Election to determine future of Fort Collins medical marijuana businesses

The long-simmering debate about medical marijuana in Fort Collins is coming to a boil with the Nov. 1 election.

Voters will consider ballot Question 300, which would ban licensed medical marijuana businesses from the city, including dispensaries, grow operations and makers of marijuana-infused products.

If the measure passes, the city’s 20 medical marijuana businesses would have to shut down within 90 days of the city clerk certifying the election results.

Both sides of the debate say the issue isn’t the legitimacy of using marijuana to provide relief from severe pain and other debilitating conditions but rather how the medicine is delivered to patients.

Proponents of the measure say the presence of medical marijuana, or MMJ, businesses in the city has been harmful to the community by expanding the availability of marijuana for recreational users, including students high-school aged and younger.

“We all want the best thing for our city,” said Bob Powell of Concerned Fort Collins Citizens, which put the measure on the ballot through a petition drive. “But now we have this reputation for having a lot of marijuana.

“How can it be a good thing that we have people coming here to rob dispensaries and grow marijuana illegally because they believe this is a safe place to do that? How can that be good for our community?”

Local dispensary owners and others who oppose a ban on dispensaries say a ban would harm patients’ ability to access medicine.

Without licensed MMJ centers, patients would have to go to the black market for marijuana or seek out caregivers who grow in their homes, said Dave Schwaab, co-owner of Abundant Healing, 351 Linden St.

Centers are heavily regulated under state law and are required to track what happens to the marijuana they grow “from seed to sale.” Patients know what they are getting and don’t have to take chances with their medicine, Schwaab said.

“You can go through a licensed, secure, monitored and regulated dispensary or through unregulated and unsecured homes in neighborhoods,” he said. “I think it’s preferable to go through centers.”