Politics
Colorado Lawmakers Considering Allowing Marijuana Deliveries
Colorado’s legal marijuana system is continuing to evolve, and that could include allowing medical and retail cannabis deliveries.
A bill filed on Tuesday would create a new class of permits for retailers and transporters to deliver cannabis and related products to qualified medical marijuana patients or adults over 21. It would also require those seeking a permit to go through a training program to learn the rules around delivering marijuana.
If the legislation were to pass, medical cannabis deliveries would start in January 2020 and retail deliveries would start in January 2021.
Under former Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), who is now a 2020 presidential candidate, the prospects of expanding the state’s marijuana program by allowing deliveries would have been dismal. He’d vetoed more modest proposals such as adding autism to the list of conditions that qualify patients for medical cannabis.
But the industry has a friend in the new governor, Jared Polis (D). Unlike his predecessor, Polis has long championed legalization and pledged to sign into law several proposals that Hickenlooper blocked.
That could be why state lawmakers seem more emboldened this legislative session to introduce various, wide-ranging pieces of marijuana legislation.
There are already bills to allow medical marijuana for any condition that opioids are prescribed for, to provide protections for medical marijuana patients who own firearms and to authorize on-site consumption of cannabis at licensed shops.
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While Polis hasn’t weighed in on each of the new proposals directly, he’s indicated that he’s willing to go further and faster on marijuana expansion than his predecessor was, and these bills seem to be within the realm of possibility.
“He doesn’t want to go slowly about pot at all,” Hickenlooper said of Polis in an interview with The Colorado Sun in January. “I’m not saying it’s wrong, it just different. We thought at the beginning we should go more cautiously. He wants to go fast.”
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