Growing Pains: State Legislature seeks reform for medical marijuana law
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Controversy over Montana’s Medical Marijuana Act has certainly stirred the pot this legislative session, with a variety of bills introduced to regulate what many Montanans see as an out-of-control situation. Since an October 2009 statement by the Obama administration that the federal government would not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, the number of patients enrolled in Montana’s medical marijuana program has skyrocketed from about 2,000 to more than 28,000.
Three bills currently making their way through the Legislature seek to cap the medical marijuana boom: House Bill 161, which would completely repeal the 2004 Medical Marijuana Act; Senate Bill 423, which would repeal the current law and establish the Montana Therapeutic Marijuana Act, a severely restricted version of the Medical Marijuana Act; and House Bill 175, which would leave repealing the Medical Marijuana Act up to the voters in 2012.
HB 161, the repeal bill sponsored by Speaker Mike Milburn, R-Cascade, passed both the House and Senate last week and on Monday was being prepared to Gov. Schweitzer for either approval or veto, which could take up to 10 days. If passed, the repeal would take effect July 1, but Schweitzer has said before that he would veto a repeal of the Medical Marijuana Act.
After the House agreed with the Senate and passed SB 423, the bill was scheduled to go before the House Human Services Committee on Wednesday, but Rep. Janna Taylor, R-Dayton, said the House had some major adjustments to the bill.
“The House has significant changes to Senator Essman’s bill,” Taylor said, although she couldn’t give specifics before the Human Services Committee heard the bill Wednesday.
The House also passed HB 175 by a vote of 68 to 29. The bill would put a measure to repeal the Medical Marijuana Act on the ballot in the 2012 election, leaving repeal of the law, which was created by a voters’ initiative, in the hands of all Montanans.
“I think it’s a great idea, regardless of whether we put (other) controls on,” Taylor noted.
HB 175 was scheduled to go before the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 7, “and who knows what they’ll do,” Taylor said.
She believes that when Montanans voted for medical marijuana, they didn’t intend to create the medical marijuana industry that’s sprung up in the last couple of years.
“I didn’t think it was a business. I don’t think that a single person who voted for it voted for a business,” she said.
But most of the hundreds of Montanans registered as medical marijuana caregivers with the state would disagree, saying that to ensure quality control, medical marijuana has to be handled as a business. One local caregiver — called Jack for purposes of this article — pointed out that every dollar spent in your town is spent seven times over before it leaves the local economy — and while there’s no real way to measure how much money the medical marijuana industry in Montana has generated, “I think it would be a shocking number,” he said.
With nine patients and maximizing the efficiency of his growing operation, Jack believes he could soon be making $3,000 a month with his medical marijuana business.
“Tax that,” he said. “It needs to be taxed.”
He’s also in favor of more monitoring and restrictions, including inspections to improve quality.
“It would be safer for the patient,” he said.
If a repeal were to take place, some patients and caregivers worry that they could be targeted in some way for having their names on the state’s registry
“It’s not information that’s freely shared; I have confidence in that, anyway,”
Another local patient said he'd go so far as to leave the country if the Medical Marijuana Act is repealed.
"It's going to be the saddest tragedy in American civil liberties in a long time," he said.
