Rocky Mountain high: Colorado’s legal pot experiment

Police Chief Bob Gardner, for example, is worried about everything from the potential for violence from Mexican drug cartels that may edge into the legal market to increased instances of drugged driving. While he allows that time may prove him wrong — and that he doesn’t have any statistical evidence that recently increased availability of marijuana has led to an increase in crime — he echoes the concerns of people around the country that legalizing marijuana is to open a Pandora’s box of unintended consequences.

“There are just so many uncertainties right now,” Gardner says. “One of the things a police chief is paid to do is worry about things. I worry about tornadoes. But I also worry about what effects marijuana is going to have on my community.”

At first glance, there isn’t a garden in sight in Garden City, which is dominated on one side by the Royal Crest Dairy factory and on the other by a highway bypass. But this little city is home to four medical marijuana dispensaries; each is planning to convert its operations to recreational sales in the coming months. Their gardens are filled with marijuana.

Tucker Eldridge, the 25-year-old horticulturist and grow-operation director for Nature’s Herb and Wellness, leads me on a tour through a greenhouse that’s about the size of a small airplane hangar. We stop at his pride and joy, a 5-foot-tall purple-leafed specimen of L.A. Confidential. It’s an indica strain, meaning its effects are felt in the limbs and muscles as much as between the ears; it has a surprisingly piney aroma. In total, there are about 2,000 plants in the greenhouse, representing 85 strains.

Once these growers all open their doors to recreational customers, Garden City will probably have the most pot shops per capita in the world — one for roughly every 75 residents. The small town is dealing with altogether different concerns than next-door Greeley: Will there be enough parking for all the customers? And how will it spend all the revenue it collects from legal pot?

“I really don’t think it’s going to happen,” she says of the possibility that a traveler would be determined to be a legal guinea pig over a few grams of weed. Travelers who are carrying will first be asked to simply throw their pot in the trash. “It’s a unique situation that Colorado faces right now. We’re dependent on federal grants, and we don’t want to put our funding in jeopardy because of marijuana.”

Industries across the state are facing the same types of tests. The Colorado Supreme Court recently agreed to hear the case of a quadriplegic medical marijuana patient who was fired from his job answering telephones for Dish Network after he tested positive for pot. The case could affect thousands of employers with zero-tolerance policies toward drugs.

Banks could theoretically face federal racketeering charges for laundering the proceeds of a federally prohibited substance, which is why few of them are willing to risk doing business with marijuana retail stores. On Friday the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued a long awaited guidance memo for financial institutions telling them it’s OK to do business with marijuana operations, as long as they conduct detailed due diligence on the pot shops and report any suspicious activity to the feds. While that may be reassuring, it’s only temporarily so.

“Since the guidance issued (on Friday) could easily be reversed by a future administration, it may not provide all the protections that people in the marijuana and banking industries need to feel comfortable moving forward,” said Tom Angell, chairman of the advocacy group Marijuana Majority, based in Washington, D.C. It’s hard to fault the banks for taking a cautious approach, given that the federal government has a long history of making examples of pot smokers and the people or institutions that enable them.

The result of this uncertainty, though, is that pot shops are bursting with cash. A million dollars per day in sales is a tempting target for thieves.

But adversity also breeds opportunity. On opening day at the Medicine Man, customers like Pepper made their way through a virtual gauntlet of heavily armed guards from Blue Line Protection Group — the first marijuana-specific security company in Colorado, says spokesman Benjamin Little. When the stores opened for business Jan. 1, the company was contracted with 12 dispensaries and employed about 50 people, mostly veterans and former cops.

Like the industry it oversees, Little says, the firm is expected to do nothing but grow.

Recognizing the potential for a backlash that could have inspired lawmakers to put the screws to the fledging industry — regulations in some other medical marijuana states are too tight or complex to let the market flourish as freely — activists worked with lawmakers to help design the regulatory structure. Not everyone was pleased with the resulting framework for allowing medical marijuana dispensaries to operate. The strident marijuana “whacktivists,” as they’re sometimes called, wanted fewer restrictions, while the “reefer madness” crowd wanted more. But it seems to have laid the groundwork for a smooth rollout of recreational sales.

“If anything surprises me about where we are now, it’s that we managed to get our collective asses together and get this done,” Robnett says.

Now pot advocates are working to make the industry an example of what can work elsewhere. Mason Tvert, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project, which spearheaded Amendment 64, is focused on similar initiatives in Alaska, Arizona, California, Maine, Montana, Nevada and Oregon (as well as in states where the legislature is proposing legalization or decriminalization measures, such as Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont).