Council willing to tweak MMJ regs before major overhaul

Crested Butte to eliminate sunset provision

The Crested Butte Town Council is planning on revising its ordinance dealing with medical marijuana dispensaries sometime early next summer. But it will tweak the current regulations as needed before then.

The council agreed Monday, December 6 to not let the ordinance expire, or “sunset,” as it had been scheduled to do at the end of 2010 when passed a year ago. They want to wait and see what state regulations are released. That is expected to take place in March.
“The state regs will be exhaustive,” said town attorney John Belkin. “They’ll probably be a couple of hundred pages. The council can rescind the ordinance on the books, make marijuana legal in town or continue down the road we are currently on, which basically defers it to the state and will end up looking like a liquor license.”
 The council made no definitive decision but seemed content to continue down the current path.
“There are still some issues out there,” said Belkin, “like the fact the federal government says it is still illegal.”
Local attorney Aaron Huckstep approached the council for the Crested Butte Wellness Center, one of the three local dispensaries. The owner of the dispensary had received a Crested Butte permit before the temporary state regulations were released last year. Those state regs prohibited permit holders who weren’t from Colorado. The current permit holder is from Texas. So Huckstep asked the council to let the holder transfer the permit to his partner, who is from Colorado.
“I think we should try to be business friendly and address that sooner rather than later,” said councilperson Dan Escalante.
The application would have to be re-filed and the appropriate fees paid. The town staff said they could come up with some direction for the council by the next meeting and possibly have a first reading of an ordinance by early January. The slightly revised ordinance could then be voted on at the second meeting in January.
Huckstep and his clients were satisfied with that timeline and the council directed the staff to start the changes.
The council will dig deeper into the town’s regulations governing dispensaries after March when the state releases its rules. All the current Crested Butte dispensaries have permits that expire between May and July so the council wants to have new regulations in hand before then.