Mark Segraves, wtop.com
WASHINGTON – Medical marijuana growers and sellers will have to take thorough measures to ensure their product doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Measures from state-of-the-art surveillance systems to panic buttons for employees.
Applicants for licenses to either sell or grow medical marijuana were required to submit detailed security plans to the Department of Health and the Metropolitan Police Department. The final rulemaking, issued by the mayor’s office, set forth some basic requirements.
Distribution and cultivation centers must have the following security measures in place:
- High-tech motion detectors: “Volumetric intrusion detection device(s) installed and connected to the facility intrusion detection system.”
- Storage safe that can withstand 30 minutes of drilling: “The safe shall be a UL listed burglar-proof safe with a minimum rating of TL-30. Safes weighing less than seven hundred fifty pounds (750 lb.) shall be installed in a steel clad concrete block or otherwise securely anchored to a fixed part of the facility structure.”
- 24-hour surveillance cameras: “A dispensary or cultivation center shall be required to operate and maintain in good working order a twenty-four (24) hour, seven (7) days a week, a closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance system on the premises that complies with the following minimum standards.”
- Professionally monitored alarm system: “At a minimum, the system shall provide coverage of all facility entrances and exits, rooms with exterior windows, rooms with exterior walls or walls shared with other facility tenants, roof hatches, skylights, and storage room(s) that contain safe(s).”
- A panic button for employees: “The system shall include at least one (1) holdup alarm for staff use.”
- Outdoor lighting: “A cultivation center or dispensary shall be required for security purposes to have sufficient lighting outside of the registered business each day between sunset and sunrise that adequately illuminates the cultivation center or dispensary and its immediate surrounding area, including storage areas, parking lots, entry areas such as the front fa
