The Grand Junction City Council on Nov. 16 will consider whether to impose a one-year moratorium on licensing medical marijuana dispensaries, as city officials grapple with a proliferation of the industry and the crime that has apparently accompanied it.
Council members unanimously agreed Monday to the hearing date in two weeks. The moratorium would not affect existing dispensaries.
The proposal would temporarily prohibit the issuance of any business permits or sales-tax licenses for “any use, business or activity that is known as or functions as a medical marijuana dispensary and/or a medical marijuana primary care-giver.”
City officials say the moratorium would give them the chance to evaluate the zoning, regulation and licensing of dispensaries. They say they’re concerned about whether a concentration of dispensaries could result in them becoming illegitimate and a front or target for crime.
“While the Council acknowledges the rights of those members of the community that are suffering from a debilitating medical condition to access medical marijuana, the City Council must balance those rights against the need for regulation of the number, the location and the safety practices of those businesses supplying medical marijuana,” the proposed ordinance reads.
Dispensaries popped up on the Western Slope and in the state in recent months after the Colorado Board of Health scrapped the limit on the number of patients a dispensary can have. Voters in 2000 approved Amendment 20, which set up a medical marijuana registry program.
Grand Junction doesn’t have any ordinances regulating medical marijuana shops. All that’s required to open one in the city is a business license and an agreement to collect sales tax.
But the expansion of the nascent industry has come at a cost. Green Natural Solutions, located at 753 Rood Ave., was burglarized twice in two weeks last month and marijuana, glass smoking pipes and cash were stolen.
Email MIKE WIGGINS
Comments
By James Waton
Nov 4, 2009 12:48 PM | Link to this
I am in agreement with the City Council, they do need to set rules and regulations on caregivers. I know it sounds like Im on the governments side but I am. In order for "legal marijuana" to be a legit business. I am a marijuana smoker and I am all about it. Sales of marijuana needs to be treated like alcohol. A doctors recomendation, business licence, and an agreement to pay sales tax is not enough. An age limitation (21) should be one of the rules. Taxes are the candy for the government to keep this industry thriving. I feel the growers should pay a tax on harvest sales to the dispenseries and the dispenseries purchase from the grower, then the dispenseries pay not only sales tax but an additional marijuana tax, just like alcohol. Pass the charge of the tax to the customer. All marijuana consumers would be happy to pay a tax to smoke or eat legal marijuana. Have the weed trackable with a bar code to provr taxes were payed, if not write them a ticket for bootlegged weed. Underage possesion would be just like alcohol aother ticket. Fines are another way the government can capitolize on marijuana with it still being legal, wow I sound like a hippy-crit lol but there needs to be a reason for the government to work with this industry. Lets keep smoking and not break the law.
By commonsense
Nov 3, 2009 4:22 PM | Link to this
"Why can't the city create, sell and tax heroine?"
Comparing marijuana to heroine is like comparing whiskey to milk.
"Why can't people understand that if it is illegal, it is illegal? Why is that so hard to grasp?"
We all understand that marijuana is illegal, but millions of us do not think it should be. Do you know why it is illegal? Google the question, "Why is marijuana is illegal" and you'll see the lies told about this plant and the special interest (money) that created the laws against it.
By Duane
Nov 3, 2009 12:27 PM | Link to this
I am a medical marijuana patient and feel that if they start to regulate how many dispensaries they need to regulate regulate all the liquor stores too. There are way to many liquor stores around. I drove down North the other day and well almost every other block had a liquor store. I use the Green Natural Solutions store on Rood and I think they should set up more medical marijuana stores around. I was having to travel 15 miles to the store to get my medical marijuana and only a mile to the nearest liquor store.
Sure you are going to have people try to rob the medical marijuana store right now. It is something new but how many times was the liquor stores robbed when they first started up? More people get killed over a bottle of liquor per year than people who smoke pot. For God sakes take care of the drunks first before you start screwing with decent people.
By Aaron
Nov 3, 2009 10:35 AM | Link to this
Hey Scott, are you the product of pot? "In-brace" is not a word. I believe the word you were looking for is embrace. And why should we stop with taxing marijuana? Why can't the city create, sell and tax heroine? All to protect the kids. What idiots. Why can't people understand that if it is illegal, it is illegal? Why is that so hard to grasp?
By Concerned Parent
Nov 3, 2009 8:44 AM | Link to this
Licensing, taxing, and regulating the distribution of marijuana is the surest way to put the criminal drug dealers out of business and protect our children from the money-hungry criminal element. Itıs time to protect our children and take the marijuana business out of the hands of criminals. License, tax, and regulate the marijuana business. And while weıre at it, letıs implement a personal cultivation permit. Limit the size of the growing area or the number of plants, and put a small user-fee on it to cover administrative costs, something like a fishing license. Maybe high enough that there will be a little something left over for education or fixing the roads.
One possibility:$100 per year for a permit to cultivate a dozen plants.
It's a win-win.
By Scott
Nov 3, 2009 6:34 AM | Link to this
Here we go again can we say the same of liquor stores or pharmacies when they get robbed that they attract crime. It's just like GJ to pull a knee jerk reaction because some stupid kids (the same ones according to the police) broke into a MMJ dispensary. And all the while the city is cutting jobs, laying off and taking your cost of living raises away due to the economy. This is all backwards, GJ should in-brace new jobs being created and new businesses opening in the city. Enough reefer madness, if GJ setps on their own foot as alway they will be left in the dust of this new cash cow. I always thought GJ was just to close to Uath!
Legalize, tax, and profit is the key for GJ, or just let your reefer madness get the best of you and go down with the sinking ship that once was GJ.
By V
Nov 3, 2009 6:01 AM | Link to this
Surely the City has better things to talk about and try to control? Leave the conservatism at home.
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