by Michael W.Savage

DENVER -- When Matt Cook was coaxed out of early retirement to become Colorado's chief revenue enforcer three years ago, he assumed his time would be spent overseeing the casinos, liquor stores and car dealerships he had been keeping an eye on for much of his career.

If he had hoped for a quiet few years before heading for the golf course, his timing could not have been worse.

Cook, senior director of enforcement at Colorado's Department of Revenue, returned just as a new kind of business rolled into town promoting a controversial product. Medical marijuana was legalized a decade ago in the state, but retail-style dispensaries began springing up only in 2007.

The trickle of new outlets has turned into a flood. Officials think more than 1,100 dispensaries are operating statewide. As the numbers grew, dispensaries offered ever more cannabis strains, marijuana-infused products and delivery services.

When alarmed lawmakers decided they wanted to curb the burgeoning industry, all eyes turned to Cook. "It was last Christmas that I saw this was heading our way," he said. "Merry Christmas."

Relatively late in his career, Cook has become a pioneer in the medical marijuana industry, drawing up a stringent regulation scheme that aims to turn the industry into a legitimate -- and respectable -- enterprise.

"We plan to track the entire commodity from seed to sale," the 53-year-old said. "We will use a Web-based, 24-7 video surveillance system, and we will see virtually everything from the time a seed goes into the ground to the time the plants are harvested, cultivated, processed, packaged, stored."

The regime may be copied by the 13 other states that already have legalized medical marijuana and the 14 additional states that could soon allow its use. Cook's counterparts in other states, as well as the District, have been seeking advice.

Legislation passed by the D.C. Council in May permits the establishment of up to eight dispensaries. Virginia and Maryland do not permit medical marijuana use.

"I didn't find tough regulatory schemes out in any of the other states," Cook said. "The numbers of dispensaries they have are very limited. It is the most intensive period of work I have had at any point in my career."

A drive down Denver's Federal Boulevard, an industrial stretch running through the inner city, illustrates why his expertise was needed. New dispensaries, with their marijuana-leaf signs, are providing the latest source of urban regeneration.

Herbal Wellness, just down the street from a derelict movie theater, has a steady flow of patients. The pungent smell of its produce wafts through the front door. A sign displayed by the roadside tells passing drivers: "Sale! $250 an ounce." Chronic Wellness, Daddy Fat Sacks, Doctors Orders, Earth's Medicine and Mr. Stinky's are among the other vendors found along the strip.

Denver and Colorado Springs could have as many as 500 dispensaries each, officials estimate. Dozens also have opened in Boulder.

However, the new regulations have stopped the boom and are widely expected to cut the number of outlets significantly. No new dispensaries can be opened until next summer. Existing owners wanting to remain in business have to apply for a license by Aug. 1.

Anyone wanting a license has to fill out a 22-page form detailing immediate family and personal financial history. People with drug-related felonies are disqualified. When all the rules kick in on July 1 next year, practices such as giving away free joints will be outlawed. Delivery services will be allowed only in rare cases.

In the first year, even the smallest dispensaries must hand over at least $7,500 for a license, while bigger operations will have to find as much as $18,000 to stay in business.

Cook's starring role in shaping legal marijuana sales is all the more remarkable given that, 30 years ago, Cook was a narcotics enforcement officer who threw Colorado's cannabis growers behind bars. His Drug Enforcement Administration training certificate, dated 1980, hangs on his office wall. On a table, three volumes of Colorado statute sit next to a copy of Cannabis Connoisseur magazine.

He says his past made his new task a "big pill to swallow" but insists it is all aimed at ensuring genuine patients receive the best treatment.

Some in the industry have decided to get out before the wave of new rules hits.

"We've been jumping hoops since the beginning to get compliance, and it is getting tiring," said Charlie Van Valkenburg, who is selling his 5280 Wellness dispensary.

Cook says the new licensing requirements will shut down some shops. On a visit to the Tender Healing Care dispensary, Cook stood next to a glass counter filled with marijuana strains as he outlined some of the new rules to Geoff Graehling, the dispensary's co-owner. Cook explained that 70 percent of the marijuana sold in the store will have to be grown there and that each jar of cannabis will need to be labeled with the chemicals used during its production.

Despite the paperwork, costs and modifications, Graehling and his fellow owner, Barb Visher, say they are embracing regulation. "I think it was needed to deal with some of the bad apples that are operating," Graehling said. They are not alone in welcoming the chance to earn respectability. "Compared to the Wild West we've been in, the regulations are actually going to put some legitimacy on the medical marijuana laws," said Andy Cookston, owner of Cannabis Medical, Denver's first dispensary.

© 2010 The Washington Post Company

by Mike Meno

A Rasmussen poll released earlier this week about Americans’ attitudes toward marijuana didn’t reveal any surprising changes in levels of support for reform—43% favor ending prohibition, just slightly less than the 44% Gallup found last October—but it did contain this one interesting nugget:

However, 65% believe it is at least somewhat likely marijuana will be legalized in the United States in the next 10 years. Just 28% do not expect this to happen.

That’s fascinating. If the majority of Americans come to think that marijuana legalization is inevitable, could that make it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Could many otherwise neutral or indifferent voters be encouraged to support reform because they want to be on the winning side? Would that make opponents mellow in their resistance? Whether or not there’s merit to the idea, reformers can’t become complacent. There’s still a lot that needs to happen before we finally turn the page on the failure of marijuana prohibition—including winning some of these ballot measures in November.

Such victories will only advance the perception that prohibition’s days are nearing an (inevitable) end.

Marijuana Policy Project

Surge Voters, A Good Court Decision, and Barney Frank’s 5-Year Forecast

by Mike Meno

Exciting developments in the movement to end marijuana prohibition keep flooding my inbox. Here’s just a sampling from over the weekend:

Citing a new survey, Ryan Grim gives more credence to the idea that marijuana ballot initiatives could help Democrats drive “surge voters” to the polls in 2012. (Something I’ve written about a time or two.)

A survey making the rounds among strategists, which has yet to be made public, indicates that pot could be just the enticement many of these voters need: Surge voters, single women under 40 and Hispanics all told America Votes pollsters that if a legalization measure were on the Colorado ballot, they’d be more likely to come out to vote. Forty-five percent of surge voters and 47 percent of single women said they’d be more interested in voting if the question was on the ballot. Most of these were energetic, with 36 and 30 percent, respectively, saying they’d be “much more interested” in coming out to vote. Roughly half said it would make no difference. For Latinos, 32 percent said they’d be “much more interested” in voting and another 12 percent said they’d be somewhat more attracted to the idea of trudging to the polls.

Surge voters said they would support the measure by a margin of 63-35. Young single women would back it 68-31.

In Oregon, the Court of Appeals has ruled that a parent who tests positive for marijuana cannot lose custody of their children without evidence that his or her marijuana use resulted in child endangerment.

The state had argued that the mother’s marijuana use “presented a reasonable likelihood of harm to her two children.”

But the appeals court agreed with the mother’s argument that the state failed to provide any evidence connecting her behavior with risk to the children. […]

[Department of Human Services] workers found that the home was clean, the children had appropriate food to eat and they appeared “happy and healthy,” the appeals court wrote in its decision. A DHS worker also had testified that the mother “appears to have appropriate parenting skills.”

[…] The mother admitted using the drug at a party a week or two earlier but said she did not use it frequently and never used it around the children. A test taken a few weeks later came back negative for marijuana and other drugs.

And in an interview with The New York Times, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) predicts that a bill he has sponsored to remove federal penalties for the personal use of marijuana could pass within five years.

For all your love of financial regulation, you’ve joined with the libertarian Republican Ron Paul to write bills that would shrink government. Do you think your bill to legalize marijuana will ever pass? Yes, in the next five years.

Will that expand the tax base? As a nation, do you think we could smoke our way to solvency? I want to be clear; that’s not my major motivation. My major motivation is personal freedom. When we outlaw marijuana or online gambling, all you do is create more criminals and deprive us of revenue.

by Mike Meno

The National Black Police Association yesterday became the latest group to endorse California’s Proposition 19, the November ballot measure that would make marijuana legal for adults 21 and older. From the Los Angeles Times:

The National Black Police Assn., which has about 15,000 members, is the second African American organization to back the measure. The California NAACP has also endorsed it, citing the disproportionate arrest and incarceration of African Americans caught with marijuana.

Ron Hampton, the police association’s executive director, said he decided the group should get behind the measure because it would eliminate laws that have a negative impact on the black community.

“It means that we will be locking up less African American men and women and children who are using drugs,” said Hampton, a retired Washington, D.C., police officer with 25 years experience. “We’ve got more people in prison. We’ve got more young people in prison. Blacks go to jail more than whites for doing the same thing.”

Hampton said that the money being spent on the war on drugs could be better spent on education, housing and creating jobs. “It just seemed like to me that we have been distracted in this whole thing,” he said. “We can take that money, and focus and concentrate on things that really make a difference in our community.”

For more, watch LEAP executive director Neill Franklin discuss the endorsement on MSNBC:

by Mike Meno

Unofficial vote totals show that marijuana decriminalization supporter Peter Shumlin won the Vermont Democratic primary for governor yesterday by an agonizingly tight margin of fewer than 200 votes. Although votes are in from all 260 precincts, towns and cities have a couple of days to certify official results. Currently president pro tempore of the Vermont state Senate, Shumlin has been a staunch supporter of efforts to remove criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana in Vermont—something MPP has spent years lobbying for.

“Small marijuana offenses, when you’re already on probation, can send you to prison,” Shumlin told the Rutland Herland in June. “That doesn’t seem to me to be the best use of scarce taxpayer dollars.”

While a recount is likely because the final tally was so close, Shumlin’s victory in a five-person primary is yet another example of how candidates can benefit — not suffer — from supporting efforts to reform marijuana laws. Assuming Shumlin is the Democratic candidate, Vermont’s general election will also be of greatest interest to marijuana policy reformers. The Republican candidate for governor, Brian Dubie, is an opponent of decriminalization, and the race is expected to be close.

Marijuana Policy Project

by Lanny Swerdlow

With more than $300 million spent annually
arresting more than 60,000 Californians, the
majority of them young, black and brown, the
California Medical Association accurately labels
marijuana criminalization “a failed public health
policy.”

Proposition 19 allows police to concentrate on real
crimes, unclogs courts and reduces prison
overcrowding. The California Board of Equalization
estimates legalization will raise $1.4 billion for
schools, health programs and essential government
services.

Proposition 19 opponents point to the societal and
health costs of alcohol as proof there will be
increased costs if marijuana is legalized. Truth be
told, health care costs will go down when
responsible adults are allowed to make the rational,
safer choice to use marijuana instead of alcohol.

Hospital beds are overflowing with patients with
heart damage, destroyed livers, pancreatitis,
diseased brains — costly and debilitating ailments
caused solely by their use of alcohol. You are not
likely to find a single patient in any hospital wing —
cardiac, respiratory, cancer — with any ailment
related only to their use of marijuana. Not one!

Contrary to allegations by narcotic law enforcement
that admissions to emergency departments for
marijuana are going through the roof, a 2010 study
published in the American Journal of Emergency
Medicine found that “marijuana was by far the most
commonly used (illicit) drug, but individuals who
used marijuana had a low prevalence of drug-
related ED visits.”

A 2009 study at Switzerland's Luasanne University
Hospital and a 2006 University of Missouri study
independently found marijuana inversely associated
with injuries requiring hospitalization. The Missouri
study concluded marijuana use resulted in a
“substantially decreased risk of injury.”

An August 2010 RAND study reported fewer than
200 patients were admitted to California hospitals in
2008 for “marijuana abuse or dependence,” but
there were almost 73,000 hospitalizations related to
alcohol.


Although opponents of Proposition 19 are quick to
make misleading and inaccurate statements about a
few studies they purport demonstrate the dangers of
marijuana, even a casual reading finds the number
of people negatively affected in the low single digits
with the reports using scientific weasel words like
“may,” “might” or “suggest.”

Fiscal conservatives should note a 2009 study in
the British Columbia Mental Health and Addictions
Journal, which found health-related costs eight
times higher for drinkers than cannabis consumers
with most of marijuana's costs due to its illegal
status.

Noting that “research on medical cannabis patients
has alluded to the use of cannabis as a substitute
for alcohol,” a June 2009 Harm Reduction Journal
study found “40 percent of participants reported
using cannabis as a substitute for alcohol.”

Although driving under the influence of any
substance should be avoided, a 2007 study of U.S.
drivers published in the Canadian Journal of Public
Health and a 2005 review of French auto accidents
concluded that drivers who test positive for alcohol,
even under .08 percent blood-alcohol content, were
three to four times more likely to be involved in a fatal collision than those who use marijuana.

Revenue raised, police resources wisely used are
excellent reasons to support Proposition 19, but it
is the ability of marijuana to replace alcohol as a
relaxant and mood enhancer without the liver
destroying, judgment impairing and violence
inducing properties of alcohol that makes the
passage of Proposition 19 vital to the health of the
individual and the community.

Lanny Swerdlow, RN, can be seen on “Marijuana
Compassion and Common Sense” at 11 p.m. every
Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday on Time-Warner
Cable channel 17. E-mail him at  
lanny@marijuananews.org.