Glass pipes with dried marijuana are on display at the Trichome Health Consultants dispensary in Colorado Springs. (Photo by Michael Kodas/I-News Network)
A double life
Colorado Springs – home to Focus on the Family, Fort Carson Army base and the U.S. Air Force Academy – seems an unlikely place to launch a marijuana empire. But down the street from a Dairy Queen, tucked next to a knitting shop and facing rows of single-family homes, a man who calls himself J. Card leads one half of a double life behind a locked glass door sealed with bomb-proof film.
In this life, he’s a rising medical marijuana mogul and founder of Trichome Health Consultants, a dispensary that boasts 1,600 patients and forests of 6-foot-tall marijuana plants.
In his other life, which he lives under a different name, he’s a white-collar professional.
“I live a very Batman-Robin lifestyle, but it works for me,” Card said.
To produce the varieties of marijuana its patients want, Trichome has a network of nine growers licensed under a Colorado Springs ordinance. Trichome granted reporters from I-News access to their grow facilities, marking one of the few times journalists have been allowed to see such operations anywhere in the state. Because marijuana businesses can be targets for criminals, the grow operation is clandestine. It’s a short drive from the dispensary, in a nondescript industrial rental space protected by an unmarked solid steel door.
Some 100 plants, standing more than five feet tall with trunks as thick as corn stalks, are rooted in 18-gallon blue plastic storage containers – the kind that normally hold holiday ornaments or winter sweaters. High-intensity grow lights are strung above the marijuana canopy. Radio music hums under the deafening roar of industrial fans. The owners say both the music and the breeze stimulate the plants. A timer releases water when the plants need it.
But unlike normal gardens, patient names – not plant types – label each container.
Click to enlarge: Anatomy of a Marijuana Plant
While the plants won’t necessarily be used by the patients for whom they’re named, this system helps Trichome keep track of how many plants they’re allowed to grow.
At any given time, the dispensary carries about 50 pounds of marijuana in the form of smokable product, hashish, medicated food, lotions and tinctures. With 1,600 patients, Trichome can legally grow 9,600 plants (half mature and half developing) and keep 200 pounds of marijuana within its dispensary walls. They grow under capacity to avoid a surplus and to minimize potential charges should federal agencies prosecute. If Trichome does produce a surplus, they sell it to other dispensaries, Hall said.
Under the new law, Trichome’s contracted growers must pass criminal background checks. But this might not be enough to guarantee growers stay within the bounds of the law. Card knows that leakage to the black market occurs, and said he fired a grower after learning his marijuana was coming from California. And while some
transgressions – such as leakage to the black market – might be
unpreventable, he said, “It’s our job to try.”
Shades of gray
Jason Tran, 19, was in charge of more than one hundred marijuana plants at a Colorado Springs grow operation until a new law effective on July 1, 2010, required growers to be at least 21 years old. (Photo by Michael Kodas/I-News Network)
“I don’t know what centers are supposed to do with surplus,” said state Rep. Ken Summers, a Jefferson County Republican, who co-sponsored the new law. “I mean, are you required to burn it? That is best left up to the rule-making process.”
Summers said an evaluation period will have to take place before deciding if more legislation is needed. That period could be three to five years, he said. Until then, the rule-making is left up to the Colorado Department of Revenue.
“We haven’t drafted any rules yet,” said Mark Couch, a legislative liaison for the Revenue Department.
Couch said rules will be drafted before the end of the year and could address the surplus issue. For now, local governments and law enforcement agencies will determine how to enforce the law.
That won’t be easy, police officials said.
The new law allows city and county governments to pass their own medical marijuana ordinances, posing challenges for both law enforcement and marijuana growers who will have to navigate the discrepancies between state and local laws.
“[The state law] will maybe regulate a bit more, but it’s so vague. It’s so gray,” said Sgt. Jason Anderson of the South Metro drug task force. “We’re going to come across many grows that are probably in violation of municipal or county ordinances.”
But the nature of the law makes it easy for lawbreakers to plead ignorance, he said. “It’s truly hard to say whether or not they’re trying to [grow] professionally or not.”
In the meantime, some law enforcement officials say the shades of gray in Colorado’s medical marijuana laws mean its black market past will not soon be left behind.
Peters, the North Metro drug task force commander, says because marijuana is easy to grow, laws may never close all the loopholes: “Even if you legalize it, there will always be a black market.”
Marijuana plants grow as tall as people in this clandestine Colorado Springs grow facility. (Photo by Michael Kodas/I-News Network)