Draft of Colorado Pot Rules is a 90-Page Tome

By John Ingold, The Denver Post


Source: Denver Post



Colorado -- Medical-marijuana advocates and government representatives on Monday hammered out the final details of proposed new rules that would give Colorado the most comprehensive seed-to-sale cannabis business regulations in the nation.

The rules would govern everything: how state officials regulate marijuana cultivation; how dispensary owners keep track of their sales; what makers of marijuana-infused pastries should put on their labels. Several of the rules would place Colorado in unprecedented territory — for instance, requiring marijuana growers to install security cameras through which state auditors could remotely monitor their crop.



Others would take action on areas of long-standing concern, including inventory-control rules designed to prevent medical marijuana from leaking into the black market.



"This is a historic moment," said Norton Arbelaez, the owner of the River Rock Wellness Center and the chair of the Medical Marijuana Industry Group. "We are taking huge steps here in normalizing marijuana laws."



The rules, which take up more than 90 pages, are in draft form and could change. They can't be adopted until after formal rule-making hearings, which could take place as early as next month and at which the public could offer comments.



The drafts were put together during more than 60 hours of meetings by the state Department of Revenue's medical-marijuana rules work group, a collection of state officials, law-enforcement officers, local government representatives and medical-marijuana business owners and patients.



"When we actually get to the hearing, there should be very little surprise out there," said Matt Cook, the Revenue Department official who oversees medical-marijuana business enforcement. "There should at least be common knowledge as to where the industry is heading."



The proposed rules, which grew out of laws passed last year in the legislature, aim for thoroughness. Dispensary owners must catalog every plant they grow and then weigh it at various steps of the production process to create a trail state auditors can follow. At sale, they must list any chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides they used during cultivation.



The rules would also establish the nation's first regulations for making hash — a form of concentrated marijuana — and would spell out how dispensaries can transport their products or make changes to their business structure.



Medical-marijuana advocates raised concerns with some of the rules. Jason Lauve, a medical-marijuana patient, said he worries rules that allow for the tracking of individual purchases could invade patient privacy. Arbelaez, who is a member of the rules work group, took issue with the so-called "7 0/30" rule, which requires dispensaries to grow 70 percent of what they sell. As currently written, the rule could lead to surplus marijuana that dispensaries couldn't sell, he said.



But Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden, who is also a work group member and who has expressed skepticism of the medical-marijuana industry in the past, said he was surprised at how much collaboration there was.



"Our charge," he said, "has been to make it work."



Source: Denver Post (CO)

Author: John Ingold, The Denver Post

Published: December 7, 2010

Copyright: 2010 The Denver Post Corp

Website: http://www.denverpost.com/

Contact: openforum@denverpost.com

URL: http://drugsense.org/url/rNdTpg9c