Bill revising medical-pot regulations in Colorado advances - The Denver Post
Bill revising medical-pot regulations in Colorado advances - The Denver Post Colorado's medical-marijuana wars began anew at the state Capitol on Thursday with the first public hearing on a bill that makes changes to the state's dispensary regulations. When the hearing opened, the measure — House Bill 1043 — would have made a number of industry-friendly changes to the rules, including making it easier for felons to own dispensaries and exempting long-standing dispensaries from buffer-zone rules around schools. But Rep. Tom Massey, a Poncha Springs Republican who is sponsoring the legislation, quickly announced that he had rewritten the bill. Gone were the loosened restrictions on felons. Gone was the grandfathering of dispensaries in buffer zones. What was left was a bill that "A good compromise," said Josh Stanley, owner of the Budding Health chain of dispensaries, "is when everybody is not exactly happy." But the bill outraged marijuana activists and some small-dispensary owners, who said the changes would force dispensaries to close, hurt patient access and boost the black-market trade in marijuana. A number of activists used the hearing as an opportunity to express concerns about issues not addressed in the bill. They criticized a different bill filed this week at the Capitol that would ban the sale of marijuana-enhanced food and drinks, a major industry niche in Colorado. They blasted proposed Department of Revenue regulations that would require all medical-marijuana transactions at dispensaries to be videotaped. "We have a situation where our medical-marijuana program is run by the state tax collector, and you've really taken all the medicine out of it," said Laura Kriho of the Cannabis Therapy Institute.Extras
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