MEDICAL MARIJUANA VOTE A VICTORY FOR PATIENTS

A proposal that would have effectively shut down medical-marijuana
dispensaries was rejected Monday night by the Colorado Board of Health.

In addition to voting down a plan to limit medical-marijuana
caregivers to five patients each, the board also refused to require
that caregivers help patients with daily activities. The board did,
however, agree to changes meant to prevent fraud -- and left the door
open to revisiting the cap on patients another time.

The decision, which came after 12 hours of testimony and
deliberations, was met with a loud cheer from the 50 or so people
remaining in the audience on the Auraria campus, which had numbered
500 at the start of the day. People stood up, jumped up and down and
screamed.

"We're happy the board did the compassionate thing," said Brian
Vicente, the director of Sensible Colorado, a pro-marijuana nonprofit
advocacy group. "This is a win for Coloradan sick patients and the
voters."

Opponents of the changes, particularly the proposal to cap the number
of patients a caregiver could have at five, said the proposals would
have potentially cut off access for about 7,630 Coloradans registered
as patients who can legally use the drug. Currently, caregivers
sometimes take the form of dispensaries serving hundreds of patients.

Ned Calonge, the state health department's chief medical officer, said
the patient-cap proposal was based on the number that a caregiver can
reasonably handle daily. Other supporters, including police officers
and representatives of anti-drug groups, emphasized the proposal's
usefulness in helping law-enforcement officers control unlicensed
pot-growing operations.

Patients, meanwhile, spoke of what access to marijuana had meant to
them.

Jonathan Edens, an Iraq war veteran, was one of the 350 who signed up
to testify at the meeting.

"When I came back from the war, I had real bad PTSD (post-traumatic
stress disorder) and torn ligaments," said Edens, a Colorado Springs
resident. "I was so addicted to pills, I couldn't even look at myself
in the mirror without being disgusted. Now that I've started smoking
marijuana, I've dropped 50 pounds and am off most of the medication I
was on."

Although Calonge told the board that his patient-cap recommendation
was based on significant research into the number of patients a
caregiver could visit in a day, several board members said they did
not have enough information to accept his assessment.

After voting to reject the five-patient cap, the board briefly
discussed whether a higher number should instead be imposed. They
decided to pose the question to a stakeholder group that would gather
more information.

Three of the nine board members voted for the cap, including the
board's president, Glenn Schlabs.

"I don't believe we need to model our rule-making on comments of the
people who came forward to speak today," he said. "I don't feel
compelled to fashion regulation that appeals to you. That's why we're
the board of health."

Rick Spiegel of Centennial was one of those who signed up to speak,
but his wife, Kim, who has post-stroke thalamic pain syndrome, was so
tired that they left before their number was called.

"She's been to about five different doctors, and all the drugs they
gave her never worked for her syndrome," Spiegel said. "The only thing
that helped it was marijuana."

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WHAT HAS CHANGED ON THE MEDICAL-MARIJUANA RULE

Patients must provide a copy of a secure and verifiable identity
document when applying for medical marijuana. A patient changing an
address or primary caregiver must submit a notarized form.

7,630 registered patients in Colorado. That number could rise to
15,000 this year, a state official says.