Fire safety group developing marijuana business guidelines

A major fire safety group is updating its codes to include a section devoted to marijuana cultivation and processing sites, a sign that cannabis businesses will need to be increasingly focused on these types of guidelines.

The National Fire Protection Association, a member-based nonprofit that develops codes and standards for fire safety, has been working on the chapter for more than a year, Kristin Bigda, the group’s principal fire protection engineer, told the Denver Post.

Bigda headed a task force made up of NFPA and marijuana industry officials to draft the chapter’s code language.

The newspaper also noted that marijuana industry leaders and fire safety officials in Colorado have played a key role in the fire safety effort.

The NFPA’s technical committee will likely review the fire code’s marijuana chapter on Monday or Tuesday, the Denver Post reported. If the technical committee accepts the second draft, the chapter could be in the 2018 edition of NFPA 1, as the fire code is called, which would be published in the second half of 2017, Bigda said.