James B. Martin, executive director of the Colorado Department of Health and Environment, called the high number of men in their early 20s who’ve applied for medical-marijuana certificates to treat chronic pain “exceedingly unlikely.”

Based on figures from the registry, nearly 75 percent of the marijuana permits issued in the state came from only 15 doctors.

Colorado Senator Chris Romer said he’d propose new laws in the next legislative session to impose new regulations on the industry. For the time being, Romer said he favors background checks on dispensary owners and creating buffer zones between dispensaries and schools. But more laws will be needed, he said.

“This industry is really going to grow,” he said. “We need to think about a long-term regulatory model, and I’m beginning to question if that means licensing.”

Brown characterized medical marijuana as “the hottest economic-development issue” in the metropolitan area, and said the number of dispensaries and the lack of strong policies regulating medical marijuana are “getting out of hand.”

He doesn’t want to ban dispensaries, but said they should be subjected to the same standards as adult cabarets and liquor stores.

Brown is proposing a $2,000 startup fee for dispensaries, FBI background checks for dispensary owners, an ordinance barring convicted felons from running dispensaries, and prohibiting dispensaries from operating within 500 feet of schools.

He also wants to ban on-site consumption at the dispensaries and on-site cultivation of marijuana plants, and to subject dispensaries to the city’s 3.62 percent sales tax.

Legitimate dispensaries are clamoring for regulation, he said. “We need some rational and reasonable standards for people who are doing this,” Brown said. “The legitimate [dispensary] businesses don’t want the riffraff coming in to give them a bad name.”

Cookston said he’ll urge lawmakers to consider regulations that would “create good competition in the marketplace and better products for those that need them.”

Unlike some dispensary owners, Cookston said he’s not in favor of outright legalizing marijuana for recreational use.

“Across-the-board legalization won’t help anybody,” he said. “It should be kept as a medical product.”

Cookston, who says he consumes a marijuana brownie every morning to treat pain associated with an automobile accident, said marijuana should be regarded as a “controlled substance.”

“There should be controls for the sake of public safety,” he said. “[Marijuana] can alter the way you feel, drive, or deal with other people.”

Some Denver attorneys say they’ve fielded calls from employers asking what the liberalized federal guidance means for businesses that perform routine drug testing on workers.

Danielle Urban, an attorney for the Denver office of Fisher & Phillips LLP, said since marijuana is still illegal under federal law, courts are likely to take a “conservative stance” regarding employers’ rights to fire workers who test positive for using marijuana if it compromises their ability to do their jobs.

Urban cites recent cases in California and Oregon, which also liberalized laws to permit use of medical marijuana.

She said employers need only to make efforts to “reasonably accommodate” workers who take medical marijuana or prescribed narcotics because of medical circumstances.

That means assigning any available “light duty” to those who are using the drug while recovering from a medical condition.

If an employee needs to use marijuana in the long term, Urban said an employer may dismiss the worker if the drug use interferes with the ability to do their job.