[420 Girl]

Four additional Colorado cities passed moratoriums on new medical marijuana dispensaries this week. Officials cite the growing number of zoning and licensing concerns around the new businesses. The move comes at a time when vague state laws are leaving cities to fill the void.

The city of Fort Collins initially approved a three-month time out on new dispensaries on Tuesday. City Manager Darin Atteberry says right now Fort Collins requires more background checks for individuals wanting to open a liquor store.

"But yet someone can walk into the city's finance department and can request a medical marijuana dispensary sales tax license and get it within a couple of days," he says. "We just think that needs some special attention at this point."

The city has received 19 applications from would-be dispensary owners in the past week. Twenty six have been approved for sales tax since 2008.

"I think most cities and towns are trying to address this with a long range perspective," says Rachael Allen, staff attorney at the nonprofit advocacy group Colorado Municipal League.

She says the issue may look the same from town to town, but each is taking a slightly different approach. They can pass an outright ban on medical marijuana dispensaries like Greeley did. Or, as was the case in Boulder, pass operating rules. But Allen says a popular first step is just taking a time out, similar to what Fort Collins, Loveland and Grand Junction all did this week.

"They adopt a moratorium to look at the issue more closely, and figure out how are we going to adopt some local ordinance to address this? Or do we need to adopt a local ordinance?" she says.

Given the time frame on most of the moratoriums, it appears that many towns are looking to the state legislature to paint the broad strokes of a legal framework when it convenes in January. But Allen says that won't solve all the problems. Cities still need to come up with local rules on zoning, hours of operation, and what kind of signs dispensaries can display outside of their shops.

"Those are still local issues and I think that whatever the state ends up adopting, I think they can work harmoniously together," she says.

A Patchwork of Local Laws
That's certainly been the case so far in California. Voters there legalized medical marijuana dispensaries in 1996. More than a decade later, the patchwork of local laws hasn't been a problem, according to Jennifer Whiting with the California League of Cities.

"We don't see a lot of downfalls from our viewpoint it's really up to a local jurisdiction to decide how they want to work dispensaries into their city or county, if at all," she says.

But, Whiting says, as ideas mature in California about how to handle dispensaries, there can be a clash between what cities and counties want to do. That's the case right now in Los Angeles. The city wants to pass rules to curb the rise of for-profit dispensaries. The county wants more of a crack down.

"So it's still pending," she says. "They don't know how they're going to work it out."

Changing Every Day
No such issues have come up in Colorado. That's because the rules are changing almost daily. Laws limiting who can dispense medical marijuana have been enacted and voided since the beginning of the month. This week state Attorney General John Suthers said that dispensaries should be collecting sales tax from all purchases.

"We're just trying to make sense of everything as it changes," says Rachel Allen of the Colorado Municipal League. "And that's why it's really good that cities have the ability to enact ordinances to address this in a practical way."

In December the Colorado Board of Health is expected to revisit potential restrictions on who can dispense the drug. In the meantime, cities will continue to study and enact their own rules, dictating how the medical marijuana industry grows in their own back yard

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