Public Hearing Continued To December

TELLURIDE – While the Planning and Zoning Commission last week stopped short of recommending to the Telluride Town Council language to amend the Land Use Code for the purpose of regulating medical marijuana dispensaries here, after a lively discussion the commission was leaning toward regulating them like liquor stores and continued a public hearing on the matter to its next meeting on Dec. 10.

“I think we want to treat it more like a liquor store, because that’s where it’s going…” said Kathy Green, summing up the commission’s overarching belief that one day the sale of marijuana for non-medical purposes will be legal.

At the same time P&Z Member Bruce Wright cautioned against putting too many rules in place.

“Before it’s legal I think you have to have some regulation going on,” he agreed. “But if you treat it like it’s going to be a drug den then that’s what it’s going to become.”

To that end the five-member P&Z roughed out a series of regulations using ordinances crafted in other Colorado municipalities including Frisco and Dillon for inspiration.

“We don’t have to reinvent the wheel here,” said Town Planning and Building Director Chris Hawkins.

The commission tended toward recommending that all dispensaries be required to hold current, valid business and sales tax licenses.

Its members also supported potential requirements for the submission of dispensary plans describing security provisions, hours of operation, and the number and ages of employees, as well as cultivation and ventilation plans in the event that any plants were to be grown on-site.

Measures requiring that all dispensing, cultivation and storage activities take place indoors, and a prohibition on plants, products, accessories or paraphernalia being visible from public sidewalks or rights of way also had traction.

The commission liked the idea of set business hours – perhaps 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. or something similar – and on-site consumption would be prohibited.

“I don’t want to see a storefront operating at 1 a.m. and people going outside my bar with their medical marijuana card smoking it and then me hearing about it,” said commission member Andrew Dolese, a Sheridan bartender. “I’m all for regulating this.”

The dispensaries are likely to be permitted only in the town’s Commercial and Historic Commercial zone districts, but not within 500 feet of an existing kindergarten through 12th grade public or private schools.

Pre-school and adult education could be handled with somewhat more flexibility in the event they wanted to occupy a commercial space near an established dispensary.

“I don’t want to turn down a daycare because there’s an existing marijuana dispensary,” said Green. “We have a lot of [commercial] vacancies right now and a lot of vacancies coming up.”

“I don’t think we need to be too worried about a daycare or adult education,” she continued.

Medical marijuana dispensaries are unlikely to be permitted in movable or mobile structures.

“We didn’t want to have ‘bud-mobiles’ driving around town,” said Hawkins with a grin.

The P&Z discussion came in the wake of a moratorium enacted by council in late October that has suspended the issuance of licenses, permits and other town approvals to dispensaries for six months in order to giver the government time to figure out exactly how to handle them.

In November 2000 the use of marijuana by people with certain debilitating medical conditions like cancer, glaucoma and HIV/AIDS and for treating conditions such as severe pain or nausea, seizures characteristic of epilepsy, muscle spasms characteristic of multiple sclerosis, and other medical conditions approved by the state became legal in Colorado after the electorate approved Amendment 20 with 53 percent of the vote.

The new state law permitted the possession of up to two ounces and the cultivation of up to six marijuana plants for medical use, however it remained illegal at the federal level.

This past February, however, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department would no longer spend federal money prosecuting medical marijuana dispensaries established legally under state law. Since then dispensaries have been popping up in the 13 states where they are legal and local governments have been grappling with how to handle them ever since.

Seven applicants applied for town business licenses prior to the moratorium going into effect and so it appeared they would not be required to comply with any new regulations resulting from it.

However, five of the seven applicants including: Austin, Colo.-based Grand Mesa Herbal Dispensary, LLC, Durango-based Nature’s Own Wellness Center, and the Telluride-based TMMD, LLC, Legally Supplied Marijuana for Telluride, and New World Alternative Healthcare LLC, each received letters from Town Attorney Kevin Geiger alerting them that they are ineligible to engage in business because they did not apply for sales tax licenses prior to the moratorium going into effect.

“Please be advised that engaging in business within the Town of Telluride without the required sales tax license violates the Municipal Code and will be enforced,” Geiger wrote.

Two companies, Telluride Herb Company and Telluride Mountain Medicinal, applied for and received both a business and sales tax license, and at least one, THC, is in operation.

Earlier this week Colorado Attorney General John Suthers issued a formal opinion addressing questions concerning the taxation of medical marijuana that seems to bolster the town’s position, Geiger told the Telluride Town Council when it met on Tuesday.

“Colorado law is clear: Medical marijuana, in most instances, should be subject to state and local sales taxes,” Suthers determined.

“It is illegal for operations to be conducted if they don’t have a sales tax license,” Geiger said.