OVERSIGHT OFFICE FOR MED POT IS WELL-OFF

When fully up to speed later this year, the new state office
dedicated to enforcement of
medical-marijuana laws for the industry will have enough investigators
to rival the size of the field staff at the Colorado Bureau of
Investigation.

The burgeoning new Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division - born last
July 1 and funded by fees paid by dispensary owners and growers - is a
rarity among government programs in that it is hiring at all.

The division hopes to have 27 investigators, up from the five it has
now.

The CBI, an agency that helps smaller departments investigate murders
and other major crimes and also investigates complex white-collar
crime cases, has 34 field investigators. Its officials have been
begging for years for two to three more sleuths at what it says is a
woefully understaffed office in Grand Junction.

"People are working like crazy," said bureau spokesman Lance Clem.
"Their plate is full."

To make up the slack, officers from Denver routinely drive across the
state to help staff the office.

Clem adds that it is not lost on those trying to solve tough cases
such as homicide and fraud that they feel understaffed while the new
medical-marijuana division rakes in the cash to monitor an industry
that exists in violation of federal law.

"You could get an earful over here," Clem said.

Folks at the new medical-marijuana enforcement division say they
understand their revenue stream can be a sore point with other
government agencies hurting for support.

"That's why we're trying to be very, very prudent," said Julie
Postlethwait, the division's spokeswoman.

The medical-marijuana division already has collected $8.9 million in
application fees from medical-marijuana growers, sellers and makers of
edible products. Postlethwait says division officials don't want to
waste such relative riches.

So despite an appropriation that would allow them to hire as many as
100 full-time employees based on those collected fees,
medical-marijuana officials expect to hire about half that,
Postlethwait said.

"Just because we have the money doesn't mean we know what we want,"
Postlethwait said. "We're new. We're trying to find the appropriate
number (of staffers)."

The nearly $9 million in collected application fees stands in contrast
to the $8.4 million that pays the CBI investigators and the bureau's
71 crime-lab technicians.