Medical marijuana hearing: Advocate says Dept. of Revenue hostile to privacy concerns (PICS)
Update below: The second day of Department of Revenue public hearings about medical marijuana regulations -- MMJ rules that attorney Rob Corry called death by 1,000 cuts in a preview yesterday -- are about to get underway at this writing. During yesterday's session, representatives of the Cannabis Therapy Institute made two emergency rules requests regarding privacy concerns that went nowhere.
Big pics below.
Earlier this month, CTI submitted an emergency petition calling for rules prohibiting the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment from sharing patient information with outside agencies. Discussion of that request was put off until a February 16 board of health meeting. However, CTI took a similar tack yesterday in Hearing Room 1 at the Jefferson County Justice Center, where today's session will take place as well, by way of addressing a Department of Revenue proposal requiring cameras to record medical marijuana transactions at MMJ centers.
"This is an intrusive, Orwellian proposal," Corry said about the cameras yesterday. "Every single patient who comes into a center and purchases any amount of medicine has to place his or her registry card on an overhead projector, and that person's name, address, Social Security number, the amount of the purchase and where they live will all be recorded. And there may be some discussion of confidential medical issues and how the medication affects the patient. All of this will be publicly accessible and subject to being hacked by a criminal enterprise. And any police officer at any level -- federal, state or local -- can obtain either live video or on-demand recordings and track these people down."
Courtesy of Cannabis Therapy Institute The Department of Revenue hearing yesterday.
So how did the Department of Revenue personnel deal with CTI's emergency proposal? According to Kriho, "They ignored it." As for the tone of those running the hearing, she characterizes it as "openly hostile and antagonistic to us and to several different people, including patients, who had come in.
"This was the first meeting of the state licensing authority that was set up in 1284," the main medical marijuana regulatory measure, Kriho continues. "That makes it sound like a board, but it's really one person. The first order of business was to read a letter from Roxy Huber, the executive director of the Department of Revenue, appointing Tim Weber, the deputy director, as the state licensing authority. He's the only one who'll be making a decision on this."
Weber and other officials were joined at the hearing by about sixty people, Kriho estimates, with twenty or more getting the chance to testify -- "and the 100 percent overwhelming concern from everybody was privacy and cameras in the dispensaries to record patients. All the MMC people and patients were concerned about this invasion of privacy."
In Kriho's view, state officials didn't seem receptive to these concerns, even though many patients and entrepreneurs alike "testified that they would be opting out" by returning to the caretaker model -- a turn that could decrease patient access as well as tax revenues produced by MMJ businesses.
Courtesy of CTI The new medical marijuana enforcement division logo.
"Everybody seemed surprised that the Department of Revenue is doing this to them," Kriho goes on, "but I remind them that Chris Romer" -- the state senator and current Denver mayor candidate who was a driving force behind much of last year's medical marijuana legislation -- "said his purpose with 1284 was to close 80 percent of dispensaries. From that standpoint, they've been very successful doing what they want to do."
At this point, Kriho suspects that the only way to put the kibosh on such regulations is through the courts, in part because "Amendment 20 is so badly written." But she's also critical of medical marijuana entrepreneurs. "If there's really 750 MMC applicants in Colorado, there were only about five represented at the hearing. I really don't understand why the industry isn't paying more attention to what's going on."
Page down to read Rob Corry's January 27 letter to the Department of Revenue about the new regulations, as well as all 99 pages of the draft regs and the Cannabis Therapy Institute petition to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Update, 11:56 a.m.: After the jump, we've added another resource -- CTI's rulemaking comments and petition for emergency rules, issued today. It's atop the other documents.
Write Comment
Email to Friend
Print Article
