Colorado Dispensaries Want to Offer Online Marijuana Sales

Your time spent dispensary shopping could be cut shorter if a new bill allowing online marijuana sales passes the Colorado Legislature.

Although the state's marijuana dispensaries can now accept pre-orders, customers are still required to pay for those orders in person — and most of those transactions must be done in cash, because the majority of banks won't provide marijuana businesses with credit and debit sales systems for fear of violating federal prohibitions. That problem could be corrected by federal legalization or the passage of a long-stalled bill in Congress that would allow banks to serve state-legal marijuana businesses. But Liz Zukowski, policy and public affairs manager for Native Roots, one of the state's largest dispensary chains, isn't holding her breath.

"We still need to see the SAFE Banking Act pass. Every year I hear from our counterparts working at the federal level in Washington, D.C., that we're getting SAFE Banking done this year," Zukowski says. "I'll believe it when I see it, but we want to be prepared as a state when it happens."

The SAFE Banking Act has been in Congress for ten years and passed the House several times, but has yet to receive a hearing in the Senate, and the measure's longstanding sponsor, U.S. Representative Ed Perlmutter, has retired. Although the Colorado Legislature can't force big banks to work with marijuana businesses, it could allow an alternative option through online orders, Zukowski points out.

Introduced by state Representative William Lindstedt, House Bill 23-1279 would allow dispensaries and marijuana delivery services to accept online payments through pre-orders. Customers would still have to enter the store and show their IDs, or provide identification to a delivery driver, in order to pick up a purchase.

A handful of states such as Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon allow dispensaries to offer online marijuana sales. Zukowski thinks that it's high time that Colorado joined the party. "The most obvious reason is that we are in 2023, and customers want to be able to have access to e-commerce solutions. The cannabis industry has been held back from that," she says. "And whatever we can do to lessen that reliance on cash would limit the risk of burglaries and robberies."

Recreational marijuana delivery, still struggling to get off the ground in Colorado, would become safer if less cash were involved, she adds.

Colorado dispensaries were temporarily allowed to accept online payment thanks to executive orders issued by Governor Jared Polis in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those orders expired in 2021, and a bill introduced that year proposing permanent online marijuana sales was rejected by lawmakers, who were concerned about increasing youth access to retail pot. That bill would have legalized medical marijuana telemedicine visits, too, which Zukowski believes also hurt the measure's chances.

"The online sales prohibition was put on hold, and we operated as a state with little to no incidents. That bill in 2021 was more than just online sales. It also had telemedicine as part of it, and I believe that was part of what got wrapped in the discussion," she notes. "Telemedicine is not part of this bill."

HB 1279's first hearing before the House Finance Committee was originally scheduled for April 10, but was pushed back to Thursday, April 13, so sponsors could file amendments.

Proposed amendments to the bill would require warning labels or announcements similar to those issued at dispensaries, including statements about the health risks of consuming marijuana while pregnant, as well as the potential dangers that extracted THC products pose to mental health, according to Zukowski. While some opposition to the bill is anticipated, it won't be from the marijuana industry, she adds.

"We have a broad coalition of supporters," she says. "No one in the industry I've spoken with is opposed to this bill."