Boulder Medical Marijuana

The farming town of Fruita has decided to impose a 5% sales tax on medical marijuana and paraphernalia, making it the first Colorado town to do so.

John Suthers, Colorado Attorney General has ruled that medical cannabis can be subject to state and local taxes.

Fruita has no dispensaries at the moment, but that hasn't stopped the city council from forecasting that the tax will bring in $100,000 in revenue in the first year.

60% of voters approved the tax measure.

The move is yet another instance of the dispensary system becoming accepted.

Changes to HB 1284 that make the law friendlier to dispensary and patient interests have come as welcome news to medical marijuana patients in Colorado.

A divided House Judiciary Committee removed a provision that would have allowed local governments to ban dispensaries in their communities. The committee also voted to allow consumption of marijuana-infused products at dispensaries, lower the amount of marijuana a dispensary would have to grow itself, eliminate a cap on the number of patients a dispensary could serve and loosen the rules for past criminal violations that could automatically disqualify someone from owning a dispensary.

Dispensaries would now have to be licensed by the state of Colorado, and grow seven tenths of the medicine that they sell. One of the most important changes to the bill eliminates the proposed cap on patients a dispensary can provide care for, as well as a ban on eating marijuana edibles on the premises of a dispensary.

The changes also prohibit towns from banning dispensaries.

The committee was split, with Democrats favoring the patient friendly changes. Tom Massey, R-Poncha Springs is upset that the changes will not allow towns to ban dispensaries.

Conservative opponents of medical marijuana continue to claim that Amendment 20 does not allow a dispensary system.

Kremmling has decided to ban medical marijuana dispensaries in it's limits, enacting criminal penalties for operating a dispensary. The Colorado Constitutional Amendment did not stop the town from banning dispensaries.

“We've got to draw the line somewhere,” Trustee Jason Bock said Wednesday night, a sentiment echoed by other trustees...

...The ordinance, adopted Wednesday, will go into effect in 30 days. It says the Board of Trustees “finds it essential that the Town enact ordinances to prevent the secondary effects of medical marijuana dispensaries, which are deemed detrimental to the public health, safety and welfare ...”

- Durango Herald News

The ordinance creates criminal penalties of up to one year in jail and/or one thousand dollars in fines, but officials say it does not target medical card holders who grow for personal use.

The town does not want to confiscate medical marijuana plants because it would have to care for them while the matter is being settled, or risk a lawsuit.

We will have to wait for this ordinance to be tested in court to determine its constitutionality.

The town of Oak Creek is scheduled to vote on a 90 day moratorium to prevent medical marijuana cultivation land-use requests from being approved by the town. The moratorium is not retroactive and will not apply to grow operations that began before the moratorium is to be put in place.

The town does not want to get into the legality of marijuana grow operations, or the medical marijuana political debate. The moratorium is in response to informal requests about the possibility of large medical marijuana cultivation operations on Main Street.

The town rejected a moratorium on dispensaries in January and instead decided to grant a conditional license for one dispensary. Dispensary members testified during the hearing that they grow most of their medical marijuana outside of Oak Creek and bring it in to sell at the dispensary.

A big display of opposition from medical marijuana activists across the state has led Colorado lawmakers to delay a vote on House Bill 1284. The bill would have required dispensaries to obtain licenses from both local and state officials before operating.

The bill would also have imposed stricter regulations on advertising for dispensaries but a rewrite of the bill loosened the restrictions.

Medical marijuana advocates argue that the law would decrease competition and access for medical patients in the state.

An Arapaho County judge ruled that the town of Centennial can not cite federal law as the reason to ban medical marijuana dispensaries.

The dispensary in question, named CannaMart, cannot be closed due to a ban on this type of business. The ruling left open the possibility that zoning could be used to close the store.

The Dispensary would be classified as a pharmacy for zoning purposes, and the area that it is in is not zoned for pharmacies.

Even though marijuana is illegal under federal law, local towns cannot enforce federal laws. Local towns must abide by the state constitution which protects medical marijuana as a right for citizens.

Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, He is talking about adding an amendment to his bill to regulate medical marijuana dispensaries that would add an excise tax to the sale of medical marijuana in the state. This new tax would be on top of the existing sales tax is collected already.

Romer Believes that the tax would bring in $10-$15 million in revenue annually. He wants to use the money for drug educations programs for teens, treatment programs and medical care for veterans in older people.

How much tax is enough tax on medical marijuana?

I am.

I would have thought that a year of dispensaries would have made people comfortable with the idea. What problems have occurred because of medical marijuana in Colorado?

Increased crime? No
More drug use? No
Increased tax revenues? Yes.

There are almost 100 medical cannabis dispensaries in the town I live in, and I can't even point to three places they exist on a map. They seem to keep a pretty low profile.

The only reason I know medical marijuana business is going on, is because I read the newspapers. Medical pot is the most interesting local story in a long time, and reporters love to cover it.

And this is the main cause of the backlash we are seeing now. The backlash where anti-pot forces claim medical cannabis advocates pulled a bait and switch, and that that the voters never intended for dispensaries to open...

The anti-dispensary people are made up of the usual suspects... reactionaries. The same people who hold us up with everything. These are the people who think "everything is changing too fast! We gotta slow down". Change makes them personally uncomfortable, and they take this out on the rest of us.

If the media wasn't relentlessly covering this story, and hyping burglaries that happen less often than bank robberies, these people wouldn't even know anything changed.

A report from Broomfieldenterprise.com details Broomfield's attempt to run the only medical marijuana dispensary out of town. The dispensary is operating from the owner's mobile home. According to officials it is operating illegally because it does not possess a sales tax license.

City Council on Tuesday took the first step toward instituting a six-month moratorium on the operation of marijuana dispensaries and growers in Broomfield.

The moratorium was proposed by City and County Attorney Bill Tuthill as a way to allow the city to get some breathing room as Colorado comes to grips with an industry that has seen 600 dispensaries open in the past year.