NOREEN: Who's to blame for reefer madness?
It’s reefer madness.
Colorado Springs isn’t going to launch a sweeping crackdown on medicinal marijuana dispensaries, but city officials — like officials everywhere in Colorado — aren’t really sure what they’re going to do about the growing chaos surrounding medicinal pot.
Fourth Judicial District Attorney Dan May vented his frustration to the City Council this week, complaining that “dispensaries” are springing up quickly and that one is only 80 yards from Palmer High School.
“I couldn’t open a liquor store there and I couldn’t open a dirty book shop there, but they are dispensing marijuana there,” May complained.
Code Enforcement official Dick Anderwald said his office will respond to complaints if they get them, and they’ll shut the operations down.
Both May and Anderwald better think again.
May needs to remember he swore an oath to uphold the Colorado Constitution, which has contained a provision allowing medicinal pot for nine years.
Before Anderwald tries to put someone out of business for a code violation, he’d best make sure the city has a code concerning medicinal pot vendors. Right now, it doesn’t.
Anderwald thinks he is going to shut down a constitutionally protected enterprise without any supporting local regulations to back him up. Good luck explaining that to a federal judge.
After passage of Amendment 20 in 2000, the legislature dropped the ball by failing to approve enabling legislation for it. Colorado’s 64 counties and its municipalities also are guilty of benign neglect for failing to approve codes and ordinances, when they have had nine years to do it.
Sure, some of the “dispensaries” are just drug dealers trying to get cover for their operations. There also are legitimate dispensaries making a good-faith effort to provide medicine to a variety of patients.
“It’s like the wild West out there,” said Councilman Sean Paige, who joined Councilmen Tom Gallagher and Randy Purvis in urging that an ad hoc panel (see my blog) be established to develop local rules for the operations. This is a wise move.
The dispensaries have a constitutional right. It’s not an absolute right. The job of defining the limits belongs to those who have been asleep at the switch. The city is waking up.
“They came in and accentuated the negative and most on council resisted that,” Paige said of the presentation by May and Colorado Springs Police Chief Richard Myers.
Still, Paige said, “if there are complaints brought about them we need to respond to it like we would any other business.”
Perhaps there should be a moratorium on closing these shops until city codes are approved. Businesses can’t obey laws that have not yet been passed and zoning officials don’t get to make it up as they go along.
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See my blog at gazette.com/blogs/barrysblog
