Colorado Board of Health meeting NOW to decide medical marijuana dispensary fate

(Denver Post) The Colorado Board of Health today will vote on a proposal that may cut off some of 7,360 registered patients’ access to medical marijuana.

The proposal would shut down small and large medical marijuana dispensaries by limiting them to selling their medical herbs to five patients at a time.

Currently there is no limit to how many patients they can supply.

At issue is wording in Amendment 20, passed in 2000 by Colorado voters, which allows people with debilitating medical conditions, such as cancer and HIV/AIDS, to grow their own marijuana or appoint a “caregiver” to do it.

Caregiver has, however, in some cases taken the form of dispensaries that serve more than 600 patients each.

The health board is proposing to tighten the definition of caregiver to someone who does more that just supply marijuana.

Here is the actual language of Colorado’s constitutional amendment in question (emphasis mine):

0-4-287 – ARTICLE XVIII Section 14 (f) “Primary care-giver” means a person, other than the patient and the patient’s physician, who is eighteen years of age or older and has significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient who has a debilitating medical condition.

It’s that “significant responsibility” part that the Board of Health takes to mean “attending to patient health care needs aside from just providing medical marijuana”.

I think that if you’ve got HIV/AIDS and without marijuana you can’t eat, you waste away, and you die, then the person who provides you a medicine that helps you eat and live has a pretty significant responsibility for managing your well-being.  If you’ve got cluster headaches that reduce you to a bawling wreck lying in the fetal position in a darkened room, then the person who provides you a medicine that takes away that pain and allows you to live a productive life has a pretty significant responsibility.  If you’ve got multiple sclerosis and tremble so badly you can’t feed yourself, much less work, then the person who provides you a medicine that quells your tremors has a pretty significant responsibility.

I think the voters of Colorado intrinsically knew that when they voted for Amendment 20.  I suppose the Board of Health would counter that the “dispensary as care-giver” definition would make any pharmacist a “care-giver” when they hand out pills.  I’d reply that the folks in the Rocky Mountain High state are well aware that medical marijuana isn’t some mass-produced pill you can order from a factory.  It requires intense gardening, harvesting, and manicuring, and is otherwise only available from shady dudes on the street.  If Colorado decided to limit care-givers to five patients, it seems obvious that the well-being of thousands of patients will be threatened because they can’t just go to a pharmacy and pick up their medicine.

The Board of Health seems to think a care-giver is a designation along the lines of Certified Nurses Assistant (CNA).  My wife is a registered CNA in Oregon and she had to take a lot of nursing training and pass tests to get that license, which she must renew every year.  CNA’s have “significant responsibility” for their patients, bathing them, taking vitals, administering medications, helping them ambulate, and being ready with first aid and CPR should the patient need them.  Yet, in Amendment 20, there is no medical training or licensing necessary to be a care-giver, only the requirement of being 18 or older.  So how “significant” a responsibility for health care does Colorado intend on placing in medically-untrained people’s hands?