Colorado-Denver Ordinance
Denver Ordinance What follows is a detailed summary of Denver’s new Medical Marijuana regulations. These regulations become effective on 03-01-2010.
Medical Marijuana dispensary regulations stipulated by the Denver City Council:
• Nobody under the age of 18 is allowed on dispensary premises.
• Marijuana products and marijuana in cultivation cannot be visible from the outside the dispensary.
• A dispensary application carries a $2,000 fee, licensing of the dispensary costs $3,000, and criminal background checks for each owner are additionally charged at cost. Even dispensaries already in operation prior to the March 1st enactment date must pay these fees through the Denver Department of License & Excess.
• Anybody with 10% or more ownership interest in a dispensary is required to register with the Department of License & Excess as part of the dispensary’s ongoing licensing requirements. Any individual who has been jailed on a felony conviction in the last 5 years may not be even a partial owner of a dispensary.
• Dispensaries must remit a written operating plan that includes: 1) A description of the products and services available, including special notation for food products, 2) A floor plan which describes the layout of the dispensary, including a depiction of where services other than the sale of Medical Marijuana will be occur, 3) A security plan that details 24-hour surveillance of the property and whether or not licensed security guards will be used.
• The Department of License & Excess must circulate all applications for dispensaries to the Department of Community Planning and Development, the Department of Finance, the Department of Environmental Health, the Denver Police Department, and the Denver Fire Department to determine whether the proposed dispensary is in full compliance with each department.
• The Department of License & Excess must run a criminal background check on each potential dispensary owner noted on the application, and then perform a full inspection of the proposed dispensary premises to determine compliance.
• All sales of Medical Marijuana must be orchestrated directly by the patient’s Primary Caregiver, and any delivery of the meds must be made by the patient’s Primary Caregiver.
• Dispensaries cannot reside within 1,000 feet of a school, daycare establishment, or residentially zoned area. And to limit the clustering of Medical Marijuana dispensaries in areas like South Broadway’s “Broadsterdam” district, no two dispensaries can exist within 1,000 feet of each other.
• The ordinance requires Medical Marijuana patients to take their meds off-premises for use. The pot café atmosphere that has defined a number of Denver dispensaries will end with this requirement. Whole buds must be smoked elsewhere, and edible doses in the form of baked goods must be ingested off of dispensary grounds.
• Contact information for dispensary ownership must be on display “conspicuously” within the dispensary.
Ordinance #39 was adopted unanimously by the Denver City Council on January 11th, 2010. It will take full effect March 1st, 2010.
