[420 Girl]

GLENWOOD SPRINGS — A candle flickered in the lap of the Buddha statue beside the stereo. A pair of tranquil pictures hung on the wall across from the couch. Outside, a stream of passersby on Grand Avenue shot glances as they passed the latest medical marijuana clinic in the Roaring Fork Valley.

“It’s been busy,” said Darren Hofert, operator of Green Natural Solutions, LLC, a self-described “family man” who moved with his wife and two kids from Phoenix to open the clinic.

In a former real estate office just below the Grand Avenue bridge next to a barber shop, the store sees plenty of foot traffic passing by the glass windows, but visitors without a medical marijuana certificate will see nothing more than a waiting room.

Those with a certificate are invited into the back, where Hofert said he carries over a dozen varieties of Colorado-grown marijuana, with names like Bright Angel and Blue Dream, plus tinctures, hash oils, butter, cookies and lollipops.

A sister store to one in Grand Junction, Green Natural Solutions, which opened on Thursday, is one of more than a half-dozen medical marijuana clinics that have launched between Aspen and Glenwood Springs since August, many of which deliver.

“In this town there’s probably not much room for more,” said Hofert, who was wearing a white polo shirt emblazoned with the store’s log, a marijuana leaf over a red cross. “It’s getting saturated in some areas.”

The flurry followed a statement in the spring by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder that gave pot entrepreneurs assurance that the federal government wasn’t going to crack down on medical marijuana clinics. They were further bolstered in July, when the Colorado Board of Health rejected a measure to limit to five the number of patients each medical marijuana caregiver could have.

Possessing medical marijuana is still a federal crime.

Despite the boom in area pot dispensaries, the region’s leading mental health center said it’s a “benign issue” from the perspective of substance abuse.

“So far, this has been a non-issue for us,” said Sharon Raggio, CEO of Glenwood Springs-based Colorado West Regional Mental Health, Inc. “Our center does not issue prescriptions for medical marijuana and we have not yet seen a spike in demand for substance abuse services. It remains to be seen if a spike in treatment will result.”

In just one month, the number of Pitkin County residents on the state medical marijuana registry jumped 50 percent. By the end of July, the county had 61 medical marijuana patients, up from 42 the previous month. In June 2008, the county had just three patients.

Garfield County has 105 patients. Eagle County has 85.

Raggio said most marijuana users who come to its centers across the Western Slope have abuse issues with multiple drugs, not just marijuana, although she said marijuana is considered addictive. She said she worries that, now that medical marijuana is legal, users will forget that it can still be harmful.

“Just because it’s legal, it’s still a drug and it can be abused as well,” she said. “Just like any legal drug. Just like alcohol or tobacco. And we want people to know that treatment works.”

Colorado ranks last in the nation in substance abuse treatment funding, she said.

Kyle Torline, manager-in-training at Green Natural Solutions, sees marijuana as an alternative to stronger narcotics that are easily abused. He said he uses marijuana to control the symptoms of epilepsy.

“It can be abused, but so can prescriptions,” said Hofert, who said he was a recovering alcoholic and considers marijuana less harmful than alcohol.

Like other medical marijuana operations in the valley, Hofert’s clinic can refer patients without a certificate to a doctor who is willing to write medical marijuana prescriptions. The range of ailments stretches from chronic aches to cancer.

When the store opened, Hofert admitted, it felt like they were doing little more than “selling dope.”

“That’s what it seemed like at first,” he said. “Then you have your first cancer patient.”


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