The Stanley Brothers Farm in Wray cultivates product for Indispensary, a medical marijuana center that provides tailor-made cannabis medicine for Colorado Realm of Caring patients. (Photo By Joe Amon/The Denver Post)
A hearing portended fireworks Tuesday afternoon in the Senate Finance Committee. Chairman Tim Neville, R-Littleton, started the two-hour discussion of regulating licenses for growers, sellers and vendors by calling medical marijuana “the granddaddy of them all” and “everyone’s favorite” topic.
In the end, however, only one of the 15 recommendations presented by senior policy analyst Brian Tobias of the Department of Regulatory Agencies got a yes or a no: Senators agreed that the regulatory program should be extended to 2019. Failing to do that much wouldn’t have made medical pot go away, but it would have made it unregulated.
The rest of DORA’s recommendations aren’t dead, but they aren’t fully debated enough to be included in a bill the House and Senate could vote on, as the Finance Committee unanimously determined. Most of the recommendations are aimed at handling the business of medical marijuana more like recreational pot, including testing standards and keeping criminals out of the mix.
Sen. Owen Hill, R-Colorado Springs, said some of the 15 recommendations merit a slow roll on the legislation that eventually re-enacts the rules, while most lean toward housekeeping and keeping things consistent.
“Some of them are great ideas, some I’m a little concerned about from a public policy standpoint and a constitutional standpoint,” Hill, the committee’s vice chairman, told the four other members.
He preferred changes to the program being added on as individually considered amendments. Testing, for ecample, is “an important issue, let’s make sure we get that right … Rather than starting with all 15 amendments and changing it from there, let’s start from scratch and make good policy,” Hill said
He said it also wasn’t yet clear to him whether medical marijuana licensing should be regulated more like recreational pot, or if recreational should be more like medical. For instance, medical pot sales can only occur from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., but retail sales are OK from 8 a.m. until midnight under state rules. Rules on recreational pot, however, are not yet up for review.
Hill added, “We’re not starting from scratch. We’re starting from what we currently have, and there’s some debate to be had about what’s working and what’s not working in what we currently have. My conservative tendencies lead me to think ‘do no harm.'”
That could lead to a lot of lengthy hearings. Sen. Mike Johnston, D-Denver, suggested drafting DORA’s recommendations as amendments to move things along.
Sen. Chris Holbert, R-Parker, joked to Hill, “I trust if your motion passes, you’ll be willing to carry the bill.”
Hill said he would, after he joked. “I was hoping Sen. Johnston would leave so we could give it to him.”
Tobias cautioned at the beginning of his presentation not to mix up what the sunset review is about: medical pot licensing issues, which include testing standards or making sure edibles have THC that’s spread out rather than concentrated in one bite. Legislators aren’t reviewing the state health department’s determination of who should qualify for a medical license, review or oversight of physicians or in any way the retail marijuana code.
What was clear Tuesday is that despite recreational weed becoming as of Jan. 1, 2014, the medical pot business continues to blossom. As Tobias put, “This industry is evolving very rapidly.”
As of Dec. 31, there were 505 storefront dispensaries across the state, 748 grow operations and 163 licensed makers of medical marijuana-infused products. At the end of the year, there were 984 owners, 3,563 managers and 12,429 support employees for stores, vendors, couriers and security.
