The state Board of Health on Wednesday rejected an emergency petition filed by medical marijuana patients who urged the panel to halt the sharing of patient information with law enforcement.
A June audit found that the Colorado Department of Health and Environment hasn't kept the registry confidential.
The board apologized to marijuana patients who demanded they destroy and rebuild the 107,000-person registry. Information from the registry is supposed to be accessible to law enforcement only under limited circumstances.
Board president Laura Davis said the panel doesn't have enough information to determine that the registry is not working properly.
That information will come from the state Attorney General's Office, which so far has made no formal recommendations about what, if anything, should be changed, Davis said.
"We don't know that we are doing anything wrong," she said. "The prudent thing to do is have a conversation with the attorney general."
Audrey Hatfield, president of Coloradans for Cannabis Patient Rights, said three patients had contacted her to complain that officers who stopped them and ran their names through their computers found that they were on the registry. "It has been going on for at least a year," she said.
Ron Hyman, the state's registrar of vital statistics, said his office has been in contact with the attorney general "to assure we are adequately following what we should be doing. The audit said we are moving through uncharted waters and we want to be prudent."
The state has been making changes recommended in the audit, he said.
In a 2012 case, according to the audit, the health department turned over 107 names to an officer investigating a dispensary, a violation of the protocol for sharing registry information with authorities. In another case, the health department shared with auditors the names of 5,400 people designated to grow marijuana on behalf of others, without notifying the caregivers of the breach.
Auditors also criticized the health department for not getting confidentiality agreements from temporary employees hired to help process medical marijuana applications.
Laura Kriho, of the Cannabis Therapy Institute, said she would resubmit the petition. The names on the registry should be confidential "so patients won't fear being treated as criminals."
Marijuana activists demonstrated during the meeting outside the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. They wore paper bags over their heads to protest what they called the breach of confidentiality.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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