[420 Girl]

BOULDER, Colo. — Due to tight privacy regulations built into Colorado law, few people know the names of medical-marijuana caregivers or how many people are certified to provide the drug in the state.

In fact, the law makes it so difficult to identify the people who can legally provide marijuana that the Boulder County Drug Task Force doesn’t know how many certified marijuana caregivers are in the Boulder County region. That has officers spending considerable time investigating pot-growing operations purporting to be legal; double-checking caregiver certificates and patient cards; and making sure caregivers don’t have more than the allowed amount of marijuana, said task force Sgt. Barry Hartkopp.

“We are trying to determine how many we might have and make sure they are all working within the laws in dispensing the marijuana,” Hartkopp said. “They are flying under the radar pretty well right now.”

For instance, a medical-marijuana distributor in Boulder that was robbed Tuesday afternoon was unknown to many of the law-enforcement officers who responded to the call for help. Hartkopp said he doesn’t know how many patients are served by the New Options Wellness Clinic, 2885 Aurora Ave.

“Confidentiality of caregivers and users is important to (the state),” he said.

According to the Colorado Department of Public Health, which certifies caregivers and issues patient cards, the confidentiality of providers and users is protected by law, and “no lists of doctors, patients or caregivers are given to anyone.”

The state’s Web site details the law and says authorities can only view a registry of users to verify information on specific cards. According to the site, “The registry database resides on a stand-alone computer and is password protected and encrypted.”

Hartkopp said his task force is investigating how the four men suspected in Tuesday’s robbery at the New Options clinic knew about the facility, and whether the center is legally certified by the state.

“We are still checking into whether this business is legal,” he said.

Prospective caregivers and users must go through a lengthy state-certification process to provide or use marijuana legally. The state keeps a registry of users but not of caregivers, said Mark Salley, spokesman for the state public health department.

The law, enacted Nov. 7, 2000, to make it legal for people to use marijuana as medicine, defines a caregiver as a person who is 18 years or older and has “significant responsibility for managing the well-being of a patient who has a debilitating medical condition.”

Warren Edson, an attorney from Denver who helped co-author the law more than a decade ago and who advises about 20 medical-marijuana dispensaries in the state, said there are three to five legal dispensaries in Boulder and about 30 in Colorado.

Robberies, like the one in Boulder this week, are among his greatest fears.

“I’m afraid that what happened yesterday will become more common,” Edson said Wednesday. “I urge security ... whether it’s video or security guards or whatever. I’m very concerned about this.”

At Boulder Alternative Medicine — one of the few “open” medical-marijuana dispensaries that allow anyone with a medical-marijuana card to walk in for treatment — security is tight and the owners are vigilant about how they store the product.

Jay Epstein, co-owner of the medical-marijuana dispensary at 1325 Broadway on Boulder’s University Hill, said his company — which has been seeing patients for more than two months — is in a “really good location.”

“We are a block from a police annex, on a second story,” he said.

It also allows only one to two patients in the shop at a time, closely monitors the medicine, uses a camera security system and has panic buttons, Epstein said. And, he said, employees keep small amounts of marijuana and money in the clinic at any given time.

“We go straight to the bank and make deposits,” he said. “If someone wants to come in and steal $800 worth of medicine and less than $500 in cash, they can go for it. That’s why I have business insurance.”

Epstein said more medical-marijuana dispensaries are popping up in and around the area, and demand is growing — his business has seen about 150 people since opening.

Mark Rose, 49, of Nederland, has been using medical marijuana himself and providing it to others for years and said that as he prepares to open a dispensary in Nederland called “Grateful Meds,” security has become a major concern.

“I’m more nervous about being robbed than anything,” he said.

http://www.420magazine.com/forums/in...providers.html