http://www.denverpost.com/ci_13893335

Pot patients sue Centennial over closed dispensary

By KRISTEN WYATT Associated Press Writer

CENTENNIAL, Colo.—A medical marijuana lawsuit in suburban Denver could test the limits of how far Colorado cities can go to stop pot shops.

A dispensary and three patients sued the city of Centennial Monday after the town shut down a marijuana dispensary last month.

Centennial originally gave CannaMart a business license but then forced the dispensary to close after about a month, saying town officials didn’t know the business was selling pot.

Kirsten Lamb, 41, one of the patients suing, said she has multiple sclerosis and can’t find an alternative dispensary she likes as well.

“They have always been there to take care of me, but now they’re not there,” she said.

The lawsuit could answer a question many Colorado cities are struggling to answer as pot shops proliferate: Do cities have to allow dispensaries just because state voters in 2000 allowed some patients to possess marijuana?

Lawyers for CannaMart say yes.

The Centennial lawsuit is the first of its kind in Colorado, and the message should be sent that towns can’t ban dispensaries, the attorneys said.

“They cannot ban a constitutional right,” said Robert Corry, one of CannaMart’s lawyers.

The plaintiffs want a judge to force Centennial to allow the dispensary to reopen.

But Centennial has the right to ban businesses that violate federal drug laws, said Centennial lawyer Robert Widner said Monday. And CannaMart wasn’t honest on its application for a business permit, he said.

“They had a license for medical supplies. We had no clue it was for marijuana,” Widner said.

Centennial did not pass a law banning dispensaries but simply revoked CannaMart’s business license because the establishment does not comply with federal drug laws, he said.

Cities in other states that allow the sale of medical marijuana have also been baffled by how to regulate it.

Earlier this month, Los Angeles officials put off a decision on whether to make permanent a moratorium on businesses selling it. The California towns of Sacramento and Santa Cruz are also considering banning pot shops.

In Colorado, Castle Rock banned marijuana dispensaries earlier this month after receiving at least two business permit applications for dispensaries. Those permits are under review.

The owners of CannaMart said the difference in Centennial is that the shop was given a license, then shut down without due process. One of the owners, Stan Zislis, said CannaMart was even in the process of paying city taxes.

“They cannot legitimize a business” by taking taxes, then shut it down, he said.

CannaMart, which had about 600 patients, was briefly located in the nearby suburb of Greenwood Village but was kicked out under a nuisance citation before its business permit there could be approved, Zislis said.

Eric Frasher, 41, said he has multiple sclerosis and joined the lawsuit because CannaMart’s closure forces him to “drive around all day” looking for a dispensary.

“I’d just like to see it back in my neighborhood,” Frasher told reporters.

LINK: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_13768533

denver and the west

Colorado medical-pot backers form trade group

By John Ingold
The Denver Post

Posted: 11/12/2009 01:00:00 AM MST
Updated: 11/12/2009 02:24:29 AM MST

A group of medical-marijuana advocates — striving for legitimacy for their still-nascent industry — announced the formation of a new trade group Wednesday.

The Colorado Wellness Association, its founders said, will formulate regulations for the state’s booming medical- marijuana dispensary business, develop quality-control guidelines to protect patients, produce a regular magazine and perhaps even start an online medical-marijuana commodities market for dispensary owners to purchase their product.

“This industry is growing up,” said medical-marijuana attorney Rob Corry, the new group’s chairman.

The founding of the association is another step by members of Colorado’s broad medical-cannabis community in recent months to cast a mainstream light on what had for years been an in-the-shadows business. A group of medical-marijuana patients and dispensary owners in Boulder County have formed a similar group. Advocates have begun to lobby state lawmakers for regulations to better define and protect the industry.

Wednesday’s announcement came at the offices of Full Spectrum Laboratories, a recently opened Denver company that tests samples of medical-marijuana products and quantifies their potency. The lab not only provides quality-control assurances but also helps patients determine their needed dosage of the drug, lab founder Bob Winnicki said.

“We’re just bringing stuff that is already being done in other industries and focusing it on this industry,” said Winnicki, who dropped out during his third year of medical school to start the lab.

The lab will charge dispensaries about $60 per test and will provide the dispensary with a certification that can be shown to patients. Understanding the potency of an item of medical marijuana — which can vary widely based on the plant strain, growing technique and how the drug is consumed — is another step toward mainstreaming the industry, Winnicki said.

“Doctors are not going to write prescriptions for things that are not a given dosage,” he said. “No doctor is ever going to say, ‘Take two hits off a joint and call it good.’ ”

The new association also is working with former state Sen. Bob Hagedorn, a one-time head of the Senate’s health committee, to craft policy proposals for the upcoming legislative session.

John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com

VIDEO: http://www.9news.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=126712&catid=222

Judge overturns board’s medical marijuana decision

posted by: Sara Gandy written by: Jeffrey Wolf TaRhonda Thomas

DENVER - While questioning an attorney defending the decision to change a rule regarding medical marijuana caregivers, Judge Larry Naves realized he was getting pretty intense.

“If I seem a little upset about this, it’s because we’re doing the same thing we did two years ago,” he said.

Tuesday morning, Naves presided over a hearing in which plaintiffs from the medical marijuana community filed a complaint in response to a decision by the State Board of Health.

He overturned a decision that the board made last week, redefining what it means to be a caregiver.

On Nov. 3, the board met in an emergency meeting and voted to redefine the term caregiver, as it applies to medical marijuana. The board’s ruling, which wasn’t permanent, stipulated that caregivers have more personal relationships with their clients.

“Being a primary caregiver and having a significant responsibility for managing the well-being means more than simply supplying marijuana,” Colorado First Assistant Attorney General Anne Holton said.

The attorney representing medical marijuana caregivers and patients argued that the board had no reason to meet in emergency session. And, when it did have that emergency meeting, it did not take the proper steps to notify everyone who would be affected by the decision.

Therefore, attorney Robert Corry argued, the decision to redefine the term caregiver should be thrown out.

“This is what happens when government moves hastily,” Corry said, “when they forge ahead without following the proper procedures.”

Holton argued the board was justified in meeting in an emergency fashion because the members did so in response to an appeals court ruling, which upheld the conviction of a Longmont woman who was found guilty of growing marijuana plants even though she said she was a caregiver and the plants were for her patients. The ruling, board members say, meant a change in state law; therefore, their guidelines had to reflect that.

“The board had been attempting to provide clarity so there wouldn’t be confusion by what it means,” Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment spokesperson Mark Salley said.

Corry, however, disagrees. He says the appeals court ruling is an interpretation of the law, not a law itself.

In 2007, both sides were in the same courtroom. They came to an agreement on the procedures the state board would follow in order to make any changes to medical marijuana guidelines.

“Our intent was to avoid the previous shenanigans,” Corry said. “Those shenanigans involve putting things through without adequately notifying the public… and letting the public participate in the process.”

Public comment was not allowed in the Nov. 3 meeting. In July, the same board did allow public comment in the meeting it held to originally define the term caregiver. At that time, the board accepted a broad definition, much to the liking of medical marijuana advocates.

Tuesday’s decision by the judge reinstates the old, broader definition of the term caregiver.

The board will bring up the same issue of defining the duties of a caregiver in its meeting on Dec. 16. Written comments from the public will be allowed. A decision has not been made on allowing verbal public comment.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has a record of more than 11,000 state-registered medical marijuana patients, as of its last official check in July. The department does not regulate or keep track of medical marijuana dispensaries.

(Copyright KUSA*TV, All Rights Reserved)

guest commentary
Stop the medical marijuana madness

By Robert J. Corry Jr.
Posted: 11/02/2009 01:00:00 AM MST
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_13691103

“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” — Ronald Reagan

Today, not much about Colorado’s economy moves. The state is broke and releases prisoners because it cannot afford to keep them. The governor slashes the higher education budget 40 percent. People lose jobs, homes and financial security. Our leaders face serious issues.

And what keeps some politicians up at night? That sneaking suspicion that some suffering cancer patient may gain limited pain relief through medical marijuana, coupled with that gnawing certainty that someone, somewhere, actually grew the plant for that patient.

But government cannot repeal the laws of supply and demand, and cannot extinguish the spark of freedom in peoples’ hearts. Now, the marijuana distribution chain becomes legal. Responsible entrepreneurs open shops to supply a skyrocketing demand for medicine. These small businesses serve needy patients. They pay taxes. They hire employees. They lease space. They advertise. And the drug war industrial complex can’t stand it.

Most elected leaders have a good sense of proportion regarding this issue. A minority of politicians, however, avoid reasonable proposals to tax and regulate marijuana, and instead irresponsibly fear-monger in the worst tradition of Prohibition-era “Reefer Madness” propaganda. We hear racially charged tales of “Mexican cartels” supposedly running the medical marijuana business, when the truth is Colorado homegrown marijuana puts foreign cartels out of business, and it is law enforcement that enriches cartels through hostility to medical marijuana.

We hear local bureaucrats complain about dispensaries, and then in the same breath enact moratoria, thus granting government-enforced monopolies to the very shops that offend them, and shutting out newer entrepreneurs who would do more responsible business. Government can help lower the high cost of medicine, but artificially restricting supply has the opposite effect.

We hear unsupported anecdotal government propaganda about how dispensaries “attract crime,” when the truth is these shops, which are generally open only in daylight hours, have security systems and are not open to the general public and only admit registered patients, and are safer than convenience stores, liquor stores, bars, gas stations or banks.

We hear government hysteria about how these shops should not be near schools, without a single documented case of a child obtaining marijuana from a dispensary. On Ninth and Corona streets in Denver is a small liquor store and a pharmacy, both legally dispensing drugs far more potent that marijuana, and both directly across the street from a large public elementary school. And this is not a problem. Children are not wandering in to buy narcotics or liquor. It is another example of an imaginary concern designed to justify irrational restrictions.

We also hear government officials with no formal medical training demonizing and second-guessing private confidential decisions of trained physicians who advise patients. Government should not interfere with private medical decisions.

Some officials even contend that although medical marijuana is legal, it is not legal to actually produce or distribute it. However, the Colorado Constitution legalizes “acquisition, possession, manufacture, production, use, sale, distribution, dispensing, or transportation of marijuana” for medical use.”

If “sale,” “distribution,” and even “dispensing” are legal, then a “dispensary” is legal. And if “manufacture” and “production” are legal, then growing is legal.

Many of these proposals would drive vulnerable patients away from the well-lit, safe, secure, private, confidential medical marijuana dispensary and put them and their wheelchairs back in the dangerous black market.

There are two positive results of this government hysteria: Thousands more Coloradoans are aware that they have the option of being legal medical marijuana patients; and voters continue discussions of the wisdom of continuing Prohibition. This is a debate that freedom wins and government nannyism loses.

Robert J. Corry Jr. (www.RobCorry.com) is a Colorado attorney specializing in medical marijuana.