By Susan de Castro McCann

Redstone Review Editor

LYONS – The Lyons Town Board has received from town attorney Tim Cox a summary and update on the new medical marijuana law, House Bill 1284, signed into law by Gov. John Ritter on June 7.

The bill proposes a complex set of regulations and boards, similar to the municipal and state liquor boards, which must be created within the next year to approve dispensaries.

House Bill 1284 regulates growers, caregivers and dispensaries and opens up a list of questions with no answers available at this time. Dispensaries are now required to be licensed at both the state and local levels. Dispensaries must apply for their state licenses by August 1 but it seems that there are no forms ready yet. Dispensary owners cannot be caregivers, and this creates a gray area when the dispensary owner is giving advice to a patient, for example. Dispensary owners must have lived in Colorado for two years before they can apply for a license.

A second bill signed by the governor, Senate Bill 109, places medical marijuana requirements on doctors requiring that they must be in good standing to prescribe marijuana, and it also requires the patients to have established relationships with their doctors, who must give their patients complete physicals. It prevents doctors from getting paid by dispensaries for prescribing marijuana. This bill goes into effect immediately.

Lyons has in place a moratorium on new dispensary licenses, due to expire in September, and Attorney Cox told the board that he recommends extending the moratorium until the town can set up the required medical marijuana board and figure out the zoning issues.

At issue under the new laws is the fact that communities can opt out of allowing any medical marijuana dispensaries, an option that has some attorneys lining up for lawsuits. Vail has already voted to opt out of allowing medical marijuana dispensaries. Even though dispensaries are not allowed, patients are still allowed to use medical marijuana in those cities and caregivers are allowed to work with patients.

Several items in the new bills pose potential problems for dispensary owners who are now required to grow 70 percent of the marijuana they sell. Owners are also now required to undergo criminal background checks.

The state has a 1,000-foot rule, similar to the requirement for liquor stores, which prohibits dispensaries from opening up within 1,000 feet of a school, day-care center or other places where children gather. However individual municipalities have the option to change the 1,000 foot rule or to do away with it.

Attorney Cox told the board that it would have to decide how it wants to structure the new required medical marijuana board. The town board can act as the medical marijuana board or it can appoint a new board. Currently the town board acts as the liquor board.

A patient is defined by Colorado Amendment 20 as “a person who has a debilitating medical condition.” A primary caregiver is a person other than the patient and the patient’s physician who is 18 years old or older and has significant responsibility for managing the wellbeing of a patient who has a debilitating medical condition. A patient is allowed to grow and possess a limited amount of medical marijuana. The caregiver is also allowed to grow and medical marijuana for up to five patients. The caregiver can possess up to two ounces of marijuana and up to six plants, of which three can be flowering.

A local municipal medical marijuana board or licensing authority must be in place and have an ordinance in place to regulate standards for licensing dispensaries by July 1, 2011. Local licensing authorities are allowed to create their own forms and to set application, licensing and processing fees, an allowance that has some communities anxious to fill the yawning gaps in their budgets with medical marijuana fees.

The local boards are required to create distance restrictions between dispensaries, set restrictions on the size of the dispensaries, and other requirements necessary to ensure control and enforcement of the dispensaries.

The Lyons Board of Trustees asked staff to set up some workshops for business owners to gather more information and for the public to learn more and be able to ask questions. The dates have not been set yet. The licensing authority at the state level will fine-tune the regulations set by the state and it will also set up a state-licensing fee. Many believe that the fee structure at both the state and local levels will be prohibitive for most dispensaries to operate under and many will go out of business.

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