Marijuana: Boulder rejects pot shop ban, but councilman urges caution moving forward
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| Josh Kappel, right, with activist Rico Colibri at an Amendment 64 debate. |
Haddock rejects that theory. In her view, the ordinance is mostly about logistics.
"The way Boulder does things, there's a lot of staff work that goes into an ordinance before council sees it," she says. "So we looked at this and realized we're not going to know what the state's going to do before they start issuing licenses, and how they're going to staff.
"With medical marijuana, they ran out of money and stopped staffing," she goes on, "and they still haven't issued licenses on a lot of applications they received in 2010. So we need to see if that's going to be the effect here, and then figure out what the city's policy should be -- get direction from council before we're deep into drafting, then hold meetings with businesses and interested people before it goes to the planning board -- because the way Amendment 64 is written, the only local control is through land use -- and then to city council."
Could Boulder simply repurpose many of its medical marijuana regulations for the recreational kind? It's not that simple, Haddock maintains.
"The way recreational marijuana is regulated by the amendment, it's very different from medical marijuana. We just have no idea what the state may delegate to local jurisdictions to make decisions about, or if everything will be handled by land use, or if they'll set up a dual-licensing program like medical marijuana. With medical marijuana, we had businesses going before we had the regulations, so we needed to act right away. But with recreational, our hands are tied until the state tells us what they're delegating."
Why not wait to push through an ordinance until the federal government decides if it will allow Amendment 64 to be enacted, or whether the Justice Department will intervene to block it?
"That would be fine, except that they're not on a deadline," she replies. "The amendment provides a deadline for when the state needs to act, but we have no idea how long we would have to put things off until the feds act."
Continue to read more about a possible Boulder pot shop moratorium, and to see the document recommending the ordinance.
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