Unregulated environments sure are a boon to business growth. Colorado Springs is home to more than 100 “medical” marijuana dispensaries. Of course, there is no zoning to ensure that these establishments don’t create problems for their neighbors.

Which is why early Sunday morning, my father received a call from his alarm company alerting him to a break-in. Turns out that while the reinforced door of the pot shop that has opened up next door thwarted four thieves from stealing pot, the drywall between my father’s office and the pot shop was more mailable. Of course, there is no marijuana kept on onsite in Colorado dispensaries, but that doesn’t stop thieves from trying. Reported here and here.

For more than 20 years, my father has practiced medicine at the same location.  In all that time his office was never broken into. Nothing had ever been stolen. And parents of young children and the elderly felt safe coming for medical treatment.

Since the headshop opened, healthy-seeming young people have begun loitering outside, smoking tobacco. Someone snuck through his back door to steal his microscope. And now, four guys took a sledge hammer to try and get into the shop next door, discovered that no “medicine” was on site, and helped themselves to a variety of actual medical devices and drugs from my father’s office. And let’s not forget the 4 attempted break-ins since the dispensary opened last year.

Do I think that marijuana may have medical uses? I’m not a doctor, but I’ve been told by doctors that yes, it might. Since the signing of the medical marijuana law in Colorado, my father has even put a handful of patients with on the registry–patients with chronic pain or conditions essentially untreatable by conventional narcotics. Am I opposed to marijuana use? I don’t toke myself, but I thing that the war on drugs is a frightening failure–just like prohibition of alcohol had been–and I think that we should seriously consider legalizing pot. But, is Colorado’s unregulated “medical” experiment a horrible mistake? Absolutely.

There is no medical oversight of patients’ use (unlike, say, a prescription medicine, where you need to check in with your doctor, and which you receive from a trained pharmacist). There is no zoning in anti guv’ment places like the Springs (Pueblo, for example, is taking a cautious approach to zoning so that the problems my father is facing don’t occur). And now my father’s patients, with real problems, may have to reschedule their appointments, because one of the intruders bled over the floor, broke windows and furniture, and left a huge hole in the wall through which a lovely grassy aroma will be delivering contact highs.

Great.

Update: this poorly reasoned piece in the Gazette takes the opposite view. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t seem to support a ‘no correlation’ argument & the police say that there is insufficient data.