It’s about time the state got a grip on the role of medical marijuana caregivers.
The vote Wednesday by the state Board of Health to require caregivers to provide sick patients with, well, care in addition to marijuana is a long time coming.
The regulations are in line with Colorado’s 2000 medical marijuana constitutional amendment, an appellate court decision and state statutes.
But since the regulatory changes will circumscribe the efforts of those who see medical marijuana as a backdoor route to legalization, the rules also drew howls of protest.
Nevertheless, the rules are reasonable.
The constitutional amendment describes a caregiver as someone who has “significant responsibility for managing the well-being of the patient.”
State statute says that simply providing medical marijuana doesn’t cut it. Furthermore, a 2009 Colorado Court of Appeals decision rejected the idea that all you had to do to be a caregiver is to provide marijuana to people with medical marijuana cards.
The board’s vote requires caregivers to engage in support activities, such as housekeeping, preparing meals and making arrangements for health care.
While we have concerns about how authorities will enforce these rules, they are in keeping with the original aim of the amendment — to give seriously ill people relief by allowing them to smoke marijuana without fear of prosecution.
Instead what we got in recent years was an explosion of people, many of them young men, complaining of “debilitating” and “chronic” pain in order to get a medical marijuana card. There are now some 124,000 people on the registry.
We are glad to see the Board of Health acting to rein in the role of medical marijuana caregivers, even if it is a couple years too late.
In the summer of 2009, the state Board of Health declined to pass regulations that would have limited medical marijuana caregivers to five patients each. (State lawmakers subsequently passed legislation including that limit).
In failing to take that action two years ago, the board opened the door to the convenience-store model of medical marijuana distribution. It was an opportunity that so-called ganjapreneuers seized upon.
The state legislature’s efforts since then to regulate medical marijuana dispensaries, which we have always viewed as an unfortunate expansion of the constitutional amendment, served to legitimize the dispensary model.
A return to pre-dispensary days appears extremely unlikely given that it would involve shutting down hundreds of businesses and destroying their investments.
However, the rules passed by the Board of Health regarding caregivers are a positive step in bringing some order to Colorado’s medical marijuana scene.
