Medical marijuana laws in Colorado will be more strict starting on January 1st in Colorado.
The new rules for buyers and sellers were announced this week. Mark Ferrandino, executive director of the state’s Department of Revenue and a former speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives, announced the rules late Tuesday night.
While he had final say, he also received a lot of input from state marijuana enforcement officials and a task force that included parents, health professionals and marijuana industry representatives.
That task force was formed by the new law passed this year, HB21-1317, that represented the state’s most significant overhaul of marijuana regulations since recreational legalization in 2012.
The new rules, which in limited cases also affect recreational buyers, include daily purchase limits. The state will limit the daily purchase to two ounces of flower and eight grams of concentrate such as wax and shatter for medical marijuana patients. The concentrate limit goes down to two grams per day for medical patients between the ages of 18 and 20. The previous daily concentrate purchase limit for medical patients was 40 grams.
Dispensaries must also enforce the daily purchase limits by inputting patient ID numbers found on medical marijuana cards. Stores are to refuse sale to anyone who seeks to exceed their purchase limit. All data collected must be kept confidential.
Exceptions to the new limits apply only to a patient whose doctor affirms in writing that the patient has a physical or geographic hardship that should allow them to exceed the daily purchase limits, and that the patient has designated a store as the primary place they get their medicine.
The new rules also include an educational resource in the form of an 8×11 paper pamphlet must be provided to customers (medical and recreational) at the point of sale of a concentrate.
This pamphlet will include a black dot, smaller than a fingernail, displaying the state’s recommended serving size for concentrates. It will also feature advice on how to safely consume and a list of negative conditions the state declares can result from the use of marijuana concentrate, including psychotic symptoms, “uncontrolled and repetitive vomiting” and “physical and psychological dependence.” The pamphlet will list numbers to various hotlines for people experiencing any of those problems.
Medical marijuana dispensaries will also be specifically barred from marketing to people under the age of 21. That’s a change from the previous ban on advertising to people under 18. The state considers it a violation if an advertisement appears in a form of media estimated to have at least 28.4% of its audience younger than 21. In advertising concentrates, medical and recreational businesses must both include language approved by the state that warns of the risks of overconsumption.
