Smoke screen: Brighton medical marijuana incident illustrates confusion, gray area in laws
By Kevin Denke/Gene Sears
BRIGHTON – The Jan. 16 bust of a medical marijuana “assembly line” at a Brighton chiropractor’s office is indicative of the challenges law enforcement agencies face with the advent of medical marijuana facilities across the metro area.
Chiropractor Jeffrey Gappa, his wife, Christy, and a third individual, Forrest Charlesworth, were arrested at Gappa’s clinic on Fourth Avenue after police uncovered the makeshift dispensary. All three are free without bond as authorities consider potential felony drug charges.
Sgt. Jim Gerhardt, of the North Metro Drug Task Force, said to call the discrepancies between federal, state and even municipal medical marijuana laws a “gray area” is an understatement. He calls the Brighton incident a prime example.
Gerhardt said Amendment 20, which legalized the use of medical marijuana in Colorado, included some vague language when it was passed about 10 years ago.
“For many, many years, it really wasn’t a huge problem,” Gerhardt said. “People weren’t exploiting the vagueness and gray areas. From a law enforcement perspective, we really didn’t have a huge issue with what was happening with it. Occasionally, we’d come across a person that was stepping outside the bounds of the whole thing.
“It seemed to be people were engaging in this pretty much the way the voters of Colorado intended,” he added.
He said authorities could offer little argument to a physician who prescribed the use of medical marijuana for a person with terminal cancer or other illness.
“The biggest problem we had with it was an ethical problem.” Gerhardt said. “Federal law still prohibits any marijuana activity, and we’re all sworn to uphold federal laws as well as state and local laws. We don’t have the ability to enforce federal laws, but we’re still sworn to uphold them.”
He said it changed in the past year. Gerhardt points out that about 16 physicians in the state signed off on the majority of medical marijuana recommendations and the number of registered patients has jumped from 2,000 to 20,000.
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