[420 Girl]

DENVER - Eighteen hundred applications for the state's medical marijuana registry arrived by mail at the Colorado Department of Health on Wednesday. It was yet another record.

In 2008, Ron Hyman's office received roughly 5,000 requests. These days that number is starting to sound more like an average week.

"We're very busy," the director of the Medical Marijuana Registry said on Thursday. "It's been very challenging for the staff."

This week, his office started finalizing the paperwork for applications received back in early October. The backlog is that impressive. There are now more people waiting to receive their medical marijuana cards than there are people who currently have their cards.

It is so busy at Hyman's office that his staff has yet to even open letters received after Dec. 15.

Wednesday, the state legislature approved nearly $200,000 in additional funding to help speed up the processing. It will allow Hyman to hire five temporary workers.

"It will allow us to at least keep up with the increase," Hyman said.

It costs an applicant $90 to go on the registry. With all of the applications, the collections would be more than enough to fund a much speedier process, but the state legislature has routinely diverted the funds to other areas.

"It's unacceptable," said Miles Zalkin, owner of Pain Management of Colorado, a medical marijuana dispensary in Cherry Creek. "Quite frankly, the patients don't understand it. They don't understand how they're paying for a state license that is now taking 16 weeks to receive," he said.

"About a year and a half ago it took 10 days [to receive a card] and then it went to two-and-a-half weeks. Then it went to 30 days. It's just escalated from there," Zalkin said.

"The first few years [of the registry, which started back in 2000,] we received a few hundred requests a year," Hyman said.

His office received 15,000 requests last month alone.

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