(Jessica Corry – Huffington Post) Denver is a city in love with its newspapers. Even in 2009, many residents still cling to the scent and grime of fresh newspaper print. But as the recent loss of the city’s beloved Rocky Mountain News still lingers, the focus now turns to saving the publications remaining. In an ironic twist of fate worthy of its own front page feature, essential revenue could come from the most unlikely of sources. Marijuana.

Denver’s top alternative weekly, Westword, gets it. On both sides of its most recent edition’s back cover, 32 medical marijuana dispensaries advertised their services. In addition, in the publication’s “alternative healing” section, nearly nine additional pages were packed with similar plugs.

While the Denver Post has run a series of front page stories over the last month chronicling the brewing debate over how or whether to increase regulations on dispensaries, it has been slower getting into the advertising game, running quarter page ads from a handful of dispensaries, with plans to expand advertising access through a special section devoted to dispensaries and other alternative health outlets.

While most of American business is mired in a rut, for medical marijuana providers in California and Colorado, business is booming.  But it’s not just the sales of marijuana that provide jobs and tax revenue to the state.  There are also all the construction, advertising, rent, utilities, and other expenses these businesses pay that creates jobs for others.  At Oregon’s Cannabis Café, which doesn’t sell any cannabis at all, they are doing the same amount of business in a day that used to take all week to generate, and that’s just the sales of café food and beverages.  The café also charges a monthly membership fee and a cover charge minimum at the door.

This is why I always scoff at estimates of money to be made from legalization of cannabis.  I believe those estimates are extraordinarily conservatove and don’t even begin to factor in all the ancillary industries that will be formed to support the legal cannabis market.  The increase in sales of Ziploc baggies alone could bring enough tax revenue to hire more teachers and cops or fix some roads.

(WestWord) According to [Colorado State Senator Chris] Romer, he spoke to the [student newspaper] in order to reach students at the University of Colorado, among others. His goal: to shine a spotlight on his thoughts concerning the creation of “a medical review board for those under the age of 25.” He doubts that marijuana is medically necessary for a lot of younger people who’ve managed to get a doctor’s approval for obtaining it. As he puts it, “There’s some evidence of abuse in that age category when you correlate the statistics about conditions that can benefit from medical marijuana and then cross-correlate that data with those under 25.”

He’d like to “tighten up the requirements to get approval to receive medical marijuana. I’d like the initial review to include a full physical, and then that diagnosis would be sent to a second review board for their concurrence.”

What exactly is this “abuse” Sen. Romer is concerned with?  That some young people might not be in quite enough pain to really deserve medical marijuana?  That a person under age 25 might receive a recommendation from a doctor who doesn’t quite have the medical training and background to evaluate pain to Sen. Romer’s standards?

Here’s what I don’t understand about people who cry about “abuse” of medical marijuana.  Let’s assume you have a 21-year-old who is smoking pot.  Irrespective of any physical ailment, whether she lives with absolute torture from chronic pain or she just gets an annoying headache every six months, how would you prefer the 21-years-old’s use of marijuana be dealt with?  Should we:

1. Require her to visit a physician who verifies her ailment, have her fill out paperwork with the state, pay a fee to the state, become listed in a state registry, receive an identification card, and purchase marijuana from a regulated facility, where her ID and recommendation are checked, no minors are allowed, and her purchase creates jobs in a tough economy and generates sales taxes for the state; or
2. Have her find a friend with a connection or a dealer in a park, where no doctor sees her, her use is unknown to the state, and all revenues generated support everything from a dealer buying a new sports car to a Mexican cartel buying a local cop.

“If a patient has cancer or multiple sclerosis, that’s not going to be particularly hard to document in a physical review,” he maintains. “But 90 percent of the people who come in under the category of ‘chronic pain,’ we’ll go through a little more due diligence. Those who really do have chronic pain will make it through the system, and those who are abusing the system will not.”

So in addition to the review already performed by a patients’ doctor, Sen. Romer wants another full physical by another doctor, and a review panel of still more doctors to make sure that the patient is in severe enough pain to warrant the recommendation of a non-toxic herb. Even Oxycontin, Vicodin, and morphine patients aren’t subject to that type of strict review!  Because if someone was only in slight pain and using medical marijuana, why, that would… uh… well, I’m not sure what the down side is there aside from denying an opportunity for police to arrest someone who was willing to visit a doctor, pay a fee, and get a card to smoke pot.

As for those people “who set up a clinic with a pool table and video games,” Romer says, “that model isn’t going to fly — and I don’t think they’re going to be around in six months.”

“I’ve come across dispensaries and caregivers who I think provide fantastic care for their patients,” Romer emphasizes. “But I’ve also come across dispensaries that resemble frat houses, not clinics. I don’t know if 50 percent or more are in the frat house mode, but those in the clinical mode will survive, and those in the frat-house mode will go out of business — and the sooner, the better. And for people who really need medical marijuana, that’s a good thing.”

What does that mean, “frat house mode”?  Does that mean medicine can only be dispensed and administered in a sterile, clinical, serious place and that all forms of entertainment must be abolished?  What then of hospitals with their TVs in every patients’ room, or with a social area with board games or video games?  What Sen. Romer and others don’t understand is that we are social animals and that many patients lose so many social outlets because they cannot use their medicine in a public place.  If you suffer chronic pain and you have a Vicodin prescription, you can go to the movie, concert, parade, club, ballgame, or play, and if sitting still for three hours becomes too painful, you can open your pill bottle and pop a Vicodin.  Medical marijuana patients don’t have that option because of the illegality of marijuana for healthy people and lack of smoking areas even if it were legal.  So many dispensaries in California and Colorado and now the café in Oregon provide a place for patients to enjoy some social interaction and entertainment in comfort and safety.

(NY Times via CNBC) Among the 14 states with medical marijuana laws, Colorado has experienced particularly brisk growth in the stores. From fewer than two dozen dispensaries in the state in January, there are now more than 60 just in Denver and nearby Boulder, and more than 10,000 registered medical marijuana patients statewide, according to reports in Westword, a Denver alternative weekly.

Now a business that has nothing to do with cannabis is aiming its ads at medical marijuana patients. A new print ad — by TDA Advertising and Design of Boulder — for Hapa Sushi, a restaurant chain based in Boulder, features a map of Denver and Boulder with 63 dots. Four dots are red, representing the four Hapa locations, and the remaining 59 are blue, representing medical marijuana dispensaries, some of which, it turns out, are just a stone’s throw from the restaurants. The ad was to appear Thursday in the Denver/Boulder edition of The Onion and in Westword later in the month.

“We’re just kind of saying, ‘Look, these dispensaries exist and they’re becoming part of our community, so let’s welcome them in and have some fun,’ ” said Mark Van Grack, owner of Hapa Sushi, a privately held, 10-year-old chain. “If you’re going to smoke pot, you’re going to get the munchies, so come to Hapa to eat.”

And when it comes to tasty munchies, you can’t get much healthier than sushi.  (Denver’s one of the few landlocked states where I’ll eat sushi, since they have a major airport just a couple of hours from the coast by air.)

Once again, the business world can’t get enough of the power of pot.  There is so much economic opportunity locked up in the underground marijuana market and the money sharks can smell it.

It’s not just the revenues that could be made by taxing cannabis and the savings from not prosecuting its users.  It’s also the ancillary businesses that would thrive in a legal marijuana market – glassblowers, paper mills, timber mills (for hemp pressboard), farmers, retailers, restaurants, and so on – and the jobs they would create.  It’s also the extra cash freed up for other purchases; if a guy used to paying $400 an ounce is soon paying $100, even with taxes, he can afford to buy some more clothes or go out to a dinner and a movie.  Or maybe some sushi.

(Denver Post) Leo Cisneros was sentenced to 15 years in prison today for selling marijuana out of his family’s Denver apartment, nearly two months after a jury found him not guilty of child abuse resulting in the death of his daughter, Auralia.

Cisneros, 31, was convicted of possession with intent to distribute marijuana and having a gun while dealing drugs.

Three men tried to force themselves into the Cisneros family home the night Auralia was killed and they exchanged gunfire with Leo Cisneros. Auralia was shot in the face in the crossfire.

The intruders — Trivi Trujillo, Joshua Rojas and Juvencio Hernandez — all pleaded guilty in the case and are serving between 16 and 24 years in prison.

I’m not saying it’s a good idea to deal a pound of weed per week out of your apartment when your little girl is living there.  What I’m saying is that it is unjust to sentence a man who was selling a non-toxic substance to willing customers to one year less than a man who violates the sanctity of your home, guns blazing, and kills your child.

Of course, I’ve always had a problem with how we sentence pre-meditated violence in our country compared to other crimes.  To me, there is no greater crime than assaulting or killing another human being.  There should certainly be some temperance when we’re talking about spontaneous or emotional violence, but when someone coldly plans to physically harm another person, I’ve got a “one strike and you’re out” policy.

For example, take Bernie Madoff.  A really rich guy suckers some other really rich people into throwing away more money than I’ll ever see on a too-good-to-be-true Ponzi scheme.  The really rich people who were snookered lost a lot, but it’s not like you’re going to see Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon standing with a “Will Act for Food” sign at a freeway onramp anytime soon.  And it’s not as if once this was all revealed, Bernie Madoff was going to be able to pull it off again.  But for the sake of preserving society and punishing Madoff, he’s sentenced to 150 years and will never see the light of day again.

But if Bernie Madoff were just Bernie the Child Molester or Bernie the Rapist or Bernie the Murderer, depending on the circumstances he would likely be out of prison in three-to-six years.  We have mandatory minimum sentences for people who sell drugs to other people who willingly buy them, but no such mandates for people who rape, assault, and kill innocent others.  We have jails and prisons that are at 200% capacity, being ordered by federal courts to release tens of thousands of prisoners, but they can’t release the non-violent drug offenders because of the mandatory minimums, so thieves and violent offenders must be set free.

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Hemp Headlines

1. Drug Czar Kerlikowske on National Public Radio
2. Iowa Sen. Grassley: Webb Commission will “do what we tell them to do” and not “recommend or study the legalization of drugs.”
3. Oregon Court of Appeals to decide 2nd Amendment rights of medical marijuana patients

Daily Toker Tunes

• DilloKing – “Marijuana Mountain”

Grassroots Activism

• Laura Kriho from Cannabis Therapy Institute on Colorado Medical Marijuana changes.

(Westword) To make a long story short, the board voted 9-0 this morning to strike language stating that a marijuana caregiver has to have “significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient.”

This summer, the board determined that all a caregiver had to do was provide a patient with marijuana. However, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that this concept was invalid in a decision last week. So today, the board wasted no time in chucking their whole definition into the waste bin.

The board didn’t come up with a new definition, though — suggesting that it will wait for its regularly scheduled December 16 meeting to tackle the challenge. As of now, in other words, there’s no definition anywhere in state regulations stating what, exactly, it means to be a marijuana caregiver.

Gee, I wonder how many new dispensaries can set up shop in Colorado between now and December 16?  Haven’t they learned anything from Los Angeles?  State and local governments can’t just abdicate their responsibility to come up with clear regulations regarding medical marijuana.  In the absence of guidelines, people will assume the best-case scenario that allows their businesses to flourish, and then when the government does come up with regulations, they end up destroying the businesses of many people who had the best of intentions along with the carpetbaggers who were just looking to make a buck of medical marijuana.

(Summit Daily) BRECKENRIDGE — Breckenridge residents voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana and paraphernalia Tuesday under town law. In early returns, some 72 percent of voters approved the measure.

The vote means that, effective Jan. 1, people 21 and up in Breckenridge will be able to legally possess one ounce or less of the drug.

Possession remains illegal under state law, but Breckenridge Police Chief Rick Holman said his department will “still have the ability to exercise discretion.”

The decriminalization won’t change laws prohibiting smoking in public, use by minors or driving under the influence.

In an underhanded move, the Colorado Board of Health will be voting to weaken the medical marijuana law at an “emergency” meeting on Tuesday, November 3 at 10:30am in Denver. At this stealth meeting the Board will be voting to redefine what a “caregiver” is to require such individuals to provide supplementary– and often unnecessary– services beyond simply providing sick patients with medical marijuana.

“This is like requiring my pharmacist to give me a massage or make me a sandwich,” said Dan Pope, muscular dystrophy patient and medical card holder. “I can do those activities myself. I need a caregiver to give me medicine. End of story.”

This meeting, which was announced in a late afternoon email to a small handful of patient advocates, is another example of the state engaging in underhanded tactics in their effort to undermine the medical marijuana law and the will of the Colorado voters. Please help hold them accountable.

Here’s How You Can Help:

(1) Attend the Meeting. This meeting will occur at 10:30am on Tuesday, November 3 in the Snow Room, 1st Floor Building A of the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, 4300 Cherry Creek Dr. South, Denver CO.

(2) Call-in to the Meeting. While we strongly prefer that you attend in person, you can also call-in at 1-866-899-5399, conference code *3529725*

(3) Spread the Word. Please tell friends and family to attend the meeting and forward this alert widely!

Voters in Breckenridge, Colorado are deciding whether to decriminalize personal possession of up to one ounce of marijuana by adults. The editorial board of the local Summit Daily News has already come out in favor of this Measure 2F:

(Summit Daily News) …Breckenridge residents this Election Day will decide whether possessing less than an ounce of the intoxicating weed should be decriminalized.

…While police blotters and courts are filled with an extraordinary amount of problems directly related to alcohol abuse, it’s rare to ever find pot at the bottom of things like domestic abuse, bar fights, car crashes and the like.

…What the Breckenridge code change would do is one thing: decriminalize less than an ounce for adults. It will not make it more available to minors, won’t make it legal to smoke it on the street, won’t get you out of trouble if you’re stoned behind the wheel. What it says is that if you, as an adult, choose to possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use, you won’t be busted for it. It’s still a much more stringent law than those that apply to alcohol — a substance you can own as much as you want of and consume in public.One last item remains, though: As the recent pot busts at Arapahoe Basin show, consumption of marijuana can have a greater potential “footprint” than, say, drinking a beer. No one wants to have to walk with their children through a parking lot full of cars emitting clouds of pot smoke, and we’re behind the Summit County Sheriff for cracking down on these folks. Eventually, it seems these small possession busts will be a thing of the past state-wide, which makes us conclude some kind of “nuisance pot smoke” ordinance needs to take their place — roughly analogous to public intoxication statutes. Sure, smoke your weed, but don’t blow it in our faces.

Ah yes, decriminalize the marijuana possession, but make the public use of marijuana an arrestable offense.  If it’s in your baggie, it’s OK, but if it’s in your pipe, it is not.  If I may paraphrase the late Johnny Cochran, “If the joint’s not lit, you must acquit!”

…but Colorado has also said that providing marijuana in and of itself counts as caregiving.  It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.

The Colorado Court of Appeals issued a ruling today (10/29) creating the first case law on Colorado’s Medical Marijuana Law (Article XVIII, Section 14 of the Colorado Constitution). The court ruled that a medical marijuana caregiver must know their patients personally and must provide them with other services in addition to the acquisition of medical marijuana.

However, the decision came in the appeal of a defendant who was arrested *before* the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment issued rules this summer clarifying the patient/caregiver relationship. So the Court of Appeals opinion may not have any immediate bearing on medical marijuana caregivers currently operating in compliance with those rules and regulations, but it may show the future direction the Court is likely to take on this issue.

Read the Colo. Court of Appeals opinion here: http://www.cobar.org/opinions/opinion.cfm?opinionid=7372&courtid=1

The opinion was issued on Oct. 29 in the case of Colorado v. Clendenin.

Stacy Clendenin was a caregiver in Boulder County who was convicted in October 2006 of marijuana cultivation and was denied the right to have patients testify at her trial if those patients did not know Stacy personally while she was serving as their caregiver. Her attorney, Rob Corry, argued in the appeal that there is no law that requires the primary caregiver to have face-to-face contact with the patient and that the trial court erred by making an arbitrary decision to prevent patient witnesses from testifying. Corry argued that the Colorado State Board of Health recently supported Corry’s interpretation of the law, in new rules that went into effect on August 30, 2009, which state that “significant responsibility” could mean simply providing a patient with medical marijuana.

http://www.colorado420.com/news/clendenin/

http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/hs/medicalmarijuana/AdoptedRules0200900360.pdf

Rob Corry issued a statement to the Cannabis Therapy Institute that said:

“The Court of Appeals’ opinion is narrow and by its own terms only applies to defendants who went to trial before August 30, 2009, the effective date of the Colorado Board of Health Regulations providing that a person need only provide medicine to satisfy the constitutional definition of caregiver.  (See page 13-14 of Clendenin opinion.)  There are encouraging sentiments in Judge Loeb’s concurrence, where he states there could be legislative clarification to correct a possible lack of protection for everyone in the supply chain.  We will almost certainly appeal this opinion to the Colorado Supreme Court and will be working with the legislature if it chooses to follow Judge Loeb’s guidance and protect all suppliers of medicine.”

Jeff Gard, a Boulder attorney who specializes in medical marijuana laws, had a more conservative view of the ruling. His statement says:

“It is more critical than ever to view the medical marijuana laws as conservatively as possible.  Under the Clendenin case, the Court of Appeals ruled that the primary care-giver affirmative defense does not apply where the provision of marijuana is itself the substance of the relationship.  As I have told prospective caregivers who seek my advice, caregiving means more than cultivating and/or providing medical marijuana to your patient and any such activities must be limited only to patients who have assigned you to be their caregiver.  Caregiving requires a personal relationship and providing medical marijuana to your patient is only one small part of managing the patient’s well-being.”

Officials with state’s Medical Marijuana Registry program will be meeting with their attorneys next week to discuss the legal impact of the ruling.

When asked how the ruling would affect the Registry’s rules, Mark Salley, spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment told the CTI that, “The Department will be evaluating the Court’s ruling and the possible impact of medical marijuana rules currently in place.”

Laura Kriho, spokesperson for the Cannabis Therapy Institute, was not surprised by the ruling. “We hope this has no immediate negative effect on patients’ safe access to their medicine, and we are not in favor of any government regulation that will restrict medical cannabis therapies or caregiving relationships,” she said. “However, we do feel that anything that encourages our caregivers to take better care of their patients will only be good for the patients. If caregivers strive to attain the spirit of this decision, we can expect medical care for patients overall to improve,” she said.

“If caregivers decide to use this decision as a model on how to run their businesses or to set up patient service collectives, patients and communities will thrive,” says Timothy Tipton of the Rocky Mountain Caregivers Cooperative. “This should encourage other professionals that provide caregiving services and alternative therapies to begin to include medical cannabis in their practices. This will only serve to boost the industry to another level of service for our patients.”