COUNCIL MOVES TO BAN POT RETAILERS

Grand Junction city council members have signaled their desire to do
away with medical marijuana dispensaries.

After taking public testimony about the dispensaries, council members
decided on Aug. 18 that they - and not the voters - would decide the
fate of the shops. That fate now appears be to shuttering the
businesses within city limits, according to council members at a
workshop Wednesday night.

Centers that grow medical marijuana and cook edible medical marijuana
products may also perish under the axe. City Attorney John Shaver said
city staff would recommend that if council members banned pot shops,
it would only make sense to ban the commercial supply chain.

While the seven members did not vote on either of those issues
Wednesday night, a majority of council members said they would support
banning medical marijuana shops and directed city staff to draft a
resolution to that end. The council will vote on that resolution
during a mid-September meeting.

Council member Tom Kenyon said he believed those who need the drug for
medical conditions could still get it through caregivers, so closing
the shops wouldn't affect patient care.

"We are a pretty compassionate community," he said. "With the
caregiver model I still hope they'll get their needs taken (care of).
Understand that there's still a lot of issues that don't make sense to
us."

Council member Sam Susuras, and other council members, said they
didn't believe the proliferation of medical marijuana dispensaries in
local communities was the intended result when voters passed Amendment
20 in 2000. The law allows those with a physician recommendation to
receive a license for medical marijuana and grow medical marijuana or
permit a caregiver to grow plants to help the patient.

"Medical marijuana centers throughout Colorado are not compatible with
the vision and the comprehensive plan," Susuras said. Susuras also
questioned the message that having medical marijuana dispensaries in
town sends to youth.

"Will it lead to legalization down the road? I think we should look at
that," he said.

Mayor Teresa Coons was the only council member that did not expressly
say she would vote for banning the shops. She asked council members to
consider medical marijuana outside of the context of the drug being
illegal on a federal level, much like herbal remedies that line the
shelves of the store Vitamin Cottage. Like marijuana, many of the
store's herbal remedies are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration, though some people find the medicines helpful, she
said.

"Nobody is in this room or up here saying we ought to shut down
Vitamin Cottage," she said.

The ban of cannabis shops in the Grand Valley is not a done deal. In
late August, Mesa County Commissioners agreed to let voters determine
whether medical marijuana shops should exist within unincorporated
sections of the county. Voters will decide on that in November. Fruita
allows medical marijuana shops with regulations in certain zones of
the city. Palisade currently has one medical marijuana shop and a
medical marijuana growing center, but is in the midst of a moratorium
on future shops.