Colorado: Vote tomorrow -- Ask your representative to improve flawed dispensary regulation bill

Published: April 21, 2010

Cities and towns across the state have been enacting temporary bans and struggling to regulate Colorado's marijuana dispensaries. Local Drug Enforcement Administration actions have been causing widespread anxiety and confusion. Colorado lawmakers need to step into the gap and enact sensible, fair dispensary regulations. The dispensary regulation bill sponsored by Rep. Tom Massey (R-Poncha Springs), HB 1284, is scheduled for a final House vote tomorrow. If it passes, it would then be sent to the Senate.

We need you to tell your representative that patients and the medical marijuana community support dispensary regulations, but oppose several sections of this bill in its current form. 

Thanks to the efforts of activists and lobbyists, such as MPP grantee Brian Vicente of Sensible Colorado, the House Judiciary Committee removed a section prohibiting patients and caregivers from possessing their medicine within 1,000 feet of a school (effectively banning them from living in that zone). The bill still has problems that should be addressed before it becomes law, though. Some of the problematic sections of the version the House is considering include:  

• Allowing cities and towns to ban dispensaries completely, potentially forcing patients to return to the underground illegal market to get their medicine.

 

• Prohibiting caregivers from serving more than five patients, unless "exceptional circumstances" exist.

 

• Banning people with past misdemeanor drug convictions from being associated with dispensaries — even if the conviction was for violating federal law and was for medical marijuana-related activities that are legal under the Colorado Constitution. 

While dispensary regulations are necessary to safeguard providers under state law and to make it easier for providers to be in "clear and unambiguous" compliance with state law as required by the U.S. Department of Justice’s new enforcement guidelines, HB 1284 remains a flawed bill. Your representatives need to hear that while you support clear and reasonable regulations of Colorado’s medical marijuana dispensaries, patients’ needs should come first. Unnecessarily hampering dispensaries will only hurt patients in the long run.

Please write to your representative and tell him or her to amend this bill to better serve patients. 

Thank you for supporting the Marijuana Policy Project and our grantee Sensible Colorado. Please pass this alert on to friends, family, and neighbors so they can help keep Colorado’s medical marijuana law focused on protecting patients.