Jim Finnel
Fallen Cannabis Warrior & Ex News Moderator
Drive to an aging, nondescript strip mall on Fillmore Street, knock on the locked door of Cannabis Therapeutics, and when the door swings open the first thing to greet you will be the sweet, pungent smell of marijuana.
Here in the heart of Colorado Springs is the largest medical marijuana dispensary in Colorado. Doorman Ken McAdams checks your paperwork from the state, and then you're ushered into the inner sanctum.
Charismatic owner Michael Lee delights in showing newcomers around his magic emporium, with his friendly pup Sawyer trailing at his feet. There are 45 strains of pot on this day - with names like chemo, white widow, purple kush, vortex, chocolate chunk, lemonade, and orange crush - arranged in glass jars.
But that's just the beginning. There are tinctures, lotions and balms. There are cran-raspberry drinks, chewing gum, cough drops and caramels. There's bubble bath, banana bread and cherry cheesecake. New creations are constantly being birthed in the "Herbologist's" chemistry lab.
"There are so many ways to get your medicine now that you don't need to smoke it," Lee said.
Cheech and Chong would go bonkers in this place, but Lee is careful to avoid that stoner vibe. He doesn't make jokes about munchies or being high. He calls marijuana "medicine" and his customers are "patients."
He has good reasons - personal and professional - to fight the image of marijuana as the province of snowboard dudes and aging hippies, and instead promote the drug as legitimate medicine.
State voters approved medical marijuana use in November 2000, thus writing Amendment 20 into the state constitution. But nearly a decade later state officials are still tinkering with its implementation.
Newly proposed changes by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment threaten to close dispensaries like Cannabis Therapeutics. The rule changes - to be discussed at a meeting in Denver in June - would make it illegal to supply more than five patients, effectively stamping out medical marijuana dispensaries.
"It's not about business, it's about patients," Lee said.
He sells marijuana to more than 500 people, he said, roughly 1 in 10 people on the state registry. More people come to him every month, and he saw a boost recently when the Obama administration said medical marijuana use can be decided by the states, ending the raids by federal agents under President Bush.
The patients are teachers, lawyers, doctors and retirees, he said. They have afflictions like cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, and chronic pain. And inside his place - where "the grass is always greener" - they will find a cornucopia of legal marijuana products.
They will also find like-minded fellowship and care. Around the corner from Cannabis Therapeutics is the Patient Activity and Resource Center ( PARC ), where freshly cooked meals, massages and occasional medical clinics are available on Cannabis Therapeutics' dime.
There, Holly Watson hit the vaporizer and pulled pot vapors into her lungs. Watson was with friend Kristi Hernandez and Frank Blakely, who zoomed in on his motorized wheelchair to hang out for a while.
A fibromyalgia sufferer, Watson said the pain made her quit working as a certified medical assistant about a year ago, and she drifted away from her family as she got more zoned out on prescribed painkillers. She cried as she talked about what medical marijuana has done for her.
"Since I've started medicating with marijuana, I've gotten my life back," said Watson, 34. "When I was on morphine, my kids got away with I don't know what."
'Miracle Plant'
So, how does one become the king of medical marijuana in Colorado? In this case, reluctantly.
Michael Lee was an Air Force kid who moved around a lot, but graduated from Palmer High School in 1982.
After he escaped high school, he moved in with his brother in California. He was driving down Shoreline Drive in Santa Barbara on a rainy Sunday, when another car collided with his and nearly ripped it in half.
Lee said he had a fractured skull, a ruptured spleen and five breaks in his spine. But after the accident Lee spurned traditional painkillers and turned instead to marijuana to control chronic pain and muscle spasms during his quarter-century career as a flooring contractor.
When Colorado legalized medical marijuana, he got a recommendation from his doctor and became patient No. 7 on the state registry. But, Lee said, he never thought of starting a dispensary until his physician, Dr. Randall Bjork, nudged him.
"It wasn't really my idea, but somebody had to do it," Lee said. "When I was a patient, I couldn't find anybody to help me."
Cannabis Therapeutics grew from seven patients to more than 500 patients, and Lee has grown from a reluctant entrepreneur to a medical marijuana missionary.
Lee is a Christian who thinks of marijuana as a gift from God that we should be using for everything from fuel to hemp clothing. "It's a miracle plant," he said, his voice rising along with his excitement.
State health authorities, however, are more conflicted. State officials have been assailed by marijuana advocates for the proposed rule changes that could threaten dispensaries like Lee's. The public outcry forced the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, an agency typically removed from controversy, to postpone its originally scheduled March hearing to June so it could find a meeting hall large enough for the anticipated crowd. Ron Hyman, state registrar of statistics, said the department expects more than 500 people to attend.
Critics say the health department's new rules are the latest example in a long history of hurdles as the state struggles to accept the legality of the drug. Hyman counters the rules are designed to better conform to the amendment, not interfere with it.
The most controversial change involves the definition of a primary caregiver, and a limitation on how many people one person can care for.
Amendment 20 defines a "primary caregiver" as someone who "has significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient who has a debilitating medical condition."
Dispensary owners like Lee have built their businesses on the notion that they are caregivers under the amendment.
"We are more than providers. We are caretakers," Lee said, arguing that his hot meals and massages and friendly conversation are more than any doctor or pharmacist provides.
Hyman said "significant responsibility," as worded in the amendment, was vague, but a merchandiser is not who most people would consider to be a person's caregiver.
"They know better than that. That was not the original intent," said Denver attorney Warren Edson, one of the authors of the amendment. "We totally, 100 percent, intended for there to be dispensaries."
Dispensaries don't appear in the amendment, and Edson acknowledges the authors did a literary tango to try to blunt direct conflicts with federal law and find wording that would succeed with voters. He said "caregiver" was simply the word they chose to define someone other than a doctor who would grow and dispense marijuana. They wanted dispensaries, he said, because the free market model encourages innovation, variety and better prices for patients.
He thinks state bureaucrats who are uncomfortable with medical marijuana are trying to exploit ambiguities to reverse the will of the voters.
"The amendment is pretty clear," Edson said. "And the Department of Health shouldn't be changing the state constitution."
Hyman thinks the changes are true to what the people of Colorado thought they were voting for. Did voters envision a cancer patient raising a pot plant for himself, or that thriving businesses would form to sell marijuana? The changes are designed to kill the latter.
The rule changes would define "significant responsibility" as "assisting a patient with daily activities, including but not limited to transportation, housekeeping, meal preparation and shopping, and making any necessary arrangement for medical care and/or services."
With the many responsibilities of a caregiver, Hyman said, there's a question whether a single person could effectively carry out such a task for more than five people at a time, which is the new proposed limit.
The vast majority of patients on the medical marijuana registry are approved because of severe pain. Lee contends it's a logical leap to assume that all people with pain - such as himself - require a caregiver to clean their homes or make their medical appointments.
He and most of his employees are approved medical marijuana patients, he said, and yet they are far from helpless.
Dispensaries are not addressed in the Amendment or the rules, but it is implied that someone not considered a patient, physician or caregiver would be out of compliance and subject to legal action. In other words, Cannabis Therapeutics and its ilk could suddenly be considered a criminal enterprise.
Medical marijuana dispensaries haven't been a problem for local law enforcement, said Lt. Al Harmon, a supervisor in the Colorado Springs Police Department's drug unit.
"We haven't had any that we've been seeking prosecution on because of an investigation," Harmon said. "But that's not to say there won't be."
The police do check out medical marijuana dispensaries to ensure they abide by the law and aren't functioning as fronts for illegal drug sales, and Harmon is very familiar with Cannabis Therapeutics.
"( Michael Lee ) is very accommodating," Harmon said. "He lets you come in and look around so you know exactly what's going on there. He'll answer any question about his place. That makes it a little bit easier, but they don't have an obligation to be as forthright as he is."
While opponents of the state's proposed changes argue that dispensaries make the process more transparent, offer higher quality marijuana at better prices, and keep patients from making dangerous street deals, Hyman said the state wants to ensure patients are receiving a reasonable amount of care from their caregivers.
"Most of these people have heavy duty conditions," he said.
For their part, the three patients hanging out together at the PARC fear the state's changes. They said they can't take on the work of growing their own marijuana, they don't want to buy it on the street, and they don't have a caregiver in the way the state wants to define it, so the rule changes essentially make it impossible to get the drug.
[sidebars]
REGISTRY FACTS
Amendment 20 was passed by Colorado voters in 2000 and implemented in 2001.
State health officials made caregiver-to-patient ratio changes in 2004 similar to the proposed changes to be discussed in June, which would have eliminated dispensaries. The changes were thrown out by a judge in 2007, due in part to a lack of public hearings.
The number of patients registered to use the drug more than doubled in the past year, and has multiplied 10 times since 2004.
The number of dispensaries in Colorado has grown from 2 to about 30 in the past year, according to Keith Stroup, founder of the national pot lobbying group NORML. It's his opinion that Colorado has more medical marijuana dispensaries than any state other than California.
More than 500 doctors in Colorado have now recommended marijuana for their patients, according to the state.
Conditions for which medical marijuana can be used include cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS positive, cachexia, severe pain, severe nausea, seizures ( including those that are characteristic of epilepsy ) and persistent muscle spasms ( including those that are characteristic of multiple sclerosis ).
Patients approved for medical marijuana use and designated caregivers register with the state and can possess as much as 2 ounces of the drug and as many as six marijuana plants. Patients cannot engage in the medical use of marijuana in plain view of the general public.
According to Amendment 20, the marijuana is legal as soon as it gets into a patient or caregiver's hands, even if it came from an illegal source.
14 states have approved the use of medical marijuana, and Colorado is the only one to have written it into the state constitution.
GETTING ON THE REGISTRY
To get on the state registry, you must get the recommendation of a licensed Colorado doctor, apply to the state for a Medical Marijuana Registry identification card, and then either grow your own marijuana or designate a caregiver who can supply you. You must reapply every year.
To learn about regional doctors and dispensaries, contact the Patient Activity and Resource Center associated with Cannabis Therapeutics, 636-6026, or the nonprofit medical marijuana advocacy group Sensible Colorado, 1-720.890.4247.
News Hawk: User: 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: Gazette, The (Colorado Springs, CO)
Copyright: 2009 The Gazette
Contact: Submit a Letter : Colorado Springs Gazette, CO
Website: Colorado Springs News & Information : Colorado Springs Gazette, CO
Author: Bill Reed
Here in the heart of Colorado Springs is the largest medical marijuana dispensary in Colorado. Doorman Ken McAdams checks your paperwork from the state, and then you're ushered into the inner sanctum.
Charismatic owner Michael Lee delights in showing newcomers around his magic emporium, with his friendly pup Sawyer trailing at his feet. There are 45 strains of pot on this day - with names like chemo, white widow, purple kush, vortex, chocolate chunk, lemonade, and orange crush - arranged in glass jars.
But that's just the beginning. There are tinctures, lotions and balms. There are cran-raspberry drinks, chewing gum, cough drops and caramels. There's bubble bath, banana bread and cherry cheesecake. New creations are constantly being birthed in the "Herbologist's" chemistry lab.
"There are so many ways to get your medicine now that you don't need to smoke it," Lee said.
Cheech and Chong would go bonkers in this place, but Lee is careful to avoid that stoner vibe. He doesn't make jokes about munchies or being high. He calls marijuana "medicine" and his customers are "patients."
He has good reasons - personal and professional - to fight the image of marijuana as the province of snowboard dudes and aging hippies, and instead promote the drug as legitimate medicine.
State voters approved medical marijuana use in November 2000, thus writing Amendment 20 into the state constitution. But nearly a decade later state officials are still tinkering with its implementation.
Newly proposed changes by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment threaten to close dispensaries like Cannabis Therapeutics. The rule changes - to be discussed at a meeting in Denver in June - would make it illegal to supply more than five patients, effectively stamping out medical marijuana dispensaries.
"It's not about business, it's about patients," Lee said.
He sells marijuana to more than 500 people, he said, roughly 1 in 10 people on the state registry. More people come to him every month, and he saw a boost recently when the Obama administration said medical marijuana use can be decided by the states, ending the raids by federal agents under President Bush.
The patients are teachers, lawyers, doctors and retirees, he said. They have afflictions like cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, and chronic pain. And inside his place - where "the grass is always greener" - they will find a cornucopia of legal marijuana products.
They will also find like-minded fellowship and care. Around the corner from Cannabis Therapeutics is the Patient Activity and Resource Center ( PARC ), where freshly cooked meals, massages and occasional medical clinics are available on Cannabis Therapeutics' dime.
There, Holly Watson hit the vaporizer and pulled pot vapors into her lungs. Watson was with friend Kristi Hernandez and Frank Blakely, who zoomed in on his motorized wheelchair to hang out for a while.
A fibromyalgia sufferer, Watson said the pain made her quit working as a certified medical assistant about a year ago, and she drifted away from her family as she got more zoned out on prescribed painkillers. She cried as she talked about what medical marijuana has done for her.
"Since I've started medicating with marijuana, I've gotten my life back," said Watson, 34. "When I was on morphine, my kids got away with I don't know what."
'Miracle Plant'
So, how does one become the king of medical marijuana in Colorado? In this case, reluctantly.
Michael Lee was an Air Force kid who moved around a lot, but graduated from Palmer High School in 1982.
After he escaped high school, he moved in with his brother in California. He was driving down Shoreline Drive in Santa Barbara on a rainy Sunday, when another car collided with his and nearly ripped it in half.
Lee said he had a fractured skull, a ruptured spleen and five breaks in his spine. But after the accident Lee spurned traditional painkillers and turned instead to marijuana to control chronic pain and muscle spasms during his quarter-century career as a flooring contractor.
When Colorado legalized medical marijuana, he got a recommendation from his doctor and became patient No. 7 on the state registry. But, Lee said, he never thought of starting a dispensary until his physician, Dr. Randall Bjork, nudged him.
"It wasn't really my idea, but somebody had to do it," Lee said. "When I was a patient, I couldn't find anybody to help me."
Cannabis Therapeutics grew from seven patients to more than 500 patients, and Lee has grown from a reluctant entrepreneur to a medical marijuana missionary.
Lee is a Christian who thinks of marijuana as a gift from God that we should be using for everything from fuel to hemp clothing. "It's a miracle plant," he said, his voice rising along with his excitement.
State health authorities, however, are more conflicted. State officials have been assailed by marijuana advocates for the proposed rule changes that could threaten dispensaries like Lee's. The public outcry forced the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, an agency typically removed from controversy, to postpone its originally scheduled March hearing to June so it could find a meeting hall large enough for the anticipated crowd. Ron Hyman, state registrar of statistics, said the department expects more than 500 people to attend.
Critics say the health department's new rules are the latest example in a long history of hurdles as the state struggles to accept the legality of the drug. Hyman counters the rules are designed to better conform to the amendment, not interfere with it.
The most controversial change involves the definition of a primary caregiver, and a limitation on how many people one person can care for.
Amendment 20 defines a "primary caregiver" as someone who "has significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient who has a debilitating medical condition."
Dispensary owners like Lee have built their businesses on the notion that they are caregivers under the amendment.
"We are more than providers. We are caretakers," Lee said, arguing that his hot meals and massages and friendly conversation are more than any doctor or pharmacist provides.
Hyman said "significant responsibility," as worded in the amendment, was vague, but a merchandiser is not who most people would consider to be a person's caregiver.
"They know better than that. That was not the original intent," said Denver attorney Warren Edson, one of the authors of the amendment. "We totally, 100 percent, intended for there to be dispensaries."
Dispensaries don't appear in the amendment, and Edson acknowledges the authors did a literary tango to try to blunt direct conflicts with federal law and find wording that would succeed with voters. He said "caregiver" was simply the word they chose to define someone other than a doctor who would grow and dispense marijuana. They wanted dispensaries, he said, because the free market model encourages innovation, variety and better prices for patients.
He thinks state bureaucrats who are uncomfortable with medical marijuana are trying to exploit ambiguities to reverse the will of the voters.
"The amendment is pretty clear," Edson said. "And the Department of Health shouldn't be changing the state constitution."
Hyman thinks the changes are true to what the people of Colorado thought they were voting for. Did voters envision a cancer patient raising a pot plant for himself, or that thriving businesses would form to sell marijuana? The changes are designed to kill the latter.
The rule changes would define "significant responsibility" as "assisting a patient with daily activities, including but not limited to transportation, housekeeping, meal preparation and shopping, and making any necessary arrangement for medical care and/or services."
With the many responsibilities of a caregiver, Hyman said, there's a question whether a single person could effectively carry out such a task for more than five people at a time, which is the new proposed limit.
The vast majority of patients on the medical marijuana registry are approved because of severe pain. Lee contends it's a logical leap to assume that all people with pain - such as himself - require a caregiver to clean their homes or make their medical appointments.
He and most of his employees are approved medical marijuana patients, he said, and yet they are far from helpless.
Dispensaries are not addressed in the Amendment or the rules, but it is implied that someone not considered a patient, physician or caregiver would be out of compliance and subject to legal action. In other words, Cannabis Therapeutics and its ilk could suddenly be considered a criminal enterprise.
Medical marijuana dispensaries haven't been a problem for local law enforcement, said Lt. Al Harmon, a supervisor in the Colorado Springs Police Department's drug unit.
"We haven't had any that we've been seeking prosecution on because of an investigation," Harmon said. "But that's not to say there won't be."
The police do check out medical marijuana dispensaries to ensure they abide by the law and aren't functioning as fronts for illegal drug sales, and Harmon is very familiar with Cannabis Therapeutics.
"( Michael Lee ) is very accommodating," Harmon said. "He lets you come in and look around so you know exactly what's going on there. He'll answer any question about his place. That makes it a little bit easier, but they don't have an obligation to be as forthright as he is."
While opponents of the state's proposed changes argue that dispensaries make the process more transparent, offer higher quality marijuana at better prices, and keep patients from making dangerous street deals, Hyman said the state wants to ensure patients are receiving a reasonable amount of care from their caregivers.
"Most of these people have heavy duty conditions," he said.
For their part, the three patients hanging out together at the PARC fear the state's changes. They said they can't take on the work of growing their own marijuana, they don't want to buy it on the street, and they don't have a caregiver in the way the state wants to define it, so the rule changes essentially make it impossible to get the drug.
[sidebars]
REGISTRY FACTS
Amendment 20 was passed by Colorado voters in 2000 and implemented in 2001.
State health officials made caregiver-to-patient ratio changes in 2004 similar to the proposed changes to be discussed in June, which would have eliminated dispensaries. The changes were thrown out by a judge in 2007, due in part to a lack of public hearings.
The number of patients registered to use the drug more than doubled in the past year, and has multiplied 10 times since 2004.
The number of dispensaries in Colorado has grown from 2 to about 30 in the past year, according to Keith Stroup, founder of the national pot lobbying group NORML. It's his opinion that Colorado has more medical marijuana dispensaries than any state other than California.
More than 500 doctors in Colorado have now recommended marijuana for their patients, according to the state.
Conditions for which medical marijuana can be used include cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS positive, cachexia, severe pain, severe nausea, seizures ( including those that are characteristic of epilepsy ) and persistent muscle spasms ( including those that are characteristic of multiple sclerosis ).
Patients approved for medical marijuana use and designated caregivers register with the state and can possess as much as 2 ounces of the drug and as many as six marijuana plants. Patients cannot engage in the medical use of marijuana in plain view of the general public.
According to Amendment 20, the marijuana is legal as soon as it gets into a patient or caregiver's hands, even if it came from an illegal source.
14 states have approved the use of medical marijuana, and Colorado is the only one to have written it into the state constitution.
GETTING ON THE REGISTRY
To get on the state registry, you must get the recommendation of a licensed Colorado doctor, apply to the state for a Medical Marijuana Registry identification card, and then either grow your own marijuana or designate a caregiver who can supply you. You must reapply every year.
To learn about regional doctors and dispensaries, contact the Patient Activity and Resource Center associated with Cannabis Therapeutics, 636-6026, or the nonprofit medical marijuana advocacy group Sensible Colorado, 1-720.890.4247.
News Hawk: User: 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: Gazette, The (Colorado Springs, CO)
Copyright: 2009 The Gazette
Contact: Submit a Letter : Colorado Springs Gazette, CO
Website: Colorado Springs News & Information : Colorado Springs Gazette, CO
Author: Bill Reed
