MEDICINAL POT USERS, PRODUCERS NOT SO LAID BACK OVER REGULATIONS

At its peak, 28 medical marijuana dispensaries dotted Mesa County's
landscape, staffed by about 200 workers who helped pull in tens of
thousands of dollars in sales taxes each month for Grand Junction's
city coffers.

What a difference three months has made.

After April 5, when city voters decided to ban the commercial sale of
medical marijuana, storefronts went dark, and some of the most vocal
proponents for medical cannabis appear to be silent. Grand Junction's
ban came on the heels of a ban by county voters several months
earlier. Hence, dispensaries in the county's borders, save one in
Palisade, disappeared off the map.

As of May, 3,575 medical marijuana card-holding patients lived in Mesa
County, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and
Environment, the agency that issues licenses for legal marijuana use
if it's recommended by a physician.

Without retail centers, the county's estimated number of medical
marijuana users would require a combined 715 caregivers to grow the
drug for patients, providing each caregiver grew plants for their
maximum allotment of five patients. Medical marijuana advocates say
the caregiver model in Mesa County has not developed to that extent,
and patients have either gone underground to get the drug via illegal
transactions, or they travel to neighboring counties to purchase
medical marijuana from dispensaries.

"For Grand Junction people it's really hard," said employee Jene Craft
of ColoMed Center, 4860 N. Townsend Ave. in Montrose, one of two
remaining medical marijuana centers in Montrose County. "The tax
revenue that is lost. ... You've really opened it up to the wild, wild
West again."

Craft estimates lately he is serving about 10 to 15 new patients per
week, compared to two to three new patients a week when medical
marijuana stores were allowed in Grand Junction and unincorporated
Mesa County. Craft doesn't specifically keep track of where patients
come from, but he guesses the latest influx is a result of Mesa
County's ban. The demand has become so great that marijuana grown
through the center cannot cure as long as workers prefer - about two
to three months - before it is sold.

"We can't keep up with demand, and it's never been enough," he
said.

What happened, Craft suggests, is that by having medical marijuana
legal and locally available for some time, the drug eventually became
a pain-relieving staple for hundreds of people who initially were
hesitant to try it for fear of its stigma. After weening themselves
off some of their prescription medications, "People crossed over," he
said. "Now that it's something that is part of their life, there's
more demand than ever."

Medical marijuana cardholders not heading south to dispensaries in
Delta and Montrose are making the trek east to centers in Rifle and
Glenwood Springs, according to dispensary owners there.

Four dispensaries have set up shop in Rifle. A fifth, Herbal
Outfitters, 125 W. Main St., closed recently.

"People who can't get it (locally) are a little upset," said Dave
Enlow, an employee at Rifle Mountain Dispensary, 124 W. Third St.

Enlow said the business is attracting more customers from the Grand
Junction area.

Business booms on the weekends at Green Cross Dispensary, 120 E. Third
St., Suite A, a manager named Tifany said. She didn't want to give her
last name.

Tifany said a good cut of those new patients make the 140-mile round
trip from Mesa County. While patients and caregivers are still growing
medical marijuana, it has been harder to find seeds and clones,
otherwise known as seedlings, because their sale is not allowed in
Rifle, she said.

"It definitely is sad they have to drive all the way up here," she
said. "I hear it all the time. People don't want to go to the way it
was (before dispensaries)."

The dispensary model works for some people because it's a professional
atmosphere that doesn't subject people to having to meet in strangers'
homes, parking lots or other unfamiliar areas to buy medical
marijuana, said Shannon Gass of the nonprofit Cannabis Consumer Health
and Patient Advocacy Association. Gass is in the midst of organizing
caregivers into subscribing to an accreditation model.

Gass said he's not surprised Mesa County residents didn't stop using
medical marijuana and now travel out of county to get it.

"It's a symbolic relationship between formal and informal," he said.
"Walking into a building is a formal setting. Walking into a house,
it's an informal setting. It seems like people want the
brick-and-mortar setting."