Rarity in Politics

Meg Sanders adds an MMJ voice to the Amendment 64 rules-making process

While cannabis may be one of the safest substances on Earth, there was one casualty predicted as Amendment 64 guaranteed limited legal use for adults in Colorado: dispensaries. Most were reticent to say that patients would still be willing to jump through hoops with the registry every year, visit their physician and pay a fee to buy what is legal for anyone over the age of 21. Of the 22 appointees to Governor Hickenlooper’s cannabis task force, only one seat represented the hundreds of medical cannabis centers, cultivation facilities and infused product manufacturers. Luckily for the industry, that one seat was Meg Sanders.
Sanders didn’t come from a “traditional” cannabis background, if one even exists. After bouncing around two different colleges, she eventually earned a degree in sociology and immediately went into the retail market, but soon found herself as a new mother and wanted to switch gears. Working in compliance at a small private equity firm for seven years, she was itching to get into the MMJ space and finally got a shot at compliance there, as well. Within a year, she was running the company. “The cannabis business functions in dog years . . . I did my seven years of compliance work in one year, and now here I am,” says Sanders, currently the CEO of Gaia Plant-Based Medicine in Denver.
Soon, all of that hard work would come to fruition, as the governor announced he would be forming a task force work group to hammer out exactly what a retail model of legalized cannabis would look like. There was a single spot open for someone who could portray life in the medical cannabis field, and many were jumping at the chance. Sanders said getting on the panel was “not a very big process.” Making it on the panel, however, was just the first step.
With the diversity of backgrounds on the panel, many expected contentious debate over the regulation, but Sanders said that ground rules were set in place from the start. “Everyone that was appointed had a firm understanding that this wasn’t about debating the amendment.” Although some members of the panel had never been in a grow house or a dispensary, they quickly found common ground. Her initial recommendation was simple: maintain the status quo. While medical cannabis regulations may be a bit onerous, they could clearly work for retail as well.
Still, that left most medical cannabis centers on the sidelines, and their patients looking for new providers. Surprisingly enough, the solution came from looking at a current model that’s already operating in most neighborhoods in the city.
“How would we check people in and get them into a center or to a divided center? Kind of like a Walgreens with a prescription side counter, but everything else can be accessed?” wondered Sanders.
By carefully defining areas of ingress and egress, centers can keep their doors open and essentially serve both. Sanders sees this as a huge win. “In my opinion, the biggest thing we addressed as far as making sure patients don’t lose access to medicine, and that centers don’t have to close—is by giving a very clear definition of how they can exist in the same location.”
While these are still just recommendations, most were passed with unanimous support, and that itself is rare in cannabis politics.

Scoop on the Competition

In 1901, Charles R. Walgreen Sr. purchased the Chicago drugstore where he had worked as a pharmacist—and that started the Walgreens chain. His energy and enthusiasm soon led to new ideas. In 1922, Walgreens’ employee Ivar “Pop” Coulson made his malted milkshake by adding two scoops of vanilla ice cream to the standard malted milk recipe. The rest, as they say, is history.