NFPA Journal - July/August 2018 - 65

» Take steps to get funding

In 2013, a ballot initiative was put in front
of Denver voters, asking them to approve
a separate retail tax on marijuana to put
toward regulation, enforcement, and
education. Using that money, Duplechian
said, the city now has 58 full-time-equivalent employees dedicated to the marijuana
industry, including inspectors, licensing
personnel, park rangers, attorneys, and tax
auditors. The positions are paid for from
the 3.5 percent special city tax, which
netted the city $14 million last year for
marijuana-related oversight. "That has been
key," she said. "All those people focused
on marijuana are reporting back to us what
they've seen, and that has been critical to
forming policy."

» Get out of your silos

"The collaborative approach we developed
at the beginning between departments has
worked very well for us-we couldn't have
done it without that approach," she said.
"We could have made the choice to have
15 employees housed in one building, all
focused on marijuana, but detached from
the actual departments overseeing the
facilities. If the fire department found this
pesticide problem (in 2015, DFD inspectors
alerted the city that they were noticing
an uptick in the amount and variety of
pesticides used on plants in grow houses)
and had not communicated it to us, if they
were doing these inspection in their own
silo, they might have handled their part of
the problem related to fire prevention, but
public health might not have been able to
address the consumer protection side of
it and we wouldn't have truly solved anything. The model gets us working together
to address all angles of an issue. The Denver police chief, like most police officers,
is no fan of marijuana, but he has said that
one positive thing he has seen from this is
that it has brought so many departments
together to collaborate on problems. If a
complaint comes in, we all work together."

» Control the size of the market

As of April 2 there were 1,143 active marijuana business licenses in Denver at 491
unique locations, Duplechian said. "That's
a lot for a city the size of Denver. The size
of the market is something other cities
may want to consider before they set up
their regulatory structure. Our city council
decided not to put a cap on the number of
marijuana business licenses in 2013. Now
there is a cap. City leaders need to consider if they want some control over the size
of the market, especially if they're adding
retail on top of an already existing medical
market. Other than supply and demand, I
would suggest cities think about the regulatory burden. We have 58 people working
on this, but a city without 491 locations
may not need that." -J.R.

"I've talked to a lot of equipment manufacturers and asked
'does this make sense to you?' They say no, but that's what
people want to do right now. Some guys swear by cold. It can
be done, but you need the right equipment."
He suspects that some marijuana processors will get signoff from Pressure Safety Inspectors and then change things
immediately. "That's one reason I think an annual inspection
is a good idea-but too few jurisdictions are doing that,"
Witherell said. "It needs to be an engineer, or somebody
who knows what they're doing. I don't think the average fire
department has enough information."

NFPA and the role of standards
That need for additional guidance is a common refrain
among regulators and some manufacturers in the cannabis
industry, and one that NFPA has responded to. In 2016, NFPA
assembled industry experts to help develop a new chapter
in NFPA 1 addressing the burgeoning marijuana industry.
The result, Chapter 38, Marijuana Growing, Processing, or
Extraction Facilities, is intended to help authorities having
jurisdiction (AHJs) navigate some of the more challenging
aspects of the industry.
The chapter includes basic requirements for permitting
facilities; guidance on grow operations and issues like fumigation, signage, temporary walls and tarps, pesticides, CO2
enrichment, and more; general requirements for extraction
room setups; and requirements unique to different extraction
methods and processes, including hydrocarbon, CO2, and
flammable and combustible liquids extractions. The chapter
also includes a sizable annex that offers guidance to AHJs on
details that a peer-reviewed technical report for the equipment should contain, and how to verify that it is sufficient.
"The committee wrote this chapter with our end users,
AHJs, in mind, so when they go into these facilities they
know what to look for to stay safe," said Kristin Bigda, the
NFPA 1 staff liaison who helped shepherd the document.
Although the 2018 edition of NFPA 1 only came out last
fall, Bigda said the marijuana chapter has already generated
interest. She has fielded calls from regulators across the
country asking about it-most want to know what occupancy
to classify a marijuana facility-and increasingly from the
media.
More importantly, the document is being used. Last
December, just a few months after the new Fire Code was
published, Michigan's Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs enacted a set of emergency rules to govern the
state's new medical marijuana industry. Chief among the
measures was that all marijuana facilities comply with the
2018 NFPA 1, and that a fire safety inspection officer may
conduct inspections to ensure NFPA 1 compliance "at any
reasonable time."
The new document is also currently being used in Massachusetts as that state braces for its first retail marijuana
shops to open on July 1, along with the increased number of
processing and grow facilities that will likely result. Numerous projects are already underway in the state, including a
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