Vail council member questions ban on medical marijuana in town.

Asked why she voted no, Rogers didn’t hesitate.

“The primary reason is that this is perfectly legal in Colorado,” she said. “We had a referendum on it [Amendment 20], people voted on it, they said they wanted medical marijuana to be legal, and I don’t believe that we as a council – or any government body for that matter – has a right to ignore what the people said that they wanted to have done.”

In fact, Vail and surrounding Eagle County overwhelmingly supported Amendment 20 in 2000. The county as a whole approved it by a margin of 69 percent to 30 percent. Vail proper backed it 72 to 27, Southwest Vail 85 to 14, Northwest Vail 76 to 23 and East Vail 74 to 25.

But Vail Mayor Dick Cleveland, an investigator for the district attorney’s office, said people with a real medical need can head out of town and find what they need “down valley,” much the way ski-town residents must drive to farther-flung towns to find cheaper groceries and other necessities.

“We hear complaints from people in this town that they can’t buy underwear for their kids in town, that they have to go to Walmart and down valley, and I don’t think it’s a burden on anybody to have to go down valley who has a legitimate need for medical marijuana,” Cleveland said at last week’s council meeting. “This should not be seen as a referendum on medical marijuana, that’s not what this is about.”

But that’s exactly what council member Kevin Foley says it should be about if Vail voters disagree with the council’s decision.

“[Vail’s ban] does not ban the use for people that are registered patients, and if people in the town feel strongly about, it they can put it on the ballot by referendum,” Foley said last week.

“I’ve said in the past I’m no Bill Clinton, but for the town of Vail, Colorado, with the international and continental clientele that we bring to this town, I don’t think it’s something that we want with people saying, ‘Hey, we know they’ve got it, so let’s go try and get it.’”

Bryan Swanton of Boulder, who owns dispensaries in Eagle-Vail, Nederland and Boulder, a “garden” in Boulder and hash company and medical marijuana food company in Denver, said setting up down valley, as Cleveland suggests, has become increasingly difficult because of county zoning regulations imposed in February.

“They have zoned the industry out of existence,” Swanton said of Eagle County, which is still taking public input on its regulations and may put the issue to a public vote in November. “What we’re hoping is that the allow zoning that will allow for the existence of this business as long as it’s run in a respectful, professional, legal way you would run any highly regulated business.”

The down-valley town of Avon is also considering a ban on pot shops similar to Vail’s.

The H.R. 5519 Gulf Coast Jobs Preservation Act would end the Mineral Management Service notice that halted deep-water operations for six months while the agency works to satisfy widespread safety concerns. The so-called “jobs preservation act” would require the interior department to ensure drilling companies comply with federal laws and identify methods to ensure safe drilling. The bill offers no other substantive details. By “jobs preservation” the lawmakers are referring to oil industry jobs and not the thousands or ultimately hundreds of thousands of jobs that may ultimately be lost as a result of the Gulf environmental catastrophe.

“Offshore drilling provides 30 percent of U.S. oil production and is the second-largest source of revenue to the federal government at $6 billion annually, and has a direct employment of 150,000 individuals,” Lamborn said in a release. “Just as you wouldn’t shut down the airline industry while a single plane crash is investigated, you don’t shut down the offshore drilling industry at this time.”

On Monday, Colorado Sen. Mark Udall said at a press conference that the moratorium on drilling was appropriate until the cause of the BP catastrophe can be determined and measures are put in place to prevent any similar future spill.

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Police chief Dwight Henninger said 40 years of being the “premier mountain resort community” would go up in smoke if the council took the recommendation of the town staff and the Planning and Environmental Commission and allowed dispensaries in commercial areas away from high-traffic tourism zones.

Town councilman Farrow Hitt said the impressionable youth of Vail are already conflicted enough when it comes to partying because they see adults on vacation going off on a regular basis. Apparently, seeing people with debilitating diseases ease their suffering with the same reckless abandon would be confusing.

Of course, the nearby “premier mountain resort communities” of Avon and Edwards have allowed dispensaries, so spliff relief will only be a 10- or 15-minute drive west on I-70. And for those ski vacationers who base their travel decisions on such things, Vail rival Aspen and much of surrounding Pitkin County have also allowed dispensaries.

It’s possible, though, that Vail Police Chief Henninger was just trying to avoid the regulatory mess faced by Summit County Sheriff John Minor, who has seen seven out of 10 warrants served for grow operations in the past six months turn out to be for legal agricultural endeavors.

Minor told the Summit Daily News the state doesn’t notify local law enforcement of who’s legal, requiring cops to serve warrants and then sort through paper work. That’s meant some embarrassing situations for police, including one incident in which the cops confiscated pot plants and lovingly watered them at the station to keep them alive until the grower’s legal status could be confirmed. Failing to do so could have meant a hefty lawsuit, with plants valued at $5,000 a pop.

State Rep. Christine Scanlan, D-Dillon, said she sympathizes with the sheriff but doubt the state legislature will tackle the problem and pass a bill mandating better state regulation, largely because of the down economy and lack of funds for such a bureaucracy. Minor said he doubts there’s political will in an election year.

“I don’t even know if (the legislature) will touch this in 2010 simply because it’s an election year, and politics has a strange way” of affecting such matters, he told the paper.

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