Medical pot outlets growing like a weed - for now.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: SMALL [biz]

A few decades have passed since Bill "Spaceman" Lee was approached by a reporter seeking to confirm a widespread rumor surrounding the flaky Boston Red Sox pitcher.

"Bill," he asked," is it true you've experimented with marijuana?"

"No, I don't experiment with it!" Lee responded. "I just smoke it."

I was reminded of this linguistic nuance one afternoon in mid-November as I drove down Broadway in Denver and observed the many pot dealerships - err, medical marijuana "dispensaries" - that have sprung up overnight in Denver, especially on Broadway, Federal Boulevard and Colfax Avenue (where else?).

As of July 31, a total of 13,102 new medical-marijuana patient applications had been received by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the entity charged with administering the Medical Marijuana Registry Program after Coloradans passed Amendment 20 in the November 2000 general election approving marijuana for medical use.

And yet, marijuana remains illegal under federal law. A doctor's prescription for marijuana doesn't protect an employee from being fired if he tests positive for the drug.

These are contradictions that need to be and likely will be clarified. But that hasn't stopped medical-marijuana storefronts from popping up in the meantime, spurred by the Obama administration's pronouncement in October that it would refrain from prosecuting medical marijuana patients.

But questions remain. Like, when the legal dust settles, who'll get to grow the crop? I spent this past August living solely on what I could grow in my Denver backyard in a personal subsistence experiment. What was I thinking, growing edibles like potatoes and corn and broccoli when I might have been cultivating - though perhaps not legally - a real cash crop?

Maybe it's just as well. The aforementioned Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment acknowledges the lack of legal clarity - and hence the uncertainty for pot businesses. "The law docs not clearly state where marijuana plants may be grown or if two or more patients and/or care-givers may share one growing space," the department says on its website.

Hoping to glean some insight into this budding industry last month, I stopped at the pot retailer "Walking Raven" on South Broadway and Evans. The dispensary shares a parking lot with a different self-medication retailer - King Cross Drive Thru Liquors, which was advertising cases of Bud for $16.99 on its north exterior wall. Across the street is a...