Joint Venture: Too legit to quit?

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“I’m willing to do so because the evidence I have studied is so strongly supportive of the use of cannabis in a great many situations,” says Dr. Alan Shackelford, a Denver internist, whose practice includes Amarimed, which evaluates people who think cannabis might help them.

“This is not a bunch of stoner kids trying to get around the law,” he says. “The vast majority are productive adults for whom this is an important part of their medical regimen.”
Efforts to regulate on the state level might well focus on the doctor-patient relationship, Romer says, including putting an end to doctors in dispensaries – a kind of one-stop shopping setup that he believes can be open to abuse.

On the local level, however, the focus has been the dispensaries themselves.

“I think frankly and candidly we have a few dope dealers in this business, and I think we’re going to weed them out,” said Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown, whose regulations – including prohibiting medicating at dispensaries and putting them 1,000 feet from schools, day cares and each other – passed the council unanimously in January.

Brown’s visit to California convinced him that the council needed to jump on regulation; Denver did in several weeks what its Los Angeles counterparts had been arguing about for four years. But most of the nearly 400 people who showed up for the vote weren’t there to pat the council on the back.

“I find it incredible that the Denver City Council is sitting here trying to find a way to shut down 300 new businesses,” said Laura Kriho of the Cannabis Therapy Institute, an education and advocacy group, and one of nearly 100 people who signed up to have two minutes’ say at the meeting.

The majority opposed the new rules, which they consider a solution in search of a problem. But others agreed that the business of medical marijuana is an industry in search of regulation – the kind that could corral its Wild West spirit without breaking it.

Local and state government have been sent into a veritable frenzy of zoning and regulating. Even before the Legislature began its session, medical marijuana had already turned into its most contentious issue. State Rep. Tom Massey, a Poncha Springs Republican, received bomb threats after he said he would sponsor a bill that could close dispensaries.

At press time, the state Senate was considering a bill that would require doctors who make medical cannabis referrals to give patients physical exams first and would bar dispensaries from paying doctors to make referrals. In the House, a Romer-sponsored bill would require dispensaries to operate as nonprofit health centers and grow their own marijuana. It would also distinguish between constitutionally protected caregivers – those who grow and supply medical cannabis to five or fewer people – and dispensaries, which would be subject to local regulation.

State and federal law collided head-on in February, when armed DEA agents raided grower Chris Bartkowicz’s Highlands Ranch home, arrested him and seized 16 boxes of marijuana. Bartkowicz had a state license and documentation for patients; Jeff Sweetin, the special agent in charge of the DEA’s Denver office, said he was doing his job enforcing federal law. In a letter to the Justice Department, Corry accused “rogue DEA agents” of violating the department’s own guidelines by waging a “campaign of fear and intimidation” that would deprive suffering patients of much-needed medication.

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