Durango’s City Council is hosting a public hearing on Tuesday to consider expanding marijuana retail and operational rules within the city limits, and we expect the comments to be favorable. Marijuana is slowly – some might say, not so slowly – becoming an everyday part of commercial life in Colorado.

City staff members are proposing that both retail marijuana store and medical marijuana center possible hours be extended four hours from 8 a.m. to midnight, an increase from the city’s current 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. That midnight closing would correspond to state law, which has determined opening and closing hours. Store owners can choose to be open whatever hours they wish between those hours.

Extended hours is an easy yes, in our opinion. Proponents have suggested that those additional hours lessen the possibility of shopping with an illegal seller during that time.

Other marijuana-related questions for the public hearing relate to marijuana testing rather than retail sales.

Colorado law has recently provided for the issuance of state medical marijuana testing facility licenses, and the owners of the two retail marijuana testing labs in the city believe Durango should follow suit. State law requires local approval for a state license to be issued, and without that medical marijuana testing labs would locate elsewhere. Licensing for retail marijuana testing labs exists now, and this would allow the two labs in Durango to expand into testing medical marijuana. Both lab owners spoke at a recent Durango Planning Commission meeting, saying that this is exactly what they intend to do.

And, logically, an additional city rule change on the public hearing agenda would allow both retail and medical labs to be co-located in the same building. That would match state law.

The city’s Planning Commission, the first stop for such rule changes, voted 4-0 two weeks ago to recommend the approval of the operating hour extensions and to make it possible to offer licensing for medical testing facilities.

The topics of marijuana grow facilities within the city limits, and the possibility of manufacturing infused products – that is marijuana added to snack or food products – within the city limits are not on the agenda. City staff members say that discussion will come later in the year.

The production and retailing of marijuana has come a long way in Colorado in just a few short years. It is not difficult to imagine that in the near future the intensive security at grow and retail outlets will be relaxed and marijuana will be available at grocery and convenience stores just by showing an ID. While the lack of banking is a serious brake, so far, so good, in moving the industry in that direction one step at a time.