A Booming Business

Each day in Colorado, 400 applications from patients wanting to use marijuana as medicine, come to the State Department of Health and Environment. In 2006, just over 1000 people were on the State's patient registry. So far this year, more than 11,000 people are card-carrying medicinal marijuana users. Four dispensaries have opened in Aspen since late summer and several others are serving patients up and down the Roaring Fork Valley.

To treat a knee injury, one patient I talked to uses a concentrated form of the plant that is liquified and edible. Josh Griggs says it makes the constant pain he experiences go away. Griggs is also a dispensary owner and he has created several rules for his patients, or members. They are required to sign a 5-page agreement saying they will not re-sell the marijuana on the street and the patients are outlawed from using the drug in the dispensary.

Local town governments are also creating rules in an effort to regulate parts of the industry. In New Castle, the Town Board is preparing to adopt an ordinance that would require background checks for dispensary owners and the dispensaries themselves would be subject to Conditional Use requirements. So far, no dispensaries have opened in New Castle but in Glenwood Springs there are at least two downtown stores. City elected officials have not set up rules but the mayor believes the State needs to create more regulations.

This booming industry seems to be growing so fast, local governments and even dispensaries are trying to catch up and regulate it where they can. It will be interesting to see where this newly-sprouting industry goes and whether new regulations from the State are developed.