Colorado wants to start delivering cannabis, if legislature agrees

Colorado wants to start delivering cannabis, if legislature agrees

A new Colorado bill intends to start a pilot program for cannabis delivery, allowing legal medical and social cannabis to be home delivered.

A similar bill sponsored by Rep. Jonathan Singer, Rep. Jovan Melton, and Sen. Tim Neville, who also sponsored this year’s bill, was vetoed last year by Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper because of the potential increase in public safety issues as well as the potential federal interference and attention cannabis delivery services could bring along.

“Given the uncertainty in Washington, this is not the time to be…trying to carve off new turf and expand markets and make dramatic statements about marijuana,” Hickenlooper told The Cannabist. “The federal government can yield a pretty heavy hand on this and I think we should be doing everything we can to demonstrate…we are being responsible in how we implement the will of our voters.”

Colorado might be skeptical to start cannabis delivery services in its state, however, Oregon has already paved its way by implementing social and medical cannabis delivery in their legally-regulated retail cannabis industry since last year. Nevada and California also followed suit, but only allow deliveries to be made to medical cannabis patients.

“Everyone said that they didn’t want Colorado to be the guinea pig on marijuana,” Singer told The Cannabist. “This time we let another state be the guinea pig, and we haven’t seen the negative effects from regulated delivery.”

The trio of Colorado lawmakers hope to make a breakthrough this year with House Bill 1092 with a few changes from their last year’s vetoed bill by putting limits on the geographic extent of the deliveries, number of allowed licensed operations and length of the trial period.

“Bottom line is that we haven’t seen an increase in public safety issues where this is rolled out,” Singer told The Cannabist. “Additionally, if there’s concern about federal attention, the federal attention would already be on Oregon where this happens.”

If or when passed, the state could start issuing licenses as early as Sept. 1 this year.

“This is hopefully going to decrease the incidence and the likelihood of DUIs, whether they’re related to alcohol or other substances,” Singer told The Cannabist.