin, the Drug Enforcement Administration's
agent in charge of the Denver office, seems to take public
declarations by medical marijuana growers as a personal affront. When
Chris Bartkowicz invited KUSA-TV to his suburban home and clownishly
bragged about how much money he hoped to make from his basement pot
garden, Sweetin decided it was time to show Coloradans who was boss.
His agents swooped in and arrested Bartkowicz, who has been charged
with distributing illegal drugs and could face up to 40 years in a cell.

"It's not medicine," Sweetin insisted after the Feb. 12 raid --
except that in Colorado under certain conditions, marijuana is
medicine, as declared by voters who put that judgment in their
constitution. If Sweetin wishes to sneer at the opinion of a majority
of his neighbors, so be it. But federal officials are usually
well-advised to disagree respectfully when most law-abiding citizens
dispute Washington's imperial wisdom.

Sweetin was on a roll, however, and would not bite his tongue.

"Technically, every dispensary in the state is in blatant violation
of federal law," he said. "The time is coming when we go into a
dispensary, we find out what their profit is, we seize the building
and we arrest everybody. They're violating federal law; they're at
risk of arrest and imprisonment."

What does he mean, "We find out what their profit is"? What business
of Sweetin's is the profit so long as a dispensary sells to patients
on the state registry and is able to document as much? Every
dispensary that complies with those standards meets the rules laid
down by Deputy U.S. Attorney General David Ogden last year when he
said federal agents should not target such establishments.

If Bartkowicz gets 40 years, or any years, it will be a miscarriage
of justice given the selective manner in which the Justice Department
has chosen to enforce federal law -- unless, of course, it can be
shown he was selling on the black market, too. To add to the
travesty, Bartkowicz's days as a grower were almost certainly
numbered anyway, since state lawmakers will never authorize large
growing/dispensing operations in residential neighborhoods when they
decide in upcoming weeks on a regulatory framework. Nor should they.

The marijuana growing facility I visited is not in a residential
neighborhood. It is in an industrial corridor in Denver, in a
building without so much as the tiniest sign to betray its mission.
The owner says his landlord, banker and insurer know what he's doing,
as does the city itself. "I don't come out of the marijuana culture,"
he told me. "I come out of the business culture" -- specifically, a
privately held real estate firm that was liquidated during the recent
housing debacle.

"I think marijuana should have a place in our society but it
shouldn't be everywhere," he added. He objects, for example, to one
of his residential neighbors growing marijuana.

"I don't want this guy growing marijuana in his basement near my
kids' school. And I do believe the people of Colorado are better off
buying marijuana from the likes of me than they are buying it from
the Mexican drug cartels or stuff grown in basements around town, by
guys like my neighbor."

The owner and an employee grow four different varieties at any given
time, although they keep on hand a total of 20 strains in the form of
"mother plants." The hydroponic gardening method relies upon an
infusion of nutrients, bright lights and even a boost of carbon
dioxide to enhance the growth rate.

So where does this marijuana go? My host brandished a sheaf of papers
representing "dozens" of patients for whom he is the official
caregiver. And since he isn't permitted to operate a retail
dispensary in an industrial zone, he says, he takes the drug to them.

If we're going to allow medical marijuana in Colorado, doesn't this
sort of growing operation -- efficient, secure and subject to
potential inspection by government officials -- make sense? In recent
months, I've come to believe that any scheme to regulate medical
marijuana ought to ensure that it is produced right here, mainly by
serious authorized growers, rather than provided by a mix of local
amateurs and blood-soaked kingpins.

To be sure, hundreds and maybe thousands of so-called patients are
gaming this state's medical marijuana rolls to obtain a recreational
drug. That's why lawmakers need to approve regulations that limit
(they can't eliminate) the abuse. I've communicated with too many
credible patients, however, to meekly accept Sweetin's dictum that
marijuana doesn't qualify as medicine.

Consider the plight of Cathy Donohue, a former Denver city
councilwoman whom I've known for nearly 30 years. Some years ago she
had her lumbar disc removed, as well as parts of two others. "I wore
an iron and plastic brace for three years and have worn elastic
braces with pieces of steel stays in them since then," she tells me.
"Over time, the effectiveness of the drugs I was using for pain
relief became less effective."

A few months ago, her frustration prompted her to apply to the state
registry and eventually to try a marijuana tincture, "which is a
syrupy liquid," for pain relief. The upshot? "It has lessened my pain
so significantly that I pray the legislature will not make it too
difficult for people like me to buy it."

I realize that the scientific verdict -- as opposed to the verdict by
anecdote -- remains out as to the effectiveness of marijuana for pain
relief, at least as compared to other, more readily available drugs
that don't exist in a legal twilight zone. But so long as suffering
patients like Donohue swear by marijuana and prefer the dispensary
model of acquiring it, the state ought to find a responsible way to
accommodate them.

Sweetin, meanwhile, might consider reserving his tough guy talk for
genuine threats to public safety.