Marcelo Vazquez, a marijuana grower, checks the leaves of his marijuana plants, on the outskirts of Montevideo, Uruguay, Monday.

Colorado marijuana-tracking system won’t include all plants on Jan. 1

Colorado’s much-touted seed-to-sale marijuana inventory tracking system won’t track every plant when it launches Wednesday, state officials announced Monday — less than two days before the start of historic recreational marijuana sales.

The Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division blamed bad weather and holiday shipping logjams for delaying the delivery of hundreds of thousands of radio-frequency tags that are supposed to go onto marijuana plants or packages of pot to track their progress. Marijuana businesses are required to enter information from the tags into the $1.2 million online system known as MITS, for Marijuana Inventory Tracking Solution. State officials unveiled the system publicly this month.

Without the tags, Colorado enforcement officials won’t initially be able to use the system as promised to identify the location of every plant grown commercially in Colorado.

A news release sent late Monday states that enforcement officials have “developed alternative procedures” to allow new recreational marijuana stores and existing medical marijuana shops to operate without having all their inventory logged in MITS.

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