In order to qualify as a caregiver in Colorado, you must do your clients damn laundry, or maybe unclog that drain….oh and don’t forget to pick up their kids, and teach them how to brush their teeth….

What FDA approved drug distribution facilities have these kind of strict, interfering, unnecessary rules? Do they accomplish anything to help patients get their legal medicine, or do they only serve to hinder that ability? Or is that the point…Hypocrisy at it’s finest.

COLORADO: Fight Over ‘Caregiver’

Medical cannabis dispensaries have been springing up in Colorado, particularly since the state Board of Health ruled that such storefront establishments meet the definition of qualified caregiver. In November, Governor Bill Ritter Jr. directed dispensaries to obtain retail-sales licenses and start paying sales tax, a move advocates welcomed as a further legitimization of dispensaries as a distribution model for the state. Colorado is the second state, after California, to tax and regulate medical cannabis.

But the issues has been clouded by a state appellate court ruling that the ‘caregivers’ the law authorizes to provide cannabis to patients must assume responsibility for providing shelter or personal assistance to qualify. Immediately after, the Board of Health reversed its previous decision in an impromptu meeting. Activists from Sensible Colorado, an ASA affiliate, went to court and got the decision overturned — at least temporarily — by successfully arguing that the meeting was a violation of the Colorado Open Meetings Law.

Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves, in voiding the Board’s action, chided them for losing sight of the rights of patients:

“These people have without dispute, serious problems for which they have prescriptions for medical marijuana. There was no mention of the impact of this change on these people. There is no consideration of how plaintiffs and others who need medical marijuana would obtain it.”

Colorado has an estimated 100 storefront dispensaries and at least 1,000 registered individual caregivers who deliver cannabis to patients. State officials estimate they can collect up to $15 million annually on medical cannabis sales, and city and county taxes could account for an additional $45 million a year.

http://www.safeaccessnow.org/article.php?id=5867#6