This week, Canna Care in Sacramento became the first medical marijuana center to air a TV commercial in history.

Here's Time magazine:

Earlier this week, a television commercial advertising medicinal marijuana was aired in California — the first ever broadcast in the U.S. The ad was shown over FOX affiliate KTXL in Sacramento, and has swirled up a nice little cloud of controversy from community members who worry about the commercial's effect on children. The ad itself features a series of testimonials from customers, all A-typical of our drug culture stereotypes: A pretty young woman claims she was diagnosed with a bone disease, while a middle-aged woman says she was hit by a drunk driver.

Below, find the commercial, and a talk show in Rhode Island, where MMJ is also legal, discussing the commercial's appropriateness.

Update, 2:19 p.m.: We spoke with Tuck by phone, who added that months of planning have been leading up to this meeting.

"We’ve been working with several groups, including the Medical Cannabis Council, and CONO [Council of Neighbors and Organizations] and others, trying to meet, and trying to figure out things, and we’ve made some progress," Tuck says. "There’s still differences of opinion as you can imagine, between the groups. But anyway, we’re going forward at the planning commission meeting.

"And so it’s a public meeting. People are welcome to attend and speak one way or the other. A week before the meeting, our staff report will be available to the public."

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In an e-mail to the Indy, senior city planner Steve Tuck writes that the Colorado Springs Planning Commission will hold a public hearing "to consider zoning and land use regulations for medical marijuana facilities."

Look for it at 8:30 a.m., Thursday, Sept. 16, on the second floor of the Regional Development Center.

Here's user Gurudori, commenting on our story, "You say 'patient,' I say 'caregiver'."

"Whomever is making up these regulations obviously is not a MMJ patient! Why are they making this application process even harder? What does it matter if I'm a patient and a caretaker?" Gurudori writes. "How could this possibly be a conflict when many caretakers stated out as a MMJ patients, and we just want to help others? I think they are trying to make it so difficult to be a MMJ patient that people will just give up."

Audrey Hatfield has similar concerns, and it's why she started the group Coloradans 4 Cannabis Patient Rights. While only a Facebook page at the moment, Hatfield says in an e-mail that she plans on "updating [a new] website a few times a week once it's finished and ready to go," and would like to make it an official nonprofit.

• Broomfield.org

In an interesting juxtaposition of Colorado Springs' current situation — where anti-MMJ group Let Us Vote COS seeks to place a center ban question on the April ballot — Broomfield citizens collected over 1,500 signatures to place a ban question on its ballot, in an attempt to overturn the city's current ban.

MMJ advocacy group Sensible Colorado, who provided funding and strategic support for the campaign, thinks it's a great step.

“Hundreds of sick patients who live in Broomfield deserve safe access to their constitutionally protected medicine at centers tightly regulated by the Colorado Department of Revenue,” says executive director Brian Vicente in a release.

“Sensible Colorado Action is proud to support the Broomfield citizens who stood up to City Council over the last month and collected the signatures necessary to force the Council to suspend it's ill conceived ban."

Broomfield voters will set the record straight on Nov. 2.

Forgive me an I, Robot moment ...

But the quote sprang to mind as soon as I read this in Pagosa Springs' Pagosa Daily Post regarding Archuleta County's decision on allowing MMJ centers:

• Pagosa Daily Post
• Sheriff Peter Gonzalez

But where, exactly, Sheriff Pete Gonzalez obtained his statistic that the overwhelming majority of the state’s 30,919 registered users are 20-year-olds is not immediately obvious.

Reporter Bill Hudson again:

The Sheriff was the only person to speak out against the licensing ordinance. And I believe he was also the only person to use misleading statistics.

This oft-repeated mantra that most card-holders are 20-somethings is patently, provably false. I've heard it from Colorado Springs City Councilors, El Paso County Commissioners, detractors, law enforcement officers and legal advisers.

The numbers are right here — look it up. Hudson did.

According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, there are currently 30,919 registered medical marijuana users in Colorado. And “the average age of all patients is 40.” Over 900 different physicians have signed recommendations for their patients to use the herbal medicine — a medicine that is still classed as a controlled substance by the federal government.

The average age in Colorado, according to the U.S. Census, is 34 years. The average age of medical marijuana users, according to CDPHE is 40 years.

Now, true, the department's numbers are as of Dec. 31, 2009. But it's going to take a lot of 21-year-olds to bring the average down that far. So you of the anti-MMJ groupthink — i.e. people who try "to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas" — pull together a cohesive argument, and fight facts with actual, relevant facts. Please.

• Waller

Or it used to be.

Colorado state rep. Mark Waller, take it away:

"I was speaking at the Republican roundup, at Valley Hi [Golf Course], and apparently a lot of folks who support the growth in the [MMJ] industry heard that I was going to be speaking there about medical marijuana," Waller says. "They showed up.

"I stayed, answered everybody's questions, spoke to everybody, tried to be as gracious as possible, and my reward for that was walking out to my car when it's all said and done: somebody had smeared ranch dressing all over my car."

In other news, Waller says he's happy about the El Paso County Board of Commissioners decision to refer a ban question to the ballot.

One thing though: "I think it's going to be an uphill battle though for the Let Us Vote.org folks to educate the people."

The Colorado Springs Business Journal reports that Denver-based Altitude Organics, a name that three Colorado Springs centers license, is working toward an IPO.

The Denver-based firm is a venture partner with The Amergence Group of Scottsdale. The firms hope to eventually transition their joint operation to a public company, said Altitude Organic CEO Brian Cook in a statement this week.

“We endeavor to meet the demand from new licensees and rapidly grow our business at a pace that is consistent with the current growth of this multibillion dollar market,” he said.

Let's call the whole grow off.

Or, so you might want to do after reading Westword's story regarding the wording in House Bill 1284, which states, "A patient who has designated a primary caregiver for himself or herself may not be designated as a primary caregiver for another patient."

The Denver newspaper spoke to an anonymous man who said he was taking 22 medications "and basically puking them up as soon as [he] took them," says the report. He started growing his own medical marijuana, and has knocked that list down to 14.

Before long, he decided to become his own caregiver. A couple of years later, he'd gained enough experience, and had enough medicine, "to help other people," he notes. "I became a caregiver for one patient first, and then another. And in working that out and learning how to grow, I became friends with another fellow who's also a patient. And he became my caregiver, and I became his caregiver. But now, the new law prohibits that, as I read it."

And it does. Spokesman Mark Salley at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment told the newspaper: "If someone is a patient, and something comes through for them identifying that patient as a caregiver, the application would be denied."

To summarize, as one story commenter put it:

A law passed without anyone knowing what's in it. Imagine my surprise.

• Bensberg: The lone dissenter.

Update, 2:04 p.m.: To clarify, though the vote will only affect businesses located in unincorporated territory, all registered El Paso County voters will be eligible to weigh in on this issue, not solely those in the unincorporated areas, as part of the November ballot.

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In a meeting that went half as long as the previous, the El Paso Board of County Commissioners voted 4-1 to refer a medical marijuana ban question to the ballot.

Commissioner Jim Bensberg was the lone dissenter, citing logic similar to a City Councilor's recent decision.

"I don’t question the motives of those who wish to change the status quo, nor do I condone illegal activity of any type," Bensberg says. "But I believe, as my colleague and City Councilman Scott Hente believes, in representative government. … We should decide these types of issues.

“We should not devolve into a board that does nothing but set ballot titles for controversial issues ... We ought to have the political courage to decide this issue one way or another.”

Commissioner Sallie Clark proposed an earlier motion to add a grandfathering clause to the ballot language which failed in a vote of 4-1. Despite that, Clark voted for ban referral.

"I will vote to put it on the ballot, but I think it’s important that it’s explained very clearly that this will not impact those that are in operation in their municipalities of our eight towns and cities through this county," Clark says. "It will only impact the unincorporated. But it will likely increase, if it passes, to push more into neighborhoods. And I don’t think that’s a good thing.”

In earlier testimony, Sheriff Terry Maketa echoed that sentiment.

”They’re going to end up in our neighborhood, and that’s the last place that we want them," he says. "And a lot of us don’t want them at all.”

The sheriff also added that he had not found an increase in crime following dispensaries. In fact: “At the time I asked, there had not been one crime related to a dispensary. I can only speak for the data we have available, but we have not seen it.”

Commissioner Amy Lathen justified the board's decision, despite earlier actions toward licensure: "We do the very best to guarantee opportunity, but we do not guarantee outcomes. It’s not our role to guarantee outcomes. Especially when we put [earlier measures] out there as temporary."

Denver's 7NEWS has an update on the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's medical marijuana patient registry backlog:

About 1,000 people each day are still applying for state-issued medical marijuana license, also know as a "pink card," but only 600 to 700 of those applications are being processed.

There is a backlog of 60,000 to 70,000 applications waiting for approval, Ron Hyman of the Colorado Department of Health told 7NEWS.

The delay is costly. With thousands of applications waiting for approval, there are also more than $5 million in application fees waiting to be processed.

Medical marijuana center owners have until one week from today to meet the state's requirement to grow 70 percent of their own product.

Here's a look at the affidavit requiring signature, and here's the affidavit itself.

• The disallowed ad.

Marijuana legalization group Just Say Now had a previously approved ad for its Facebook page pulled from the site, after it had already generated more than 38 million impressions, says the Huffington Post.

Andrew Noyes, a spokesman for Facebook, said that the problem was the pot leaf. "It would be fine to note that you were informed by Facebook that the image in question was no long[er] acceptable for use in Facebook ads. The image of a pot leaf is classified with all smoking products and therefore is not acceptable under our policies," he told the group in an email, which was provided to HuffPost.

In response, Just Say Now is running a petition drive to protest Facebook's decision; get involved here.

In related news, Google announced it would be accepting JSN's ads, pot leaf and all.

• Glenn

City Councilor Darryl Glenn's recent push to add a medical marijuana center ban took a potentially fatal blow in Monday's informal Council session, when he was only able to garner three other votes in favor of ballot referral.

A surprising ally was Councilor Jan Martin, who had previously voted with the majority in favor of MMCs, as had Vice Mayor Larry Small, who was also in favor of referral. Councilor Randy Purvis rounded out the total.

But Councilor Scott Hente, who had previously aligned with Glenn in voting against MMJ licensure, disagreed with him here. Though he didn't speak on the subject, Hente may have been moved by the lack of public support for anti-MMJ group Let Us Vote COS.

The question moves to Tuesday for the official Council meeting, where official discussion and voting will occur. Though possible, it's highly unlikely that Councilors would change today's positions.

Matt Cook is the Colorado Department of Revenue's senior director of enforcement. And he's heard enough about banks deciding to cease business with medical marijuana businesses. In fact, he's heard more than enough. From a recent speech:

"That’s another issue, all the banking problems that we’re having. I can tell you, that’s a huge issue for me. It’s a huge issue for you; it’s a huge issue for all of us. We’re partners in this industry and I intend to take this issue on a national basis next week …"

Here's more, from the clip posted Aug. 21:

"We are going to see juvenile dropouts [from school] increase."

— District Attorney Dan May speaking on KVOR 740 AM this morning on the consequences of medical marijuana centers continuing as they have.

The most recent numbers from Colorado Springs School District 11, the city's largest district, indicate a high-school dropout rate of 3.7 percent. The city's second-largest, Academy School District 20, reports 0.6 percent for the same timeframe. Should centers live on through this school year, we'll follow up and report on the veracity of May's projection.