Carroll: Colorado's marijuana mess - The Denver Post

Carroll: Colorado's marijuana mess - The Denver Post
State lawmakers shouldn't kid themselves about the looming fork in the road for medical marijuana, or the inescapable tradeoffs.
On the one hand, they can pass some version of Denver Sen. Chris Romer's plan to provide state licenses to marijuana dispensaries and growers. But if do, they'll solidify a marijuana industry that serves not only a rapidly growing number of genuine patients but many recreational-minded frauds as well. And Colorado will have created, in one fell swoop, a class of potentially influential marijuana entrepreneurs.
Or, lawmakers can elect to return to the medical marijuana model that Colorado followed before this year's explosion of retail dispensaries (brought about in part by a change in federal enforcement policy). If they take this path, the industry will once again sink below the public's radar as dispensaries disappear. Meanwhile, however, hundreds and maybe thousands of legitimate patients who swear by marijuana's effectiveness will be forced into an anxious world where they secure their pain or nausea relief from unregulated strangers.
As the debate sharpens, advocates on either side will deny this tradeoff exists. Some will claim that the previous system worked just fine and that dispensaries cater to a clientele that for the most part is gaming the system. Their opponents, meanwhile, will pack hearing rooms with patients relating poignant stories of their suffering before dispensaries emerged, while insisting that a well-written law will screen out bad actors.
Neither side's claims are fully believable.

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_1397253