Colorado Senate OKs Crackdown On Unregulated Pot Growers
DENVER (AP) - After years of trying and failing to make it harder to grow large amounts of pot without regulation, the Colorado Senate on Tuesday gave unanimous preliminary approval to a bill that aims to crack down on unregulated marijuana growers.
The measure would require people who grow more than 99 plants for medical pot patients to get licenses. The change is intended to force those high-volume growers to undergo background checks and pay licensing fees, same as their commercial counterparts.
The sponsor, Denver Democratic Sen. Irene Aguilar, said law enforcement needs a way to determine whether marijuana-growing facilities have state permission to grow pot for others.
Police have complained that spotty caregiver registration - combined with a recent court ruling deeming that marijuana property can't be immediately destroyed - have left them unable to root out illicit pot growers.
"People have told stories of calling law enforcement because the house next door had hundreds of plants, and nobody would do anything," Aguilar said. "What law enforcement really wanted was a hard line in the sand."
The bill also requires marijuana caregivers to share more information. For example, they'd have to carry a list of patient names when transporting marijuana so that a police officer pulling them over could verify the plants are authorized.
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The bill faces one more Senate vote before heading to the House, where it has wide support.
The caregiver crackdown includes some concessions to the pot growers, too.
The act of growing pot, for example, would be enough to satisfy the legal requirement that caregivers have "significant responsibility" for a patient. That counters opinions from the state Health Department that caregivers must do more than grow weed, such as taking patients to doctor's appointments or the grocery store.
The bill also strikes a current requirement that for medical marijuana patients under 18, their parents must be their caregivers. The requirement has never been enforced but technically makes criminals of parents who come to Colorado seeking marijuana-derived treatments grown by others.
"A parent who is caring for a child who is severely disabled probably doesn't also have time to learn how to grow marijuana," Aguilar said.
- By Kristen Wyatt, AP Writer
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