Maybe it was the snow and ice that kept them away. Or, maybe it was the $5,000 plus buy-in that made so many medical marijuana dispensary owners shy away from applying for their Denver operating licenses on Monday.
Whatever the reason, only 26 applicants showed up on opening day at the office of excise and licenses to make application to legally dispense medical marijuana - and six of those were turned away for inadequate paperwork. 20 applicants out of some 450 holders of dispensary sales tax licenses.
All of a sudden, it doesn't quite sound like the wild west anymore. The deadline for applying is March 1, so anyone serious about supplying cannabis will need to hurry.
According to the Denver Post, "The application includes a background check with fingerprinting. Owners pay a $2,000 application fee, the cost of background checks and a $3,000 annual license fee, and must not have been convicted of a felony or served a felony sentence in the last five years. If the application is denied, the $3,000 license fee will be refunded."
Some dispensary owners may be re-thinking their commitment based on legislation that is currently flying through the statehouse that will establish yet another layer of bureaucracy (a marijuana licensing authority) and an additional slate of yet-to-be-determined fees. The Colorado Statesman reports that "The Massey-Romer medical marijuana bill would establish an 18-month moratorium on new marijuana business while allowing existing operations to transition over the same period into non-profit health centers subject to rules modeled on the state's liquor code."
So, in addition to $5,000 worth of Denver fees and sales taxes plus state fees and taxes, Denver dispensary owners would have to pay lawyers to rework their corporate documents to comply with nonprofit requirements.
Patients may want to consider buying up a supply soon because it looks like the price of medicine is going to go way up.
Comments
Other business owners would riot if it cost $5,000 to open a very small, one person business.
Between the govermental paperwork maze and the fees, I am surprised the 26 showed up!
I'm surprised someone hasn't filed an equal-protection lawsuit on the grounds that businesses selling this product are being charged fees so much higher than other businesses.
A simple solution: Allow ordinary Americans to grow a little marijuana in their own back yards (maybe a $100 permit for a dozen plants).
It would rip the guts out of the drug cartels' pocketbook and free up our tax dollars for education, repairing our infrastructure, fighting terrorism, and a hundred other worthy goals.
Does anybody _really_ think that locking up marijuana users, or even people who grow a few plants for themselves... Does anybody really think locking those folks up is a good use of our tax dollars?
These enormously foolish beauracrats continue to undermine the Will of Coloradoans with unreasonable financial obstacles for providers of medical cannabis...
All these attempts to subvert Colorado's Constitution are really chilling...FDA-approved medications kill tens of thousands of people each year -- even when properly prescribed and properly taken -- and these Dunces are trying to block medical access to one of the few therapeutic substances that cannot kill from toxicity...Of course we should have medical access to NON-FATAL medicine.
Given cannabis's several thousand-year medical history ALL OVER THE WORLD and given its remarkable safety profile and proven medical efficacy, it is unconscionable that our elected offIcials are trying to undermine the intent Colorado's MMJ Law.
And please, more articles on: 1. Cannabis's Well-Established Medical History 2. Cannabis's Medical Applications (real science) 3. Personal Accounts of cannabis's wide-array of healing properties.
The prohibitively high fees are simply unconstitutional. The reason dispensaries are waiting is because they are busy preparing lawsuits to overturn this ridiculous and unnecessary legislation.
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