More Details Emerge in Colorado Legislature's Latest Medical Marijuana Dispensary Scheme

Senator Romer and Representative Massey hosted a press conference yesterday during which they unveiled a new proposal to further regulate medical marijuana and medical marijuana dispensaries throughout Colorado. Now, the text of the bill is available for download, and it is even more alarming than originally thought. Even more alarming than the bill's content however, is Senator Romer's claim to have barely read through the bill's final draft before presenting it to the world.

So what is so ominous about the Romer/Massey plan? As discussed yesterday, it would limit access to medical marijuana for all Coloradans by forcing dispensaries to reorganize as non-profit organizations. However, it would also create a regulatory body with sweeping powers to regulate everything from who gets a license to open a dispensary to what form the signage for medical marijuana dispensaries may take. Worse yet, it leaves the regulatory body plenty of wiggle room to come up with their own provisions or criteria for making decisions, paving the way for arbitrary decisions from the body in the future.

Other provisions in the dispensary bill include imposing further oversight on the erstwhile confidential relationship between doctor and patients, restrictions on where patients may consume medical marijuana (not within 1000 feet of a school or daycare center, even if the patient's home falls within those boundaries), and restrictions on dispensary advertising. This latter point promises to raise interesting constitutional issues as it bans the use of logos, presentation of prices, and limits dispensaries to advertising in line-ads only.

What is most striking about the bill overall, however, is the minute detail with which it regulates almost every aspect of the medical marijuana industry. Those aspects it does not deal with are left to the regulatory body the bill establishes. In short, the Romer/Massey proposal is a highly-complex Rube Goldberg machine of a solution to a nonexistent problem.

Medical marijuana dispensaries pose no more threat to neighborhoods than do simple traditional pharmacies. They are robbed less frequently than either banks or liquor stores. All the patients dispensaries serve are already vetted by the state and likewise pose no demonstrable problem for the safety of our neighborhoods. So why the onslaught of attention from legislators?

We hope that medical marijuana advocates will contact their legislators in Colorado's General Assembly and voice their opposition to this latest incarnation of the Romer/Massey proposal. It will deprive patients of their medication and state coffers of valuable tax revenue.