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Patients in pain draw distinction between using medical marijuana & smoking pot
Just what the doctor ordered
She began with hydrocodone for the pain, Cymbalta and Trazodone for the depression, and Flexeril to ease the muscle spasms. The drugs helped sooth the nagging discomfort in her back. On good days, they dulled the pain in her legs.
But while Barb Trego got by, she wasn’t happy. The physical toll of her condition, which includes two missing discs in her back, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, left her life in disarray, and for that, the drugs were of little use.
“They were just giving me the pain pills and muscle relaxers 60 at a time,” said Trego, who now lives in Helena. “It just makes you not care about anything. My house fell into disarray. I let all my houseplants die. I was on so many narcotics, my life was going on, but I wasn’t participating in it.”
Trego, a former reserve sheriff’s deputy and employee with the Department of Corrections, hadn’t worked since 1995. Although she was not yet 55 years old, it seemed her life was coming to an end before it really got going.
But two months after getting a medical marijuana card, Trego now manages the semblance of a smile. The drug was recommended by a friend and has, Trego says, made a big difference in her life.
“I’m working a part-time job,” she said. “I’m able to help my friends instead of them all coming to help me. I sleep better at night. I’m getting my house clean. I’m enjoying things again I thought were lost forever.”
Trego is one of nearly 15,000 Montana citizens with a medical marijuana card. Some 62 percent of Montana voters approved the use of marijuana for medical use back in 2004, giving the likes of Trego an option in their choice of drug.
But some lawmakers are taking a hard look at the state’s medical marijuana law, saying the current system of controlling prescription pot is broken and needs fixing. Not all 15,000 Montana cardholders are legitimate patients, they say, and it’s those who abuse the system that they’re looking to weed out with tougher regulations.
Among those with an eye on fixing what they see as a broken law are Republican state Sens. Dave Lewis of Helena and Jim Shockley of Victor.
Two weeks ago, Lewis announced a plan to license a single statewide marijuana grower and dispense the drug through licensed pharmacies. The result would create a system not unlike Montana’s liquor distribution laws, Lewis said, with the state controlling the supply.
“I don’t want to take it away from those who really need it,” Lewis said. “I want to make sure it’s still available to people with a true medical need. But it’s become widely available, and I absolutely believe that not everyone with a card has a legitimate need.”
After Lewis’ proposal hit the papers, his phone began ringing and his inbox filled with e-mails. In three short days, he said, he received more than 300 messages from both sides of the issue and more calls than he could answer.
“I heard immediately from the industry, the growers and the retailers,” he said. “Then I started hearing from the general public. A lot of people aren’t happy. They supported it before, but now they feel like they’ve been taken advantage of.”
Shockley has requested a bill to be drafted for the 2011 Legislature to repeal the marijuana law.
Shockley said he believes marijuana has medical benefits and should remain legal, although in a much more controlled way. But creating an appropriately controlled medical-marijuana system was too complicated for the initiative process, he said.
Even those who led the drive to legalize medical marijuana, including Tom Daubert of Helena, said the current law has flaws that need to be addressed. Daubert, who doesn’t necessarily agree with the remedies presented by Lewis, said last week that growers and dispensaries must be monitored, and the state must look at ways of regulating the industry.
Others, including a 54-year-old Helena woman named Holly, who suffers from a rare allergy to paraben (a chemical used in preservatives), blame a few high-profile pot users for exploiting the law and making it hard on those who have a legitimate claim to medical marijuana.
Holly, who’s a legal card holder, asked that her last name not be used due to a medical agreement she signed with her doctor. She got her card from Dr. Chris Christensen in Victor, who has certified at least 3,000 patients for medical marijuana.
While Holly, a cardholder, and Lewis, a politician, have little in common politically, they both mention the likes of Jason Crist by name, blaming the founder of the Montana Caregivers Network in Missoula for exploiting the law.
Crist, who has smoked publicly in front of the state Capitol, not to mention the Missoula Police Department, says his network’s clinics have heightened the profile of medical marijuana. Crist didn’t return calls this week, but he did tell Lee Newspapers of Montana that his sessions are not pot free-for-alls.
Others, however, see Crist’s move as an in-your-face publicity stunt that’s doing little for the cause.
“It’s embarrassing to the rest of us,” Holly said. “He’s going to influence just enough legislators who are of the conservative variety, and there it goes. He’s being a big ass about it, and that’s the kind of people we’ll be looking to weed out.”
Holly holds out her arms and shows her legs, which are covered with scars and open wounds. Pot, she says, has always helped her cope with the pain, and she admits to smoking it long before she was legally licensed to do so.
But now that she’s older and has grown ill, Holly says the drug makes her feel better. She says the law is still young and, because of it, she feels legitimate card holders must be allowed to police their own ranks and eliminate those who give marijuana a bad medical name.
“This is a young business,” she said. “Give us some time. Everything needs time to reach operating speed. I think it will self-police.”
As for Trego, she believes the growing flap surrounding medical pot is born from misinformation. She also worries about the current wave of bans and moratoriums that have cropped up in some Montana communities over the past two weeks.
Too few people understand the entire picture, she says, including the medical advantages of using the drug. That could leave a small number of those who use pot legally fighting to overturn the stigma that surrounds it.
“There’s always people who use it constantly, or smoke it constantly all day, but they’re not using medical marijuana, they’re smoking pot,” Trego said. “If the rest of us hide in the closets, it doesn’t show us as having a legitimate medical need.
“It’s a legitimate medical thing, and it has helped me so much, I want to get out there and tell other people it might help them, too.”
Source: Just what the doctor ordered
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States struggle to regulate budding industry
Montana is hardly alone among the states that have legalized medical marijuana and now are struggling over how to regulate a rapidly growing industry.
The most common point of regulatory efforts, officials say, is those who provide the drug to approved patients.
Moves are afoot in Oregon and Colorado to regulate marijuana “dispensaries,” which are largely unregulated in Montana.
“Since the Obama administration changed federal policy, there’s been a real drive in states with medical marijuana laws to actually regulate their industry at a state level, especially the providers of medical marijuana,” said Mike Meno, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C., a group advocating for lesser state penalties for the medical and nonmedical use of marijuana.
California blazed the medical-marijuana trail in 1996, and 13 more states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana, most of them through voter-passed initiatives that bypassed state legislatures.
A turning point in the industry occurred last October when the Obama administration directed federal prosecutors to back off from pursuing cases against medical marijuana patients in states that had legalized it.
In an April report, the National Conference of State Legislatures said some states without dispensary regulations are seeing a boom in these businesses, perhaps to get going before stricter regulations occur.
Montana’s law is silent on the issue of dispensaries or stores, said Tom Daubert of Helena, founder of Patients & Families United, a medical-marijuana patients’ support group.
“But I think under ordinary business law and circumstances of life, it makes sense for a caregiver with patients to have a location where the patient can come in for their medicine,” he said.
Stores cropping up now in Montana can supply it only to patients registered to obtain the drug from a caregiver, and aren’t open to anyone, Daubert noted.
A Montana legislative committee is starting to examine whether new regulations are needed here.
In Colorado, Gov. Bill Ritter is expected to sign two bills soon affecting doctors who recommend medical marijuana and tightening how the drug is regulated.
According to the Denver Post, the legislation would require all dispensaries to be licensed by the state and local governments, with fees to cover costs. The annual fees set by the state are expected to cost thousands of dollars per dispensary; some have predicted they may reach $15,000 annually.
Dispensary owners will be required to have been Colorado residents for two years, with some exceptions. People with past drug felonies couldn’t operate dispensaries.
Local governments or voters could forbid dispensaries in their respective communities, but not caregivers serving five or fewer patients.
Brian Vicente, executive director of Sensible Colorado, said his medical marijuana advocacy group likely will sue over some provisions, including the residency requirements.
“We tried to convince the bill sponsors to focus on what’s best for patients,” Vicente said. “I think we came out with a heavy law-enforcement focus, rather than a patient focus. Law enforcement, district attorneys and the governor, a former D.A., wanted to crack down and shut down a lot of these places, and I think they’ve probably accomplished it.”
Vicente said he wouldn’t be surprised if half of the existing 400 dispensaries end up closing because of high licensing fees. At least 30,000 Coloradoans have medical marijuana cards.
Colorado state Sen. Pat Steadman, D-Denver, said he voted for both bills, but had reservations about parts of the regulatory bill that he considered too “heavy-handed.” Yet he said he felt it was important for the Legislature to “rein in what many in Colorado saw as an out-of-control situation.”
“I also anticipate that many dispensaries will fail to survive in the emerging medical marijuana marketplace,” he added. It “will certainly hasten the demise of some dispensaries, but many would have failed on their own once the market stabilized.”
In Oregon, which already has approved medical marijuana, supporters of a new initiative to create state-licensed dispensaries have turned in 112,000 signatures or nearly 83,000 more than required to put their measure on the fall ballot, the Eugene Register-Guard reported recently.
The initiative would create a series of private, nonprofit, state-regulated dispensaries, which would sell marijuana raised by licensed growers to the state’s 36,000 medical marijuana cardholders. Both dispensaries and growers would face state regulation, background checks, inspections and audits, and be subject to health and zoning regulations, the newspaper said.
Oregon cardholders now have to grow their own pot supply, find a caregiver or grower to supply it for them, or buy it on the street, the Register-Guard said.
The proposal also is expected to raise $1 billion over a decade for Oregon’s health department by imposing 10 percent taxes on dispensaries and pot farmers and annual licensing fees, said John Sajo, executive director of Voter Power, a leading advocate of the initiative.
Under the initiative, any patient can go to any dispensary to buy medical marijuana, just like any patient can go to any pharmacy to fill a prescription, he said.
Then there is California, where voters in November will vote whether to legalize marijuana. Supporters submitted nearly 700,000 signatures, with about 523,000 deemed valid to qualify the measure for the ballot. A state study says the legalization might generate $1.3 billion in desperately needed state revenue for California.
As the Associated Press reported, “… full legalization could turn medical marijuana dispensaries into all-purpose pot stores, and the open sale of joints could become commonplace on mom-and-pop liquor store counters in liberal locales like Santa Cruz.”
Source: States struggle to regulate budding industry
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Towns react to marijuana biz with bans, moratoriums
Anaconda — Deer Lodge County Commissioner Robert Pierce was among the 62 percent of Montanans who voted to legalize marijuana for medical purposes six years ago.
“It was compassion,” Pierce said.
But then something showed up in his town that prompted Pierce to take another vote on the issue, this time directing his city and county to withdraw from most parts of the law: a giant marijuana leaf painted on the storefront of a would-be medical marijuana establishment set up right across the street from the Anaconda Dairy Queen.
“And that’s wrong, in my opinion,” Pierce said.
Pierce and his commission, who voted in late May on a six-month moratorium for all growing and selling of marijuana in the county, is hardly alone. As the medical marijuana industry has exploded in Montana, county governments, lawmakers, tribal councils and others have grappled to get their hands around the trend.
In Kalispell and Billings the concern is inflamed by violence and vandalism connected to medical marijuana. But in other parts of state, the concerns are more mundane, focusing on zoning, business licensure and electrical standards for grow houses.
The burgeoning industry has surprised even medical marijuana’s strongest supporters, including Tom Daubert, of Helena, the man behind the successful 2004 initiative that legalized medicinal pot. Daubert says he fully supports state efforts to more tightly regulate the industry. He said what’s happened to marijuana in recent months is nothing like what he envisioned.
Daubert is part of a co-op of growers in Helena. Their offices are discreet and unmarked, nothing like the gaily painted storefronts across the state that so irritate both law enforcement and the general public. Those kinds of displays, Daubert said, are “nails in the coffin of this law.”
Indeed, at least one lawmaker, Sen. Jim Shockley, R-Victor, has proposed nailing up the whole thing: repealing the law and starting completely over.
“I don’t think (voters) knew the pig they were buying in the poke,” he said in a recent interview.
Voters may also get another crack at the issue. A quickly formed group has organized to put repealing the law back on the ballot this fall, although organizers have only weeks to collect 25,000 necessary signatures to do so.
The numbers tell part of the story. If a Montanan has a doctor’s prescription for a traditional drug, he or she has just over 1,000 licensed pharmacists to choose from. But if you’ve got a doctor’s card for medical marijuana, there are about 2,800 licensed “caregivers,” and the regulations and educational requirements for caregivers are nothing compared with the degree and professional licensure requirements of a traditional pharmacist.
Shockley said it’s just that kind of wide-open nature to medical marijuana that needs changing. From growing to distributing, the state has very few regulations on the industry, and laying the groundwork for a functional medical marijuana program will require more than “just tweaking,” he said.
The Legislature will not meet for another six months, meaning any statewide change is not in the near future. Into that void, has stepped a long list of Montana cities and towns.
Take a look:
n After a medical marijuana storefront was firebombed, the Billings City Council voted 8-2 in favor of a six-month moratorium on granting business licenses to any new medical marijuana caregivers.
n Kalispell also instituted such a ban after a medical marijuana grower there was beaten to death.
n The tribal council of the Salish and Kootenai Confederated Tribes voted last month to opt out of the state medical marijuana law entirely, meaning tribal members and members of recognized tribes within the Flathead Reservation are forbidden from growing, selling or using medical marijuana.
n The city of Deer Lodge has banned new medical marijuana businesses, and
n Anaconda-Deer Lodge adopted a similar ban.
The buzz is so hot among local governments reacting to medical marijuana, the state legislative branch has written up a memo for local governments to refer to on how to regulate and zone for the industry.
Mark Sweeney, another Anaconda-Deer Lodge commissioner, was the only person who voted against that county’s ban. He said the county has real concerns about where growing operations take place, what sorts of electrical standards should be in place, where storefronts can be located and had particular concerns about growing operations in residential parts of the smelting town where old houses sit very close to one another.
“It a citizen’s initiative without a lot of direction,” he said.
Sweeney said the issue has been a real education for the commission, which mostly deals with paving roads and hallmarks of municipal regulation. Pot was not on their radar.
“It’s a can of worms,” Sweeney said.
Source: Towns react to marijuana biz with bans, moratoriums
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One man’s stash is another man’s treasure for Realtors, insurance providers, gardening suppliers
Shot in the arm for business
MISSOULA — People who live in pain aren’t the only Montanans benefiting from the state’s medical marijuana law.
In the past seven months, ever since the federal government said it would defer to state medical marijuana laws with regard to determining legal and illegal use of the drug, Montana’s cannabis industry has boomed.
Garden supply companies, real estate agents, insurance providers, irrigation experts, attorneys, web developers and security companies are among the many mainstream businesses that are getting a fiscal high from this fast-growing industry.
When the national recession brought a near standstill to the Missoula real estate market last year, Wayne Smith, a real estate agent with RE/MAX, was juggling several vacant properties.
As a result, Smith was more than willing to work with two men who wanted to turn one of his properties into a medical marijuana dispensary.
Smith looked into what it would take to renovate his Missoula Industrial Park property and meet the codes for such a business, and followed through with the necessary changes.
Although his potential clients bailed on the deal at the last minute, Smith wasn’t ready to give up on all of the time, work and money he had invested in the property, and placed an ad for the turnkey dispensary.
“Things just exploded from there,” Smith said. “I suddenly had 20 clients looking for space.”
Since last fall, Smith has helped fill 12 previously vacant rental locations — some 17,641 square feet of retail and office space in Missoula with medical marijuana businesses. The income produced from those rentals is $13,782 per month, or $165,385 per year, and more than $20,000 was spent with local contractors to improve the properties for his clients.
Smith, who explained he is neither a medical marijuana patient nor a caregiver, said he is OK with this emerging, albeit sometimes notorious, business sector.
“At this time, it’s such a small part of the much larger local economy — a drop in the bucket,” Smith said. “Still it’s better than another pinhole.
“The medical marijuana business has added to my income as a Realtor in a slow housing market and created a few weeks of work for local contractors,” he said. “But the bigger picture is that most of these caregivers are trying to do things right. They are getting city business licenses, hiring bookkeepers and each growing facility has two to five employees on the payroll.”
Aaron Evans, a Missoula web designer, has seen his already-thriving international business grow by 20 percent this past year because of contracts related to medical marijuana.
“I’m pretty busy. I have about 40 medical marijuana websites I’m working on right now, and I’ve definitely seen an uptick in business,” Evans said. “I build websites all over the world and wasn’t really attached to the local economy until this hit.”
Evans is so busy these days, he’s hired several part-time employees to help with marketing, web development and other in-house projects, and he will likely hire more in coming months as Montana’s medical marijuana sector continues to expand and businesses keep hiring his firm, Website Clarity.
“There is definitely a lot of opportunity popping up with this new industry,” Evans said. “I think it’s great, especially during a down economy and in a town like Missoula that’s been hurting with big closures like Smurfit-Stone (Container Corp.) and Macy’s.
“This is one of the bright spots.”
In Billings, Don Crawford said he’s happy to get a piece of the state’s new, thriving industry by insuring dispensaries and marijuana crop growers.
“It is just like any other business. I got involved with it when I saw an opportunity,” Crawford said. “I see this is as an emerging market and I feel it’s not going away any time soon.
“If anything, it will be become bigger as it becomes more acceptable, and I saw an opportunity to be in on the ground floor.”
To date, medical marijuana insurance represents just 2 percent of Crawford’s business, but he expects that number to climb once the 2011 Montana Legislature tackles the many vague regulations surrounding the state’s medical marijuana law.
“What I find amazing — and rare — about people in this industry is that they are begging for more regulation,” Crawford said. “They want clear laws in place and the Legislature to act and local municipalities to give them direction because the law right now is so vague and they are at a crossroads about what they want to do with their business. But they won’t make a move or expand until they know how things will shake out.”
Up in Kalispell, James Blair is taking a chance that medical marijuana services are here to stay — and will expand.
Blair, who was laid off from his job with a Flathead Valley wholesale distributor and is struggling to support his family of five, is opening a custom drip irrigation business to assist marijuana growers.
“I saw a demand and it’s putting me and my partner to work,” Blair said. “It gives me an opportunity to own my own business, work for myself and support my family without government assistance.”
Big Sky entrepreneur Chris Mountjoy shares Blair’s sentiment.
Despite a saturated market in Bozeman, Mountjoy saw an opportunity in Missoula to open a garden supply store called Green Miszoo last fall, which offers a specific inventory targeted at growing plants indoors.
Grow lights, plant food, soil and the like can be found in the small shop in the heart of Missoula.
His goal isn’t to have a dynasty in the growing business. Rather, he sees it as a relatively safe way to cut his teeth as an entrepreneur and gain the confidence to open other kinds of businesses.
“I’ve got bigger plans,” Mountjoy said, “like opening a snowboard company and building a skateboard fun center. I opened Green Miszoo because I thought it was the right time to get involved with that market and hopefully it will produce a business that will make me feel confident to make moves toward my other goals.”
Because he lives and works in Big Sky, Mountjoy hired Luke Rieker to be his store manager in Missoula.
Rieker knows about business. He co-owns the city’s specialty kayak shop, Strongwater.
“This place is busy every day,” Rieker said. “I can’t say for sure if our customers are growing marijuana, because we don’t ask them.
“But we do get a lot of questions about how to grow marijuana,” he said. “I tell them, ‘Don’t you have a computer? All the information you need is there. We are a garden supply store, not marijuana tutors.’ ”
Source: Shot in the arm for business
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Butte tobacco shop diversifies with marijuana
BUTTE — Alone on the choppy and uncharted waters of Montana’s medical marijuana laws, Butte entrepreneur Glenn Erickson attempts to stay afloat while making the industry into legitimate commerce.
Thus far Erickson, 55, admitted it has been an adventure.
“From a business standpoint, there are a lot of unknowns,” he said. “Let’s be honest, there is a lot that still needs to be cleared up.”
Erickson has had success doing business in Butte. In 12 years he grew Gilligan’s Tobacco Shop, at 916 E. Front St., into one of the state’s largest single-location retailers of cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and liquor.
Last month, in the second floor of his store, in a room that had been previously as a restaurant and bar, Erickson opened MarMed of Montana. Before doing so, he met with Butte-Silver Bow law enforcement and the county attorney’s office. He said he wanted to make sure he was doing nothing illegal and was operating within the confines of the law.
MarMed Butte is a place where those with medical marijuana cards can pick up their medicine, seek advice and smoke. Any customer with a valid card, and with MarMed as their designated caregiver, can order anything from a single-use joint to a month’s supply of the drug. A doctor will be on-site every two weeks to speak with patients and possibly prescribe medical marijuana.
The space resembles an Amsterdam coffee shop, replete with dozens of varietals of marijuana kept in jars behind the bar. It is clean and quiet and the mood is relaxed. On a warm afternoon earlier this month, more than a dozen people gathered inside MarMed, talking and joking. Some stepped outside onto a deck to smoke. It is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. seven days a week.
“We wanted to provide a safe, secure atmosphere,” Erickson said. He said the same tenets that make his tobacco business successful — product availability, product freshness and low prices — are what can make him successful in the world of medical marijuana.
“When it comes down to it, it’s a business like any other,” Erickson said.
But even he admits there are issues with medical marijuana that he would not face if he were selling something more traditional, like televisions or tea kettles.
“I’m having a hard time buying insurance,” Erickson said. “No one wants to insure this, which leaves me in a difficult position.”
Erickson said security is paramount in his business plan. He wants to make sure his plants, of which he has more than 600 scattered across the state, are safely hidden. In the store, he wants his employees and patients to feel secure and he wants to protect the privacy of his customers.
Erickson hired Mark Gibbons to be the manager of the dispensary. Gibbons, 44, has a background in landscaping and previously worked as an emergency medical technician. He has grown and supplied medical marijuana as a licensed caregiver for more than a year.
“We want to be responsible, legitimate,” Gibbons said.
He talks to his patients regularly, and makes suggestions on certain varieties that can help with certain ailments. He said that in his experience, individuals react differently to different strains of marijuana and users should try a number of them to determine what works best for their symptoms.
“My ultimate goal is to have the best strains of marijuana from all over the world,” Gibbons said.
As for Erickson, his goal is just as ambitious. He would like MarMed to have a statewide presence, with franchises open in Montana cities both large and small.
“I don’t see why not, to have a well-known, well-respected chain of places people can come in and know what to expect,” he said.
But he sees the problems in the 2004 law, and is expecting changes when the Legislature meets next year. Though the initiative was passed by a 62 percent majority six years ago, it can be called vague at best and Erickson wonders how it even got on the ballot without basic problems being addressed.
He said there are opportunities to improve the system. He said marijuana caregivers should only be able to operate in commercially zoned establishments, no different than a pharmacy. He said he would recommend more regulation of dispensaries and doing away with the “patient-caregiver” system, which he called “silly.”
“I think if you have your card, you should be able to buy from any licensed provider,” he said. “That’s just good open market business.”
Though he has moved conservatively forward with his business plan, he thinks medical marijuana is here to stay in Montana. And he thinks that is a good thing.
“I’ve seen a cloud of darkness shift away from people that were stuck underground,” Erickson said. “These people had social issues, physical issues, but the stigma of being a marijuana user is going away.”
Source: Butte tobacco shop diversifies with marijuana
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Highway patrol teaching officers to determine if drivers are under influence of prescription drugs
BUTTE — As more and more people obtain medical marijuana cards, Montana law enforcement is focusing its training on detecting drugged drivers.
While police are trained to detect if a motorist is drunk, the Montana Highway Patrol is also teaching its officers how to determine whether a driver is under the influence of prescription drugs or marijuana.
Kurt Sager, a drug recognition expert for the Montana Highway Patrol, said some motorists are putting the public in danger by driving after ingesting prescription drugs or medical marijuana. He said it is illegal to driving under the influence of any drug, whether the drug is legal or not.
“People think if it’s a prescription or recommended by a doctor, that it can’t be bad (to drive on),” Sager said.
Marijuana and some prescription drugs can impair a person’s ability to drive and can lead to crashes. Sager said that marijuana-related crashes have increased over the past three years in Montana.
In 2007, 32 traffic fatalities involved cannabis, according to Sager. Fatal accidents involving marijuana increased by one to 33 in 2008, and last year, the patrol tallied 39 marijuana-related fatalities, according to patrol statistics.
The Montana Crime Lab in Missoula received 1,480 blood samples in 2009 for DUI-related investigations, Sager reported. Of those samples, 231 tested positive for marijuana, which is about 15 percent of the samples.
“We have to let people know that it’s not socially acceptable to driving under the influence of any drug or alcohol,” Sager said.
Officers determine if a person is drunk by using the Standardized Field Sobriety Test, which involves having a motorist perform three exercises.
Now, officers also are being trained to detect drug impairment through a test called Advanced Roadside Impaired Driving Enforcement, or ARIDE. Under ARIDE, two additional exercises are designed to detect possible narcotics impairment.
The field sobriety test for alcohol impairment requires the driver to walk a straight line and turn and to balance on one leg, along with the horizontal gaze nystagmus, which detects jerky movements of the eye.
The ARIDE tests adds an exercise that has motorists stand with their feet together, arms at their sides, and lean their head back with their eyes closed. Sager said if the officer observes swaying, that could be a sign of drug influence.
A second exercise has the subject follow the officer’s finger in an attempt to make the subject go cross-eyed. Sager explained that some drug effects make it impossible to go cross-eyed.
Butte-Silver Bow Chief Deputy Assistant County Attorney Samm Cox said the more training police have in drug detection, the better chance he will have getting DUI convictions.
“We get convictions by the better collection of evidence from a trained officer,” Cox said.
And while alcohol-related DUI charges often come with blood-alcohol test results, Cox said he is just as likely to get convictions of those suspected of driving under the influence of drugs or marijuana.
Capt. Gary Becker of the patrol’s Butte District said officers probably encountered motorists who were under the influence of some type of drug, but didn’t have the proper training to recognize it.
The updated training is helping that.
“The better we are at detecting impairment, the safer everyone on the road is,” Becker said.
Source: Highway patrol teaching officers to determine if drivers are under influence of prescription drugs
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Parolees with cards pose dilemma for system
More than 9 percent of Montanans on probation and parole, including those who were previously arrested for drug offenses, carry registered medical marijuana cards, according to statistics released last week by the Department of Corrections to Lee Newspapers of Montana.
According to Corrections, 786 of the 8,710 probationers and parolees here have medical marijuana cards. Of the 967,440 residents in the Treasure State, 12,081 — or roughly 1.25 percent of the total population — had obtained a marijuana card as of March 31, according to the state Department of Public Health and Human Services. That figure rose to nearly 15,000 in April and May.
“It’s a ridiculously large amount,” said Andrew W. Paul, deputy Missoula County attorney, who specializes in drug offenses.
By law, medical marijuana is available to people who suffer a “debilitating medical condition.” Nearly 7,000 people with medical marijuana cards suffer from severe or chronic pain, and another 3,000 list their ailments as severe or chronic pain/muscle spasms. According to the latest records, 355 card holders in the state have cancer, HIV or glaucoma.
However, justice officials are concerned that many people are skirting the law by falsely reporting they suffer from chronic pain in order to receive a prescription. They worry that the public’s image of an elderly glaucoma or cancer patient as the primary receivers of medical marijuana prescriptions is far off mark.
“I’m all for the cancer patient who is wasting away who needs it. That was how this initiative was sold,” Paul said. “To call it medicine for 80 percent of the people with cards is just a farce.”
Paul isn’t alone in his field. County attorneys across Montana are seeing similar trends in the distribution of medical marijuana.
“My main concern is the abuse we’re seeing,” said Mike Menahan, a state legislator and deputy county attorney in Lewis and Clark County. “There are people it’s beneficial for, but the people we see the most are scamming the system for their own benefit. I’m afraid it will ruin it for the people who are legitimate.”
The legalization of medical marijuana also changes how law enforcement officials look at probable cause in order to obtain a search warrant for illegal growing operations or drug dealers. Paul said if police officers receive information on an indoor grow operation, they must first check to see if the person is a caregiver and how many cardholders the person is supplying. Each grower, or “caregiver,” can have up to six plants for each patient they supply.
Paul said in his experience, many caregivers are going over their limit with anywhere from a dozen to 100 more plants than they can legally have.
“Every single search warrant, they’ve had more than their limit,” he said.
Growers who possess more than the legal limit are charged with manufacture or distribution of dangerous drugs. A person with a felony drug offense on their record can’t be a caregiver, but can have a prescription card.
Paul said one of the answers to these issues is complete transparency. Lists of caregivers and their patients should be available to law enforcement officials 24 hours a day. Officers can call DPHHS during business hours to check, but after hours, there is currently no way to check. This would also help those with legitimate prescriptions to ensure they aren’t unjustly thrown in jail if they are found with marijuana and aren’t carrying their card, he said.
Menahan agrees that there is a lot of gray area when it comes to the green.
“Montana’s wheat crops face more scrutiny,” he said.
In probation and parole’s Region 2 — the largest of six regions, which includes Lewis and Clark, Broadwater, Powell, Granite, Deer Lodge, Silver Bow, Beaverhead, Madison, Jefferson, Gallatin, Meagher, Park and Sweet Grass counties — 172 people under parole supervision have medical marijuana cards.
“It’s a big concern for us,” Region 2 Administrator Monty LeTexier said.
One of the largest issues for probation officers is that there is no distinguishable line for abuse of marijuana like there is with prescription painkillers such as oxycodone.
“How can we tell if they are using at a therapeutic level and who is abusing it? That makes it very hard for us at a supervisory level,” said Annette Carter, state probation and parole officer.
Another problem is court-ordered treatment for people with medical marijuana prescriptions, LeTexier said. Many treatment programs won’t work with people under the influence of any mind-altering medication. The probationer must then seek a licensed addiction counselor who will work with people currently using medical marijuana.
Boyd Andrew Community Services, which provides services across the state and is the primary provider of chemical dependency outpatient services to residents in Lewis and Clark, Broadwater and Jefferson counties, will not provide services for people under the influence of medicinal marijuana.
Mike Rupert, chief executive officer for Boyd Andrew, said its programs discourage the use of any mind-altering medications, but medicinal marijuana is the one substance with which it has a zero tolerance policy.
“People are just realizing how it’s being abused,” Rupert said. “The vast majority of these people are scamming the system. It’s a joke. It’s got to be 90-something percent are scamming.”
Although Montana voters passed the medical marijuana initiative in November 2004, not many cards were issued for the first couple of years. In the year after it passed, 176 people were issued cards, according to a study prepared for the Children, Families, Health, and Human Services Interim Committee in April.
In June 2008, the number of cardholders reached 1,000.
By December 2009, the number had jumped to 7,339.
DPHHS has issued nearly 5,000 more cards in the first three months of this year, according to the study — with almost 15,000 now. About 2,800 people are registered to provide marijuana on behalf of one or more patients.
Mineral County has the highest population of cardholders with nearly 3 percent of the total population. Probation and parole officers reported that in Mineral, Ravalli and Missoula counties, 213 people currently under supervision have medical marijuana cards.
The actual number of probationers and parolees who have cards may be higher given that some report every six months and may have obtained a card in the meantime, and sometimes it is only revealed that an offender has a card after failing a urinalysis.
The Department of Corrections in 2008 proposed banning anyone on probation from using medical marijuana. That was abandoned when it was realized the state’s medical marijuana law does not allow for any penalty for using medical marijuana, regardless of a person’s criminal history.
“The problem is we’re really on the cusp of this issue,” said Bob Anez, spokesperson for Corrections. “It has incubated in the background for quite some time.”
Source: Parolees with cards pose dilemma for system
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Movement leader says flaws of law can be easily fixed
MISSOULA — Years ago, as Tom Daubert envisioned a medical marijuana initiative for Montana, one thing never crossed his mind.
“I guess as I thought about the language from laws in other states, I always saw medical use of marijuana as something that would happen in private,” said Daubert, one of the leaders of the movement that led to passage of the state’s medical-marijuana initiative in 2004. “I didn’t really see that we’d be having a discussion about the public use of something being used as medication.”
And yet, where medical marijuana can be used is just one of many questions surrounding a law that many think is far too vague.
The law itself does set some guidelines, but they don’t go quite as far as the Helena-based Daubert saw them going.
“I felt like the law set it out pretty well, but I see now that it’s perhaps not as specific as it could be,” he said. “This is something we need to fix. I don’t think we expect to see diabetics standing on the sidewalk taking insulin shots and I don’t think we should see medical cannabis users standing on the sidewalk smoking.”
The law certainly pre-empts medical marijuana use in some public areas:
-- In a school bus or on school grounds.
-- In a correctional facility.
-- At any public park, public beach, public recreation center or youth center.
Some of those terms — public recreation center, for instance — are so vague that no one really knows what’s intended by the language.
Public park is a little clearer, though establishing boundaries for such places creates complexities. Where, for instance, does Missoula’s Caras Park begin and end? Are the banks of the Clark Fork River or the shores of Flathead Lake “public” beaches?
“There are enough holes in the law to make it difficult to interpret in some areas,” said Missoula Police Chief Mark Muir. “But there are parts that are plenty clear, and what that means to us, for the most part, is that if you can smoke tobacco there, you can smoke medical marijuana.”
That means you can smoke in your car, although you can’t be impaired if you’re driving, Muir said.
State law clearly regulates indoor smoking and the Indoor Clean Air Act prohibits tobacco smoking inside most buildings. That law covers medical marijuana, as well.
“The fact that it’s being used as medicine doesn’t create an exception from the clean air act,” said Linda Lee, supervisor of the Montana Tobacco Use Prevention Program. “The act talks about combustible product and that includes marijuana. It creates smoke and that creates at least some level of toxicity.”
Despite that apparent clarity, the Missoula City-County Health Department has fielded questions about the possibility of setting up an indoor smoking “clinic.”
“We had someone ask us about the viability of a medical marijuana clinic, where people would be able to smoke indoors,” said the department’s Greg Oliver. “This person had already hired an attorney to look into it. We told them no, it’s not possible under the indoor smoking law.”
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But let’s say you were a medical marijuana patient who also had an interest in Missoula’s recent effort to pass an anti-discrimination ordinance. Could you testify at City Hall, then step outside and smoke medical marijuana on the sidewalk next to the police station, then go back to the meeting?
“Absolutely,” said Chief Muir. “There are businesses that have rules about smoking within some number of feet of an entrance, but on the public sidewalk, you can smoke. I don’t have to like it, but that’s the way it is.”
But could you walk across town, head for the University of Montana Oval and relieve your pain by smoking a bowl by the Griz statue?
“Absolutely not,” said UM attorney David Aronofsky. “There is no room whatsoever for discretion on our part, because we are an institution that receives federal funding.”
The university receives federal dollars for a host of reasons, and that means UM must certify to the government that it is both a drug-free school and drug-free workplace. And that goes for all schools in the Montana University System.
“That pretty well eliminates anything other than strict compliance,” said Aronofsky.
The restriction applies to dorm rooms, which are considered private residences for purposes of search-and-seizure laws but not for drug laws.
“Basically, it’s off-limits on any university-owned-and-operated premises,” Aronofsky said. “We are doing what we can to help faculty and students find accomodations off campus if this is something that would help them, but anything on campus is not acceptable due to federal law.”
The federal designation also puts the kibosh on smoking medical marijuana on the state’s millions of acres of U.S. government land.
Despite the Obama administration’s directive that it’s not really interested in prosecuting users of small amounts of personal marijuana, it remains against the law to smoke the weed on federal land, even if it’s for medical reasons.
And that means that it’s still illegal to fire up a bowl on the Snowbowl ski lift, a restriction that’s never done much to prevent the practice.
All of which prompted a little lightheartedness from Muir.
“I don’t think there are enough restrictions in the law, but I think if your place has ‘bowl’ in the name, people ought to be able to smoke one,” the chief said.
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Rather than treating medical marijuana like tobacco, Muir and Daubert would prefer the open-container model that applies to alcohol.
“That essentially confines it to private homes because of the indoor smoking act,” said Muir. “Then we don’t have people walking up and down the sidewalks smoking joints. I understand the medical aspect of using it, but what people are really talking about in terms of public use is flaunting it.”
Agreed, said Daubert.
“What’s happening is that the medical aspect of this is starting to take a back seat to the activists who are pushing to legalize marijuana,” said Daubert.
Daubert is sympathetic to the move toward legalization, but his primary interest lies in bringing pain relief to those who suffer. If the campaign to legalize marijuana threatens its use by those who need it medically, Daubert won’t be happy.
“I feel like what’s happening is that the activists are hijacking the discussion essentially,” he said. “I think they’re misleading the public and they are inviting public misunderstanding and jeopardizing the patient rights of Montanans.”
In the interest of clearing up problems caused by loose language in the law, Daubert has been meeting with an interim health committee at the Montana Legislature.
“I do think ... the law can be fixed, and it needs a comprehensive effort based on consensus,” Daubert said. “The public-use aspect is just a perfect example of something that needs to be repaired and can easily be repaired. We’ve got to get the discussion back on track and back on what it was supposed to be about in the first place.”
Source: Movement leader says flaws of law can be easily fixed
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Cardholders OK in Canada, but pot cannot pass border
Having a medical-marijuana card cannot affect a Montanan’s ability to visit Canada; however, all drugs found at the border crossing will be confiscated.
Lisa White, spokeswoman for the Canada Border Control Services Agency, said that despite rumors to the contrary, a traveler’s enrollment in Montana’s medical-marijuana program is not a reason for them to be refused entry into our northern neighbor.
“In and of itself, it is not a valid reason to deny entrance,” she said.
Health Canada, the federal department that runs the country’s health care system, has a medical-marijuana program, and the drug is allowed for those suffering from “grave and debilitating illnesses” like cancer, HIV and multiple sclerosis.
However, according to White, Health Canada does not recognize the medical-marijuana programs of any other country. Therefore, a person could not bring a personal amount of the drug across the border, despite the fact that it was medically prescribed.
White said any marijuana found at a border crossing would have to be “abandoned to the crown.”
She said that officers would not turn the car back, because that would violate the country’s drug laws.
“They have to confiscate it,” she said.
Source: Cardholders OK in Canada, but pot cannot pass border
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How to get a Montana medical-marijuana card
1. A person must get a written recommendation from a doctor that he or she qualifies for using medical marijuana. The doctor uses a state-issued form to write the recommendation. It is not a prescription.
2. The applicant submits the doctor’s recommendation along with a one-page application form, the name of his or her caregiver (if any) and a $25 fee to the state Department of Public Health and Human Services. Patients under 18 must have a parent or guardian sign their application form and act as their caregiver.
3. The DPHHS processes the application and enters the patient into the state registry of medical-marijuana license holders. The registry is not available for public review. If the patient has a caregiver, that person undergoes a background check and cannot be a convicted drug felon.
4. The DPHHS mails a medical-marijuana card to the patient, who can then begin using the drug. The patient (or his caregiver) is allowed to possess no more than six marijuana plants and one ounce of usable marijuana. The card must be renewed annually for a $10 fee.
Source: How to get a Montana medical-marijuana card
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Just what the doctor ordered
She began with hydrocodone for the pain, Cymbalta and Trazodone for the depression, and Flexeril to ease the muscle spasms. The drugs helped sooth the nagging discomfort in her back. On good days, they dulled the pain in her legs.
But while Barb Trego got by, she wasn’t happy. The physical toll of her condition, which includes two missing discs in her back, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, left her life in disarray, and for that, the drugs were of little use.
“They were just giving me the pain pills and muscle relaxers 60 at a time,” said Trego, who now lives in Helena. “It just makes you not care about anything. My house fell into disarray. I let all my houseplants die. I was on so many narcotics, my life was going on, but I wasn’t participating in it.”
Trego, a former reserve sheriff’s deputy and employee with the Department of Corrections, hadn’t worked since 1995. Although she was not yet 55 years old, it seemed her life was coming to an end before it really got going.
But two months after getting a medical marijuana card, Trego now manages the semblance of a smile. The drug was recommended by a friend and has, Trego says, made a big difference in her life.
“I’m working a part-time job,” she said. “I’m able to help my friends instead of them all coming to help me. I sleep better at night. I’m getting my house clean. I’m enjoying things again I thought were lost forever.”
Trego is one of nearly 15,000 Montana citizens with a medical marijuana card. Some 62 percent of Montana voters approved the use of marijuana for medical use back in 2004, giving the likes of Trego an option in their choice of drug.
But some lawmakers are taking a hard look at the state’s medical marijuana law, saying the current system of controlling prescription pot is broken and needs fixing. Not all 15,000 Montana cardholders are legitimate patients, they say, and it’s those who abuse the system that they’re looking to weed out with tougher regulations.
Among those with an eye on fixing what they see as a broken law are Republican state Sens. Dave Lewis of Helena and Jim Shockley of Victor.
Two weeks ago, Lewis announced a plan to license a single statewide marijuana grower and dispense the drug through licensed pharmacies. The result would create a system not unlike Montana’s liquor distribution laws, Lewis said, with the state controlling the supply.
“I don’t want to take it away from those who really need it,” Lewis said. “I want to make sure it’s still available to people with a true medical need. But it’s become widely available, and I absolutely believe that not everyone with a card has a legitimate need.”
After Lewis’ proposal hit the papers, his phone began ringing and his inbox filled with e-mails. In three short days, he said, he received more than 300 messages from both sides of the issue and more calls than he could answer.
“I heard immediately from the industry, the growers and the retailers,” he said. “Then I started hearing from the general public. A lot of people aren’t happy. They supported it before, but now they feel like they’ve been taken advantage of.”
Shockley has requested a bill to be drafted for the 2011 Legislature to repeal the marijuana law.
Shockley said he believes marijuana has medical benefits and should remain legal, although in a much more controlled way. But creating an appropriately controlled medical-marijuana system was too complicated for the initiative process, he said.
Even those who led the drive to legalize medical marijuana, including Tom Daubert of Helena, said the current law has flaws that need to be addressed. Daubert, who doesn’t necessarily agree with the remedies presented by Lewis, said last week that growers and dispensaries must be monitored, and the state must look at ways of regulating the industry.
Others, including a 54-year-old Helena woman named Holly, who suffers from a rare allergy to paraben (a chemical used in preservatives), blame a few high-profile pot users for exploiting the law and making it hard on those who have a legitimate claim to medical marijuana.
Holly, who’s a legal card holder, asked that her last name not be used due to a medical agreement she signed with her doctor. She got her card from Dr. Chris Christensen in Victor, who has certified at least 3,000 patients for medical marijuana.
While Holly, a cardholder, and Lewis, a politician, have little in common politically, they both mention the likes of Jason Crist by name, blaming the founder of the Montana Caregivers Network in Missoula for exploiting the law.
Crist, who has smoked publicly in front of the state Capitol, not to mention the Missoula Police Department, says his network’s clinics have heightened the profile of medical marijuana. Crist didn’t return calls this week, but he did tell Lee Newspapers of Montana that his sessions are not pot free-for-alls.
Others, however, see Crist’s move as an in-your-face publicity stunt that’s doing little for the cause.
“It’s embarrassing to the rest of us,” Holly said. “He’s going to influence just enough legislators who are of the conservative variety, and there it goes. He’s being a big ass about it, and that’s the kind of people we’ll be looking to weed out.”
Holly holds out her arms and shows her legs, which are covered with scars and open wounds. Pot, she says, has always helped her cope with the pain, and she admits to smoking it long before she was legally licensed to do so.
But now that she’s older and has grown ill, Holly says the drug makes her feel better. She says the law is still young and, because of it, she feels legitimate card holders must be allowed to police their own ranks and eliminate those who give marijuana a bad medical name.
“This is a young business,” she said. “Give us some time. Everything needs time to reach operating speed. I think it will self-police.”
As for Trego, she believes the growing flap surrounding medical pot is born from misinformation. She also worries about the current wave of bans and moratoriums that have cropped up in some Montana communities over the past two weeks.
Too few people understand the entire picture, she says, including the medical advantages of using the drug. That could leave a small number of those who use pot legally fighting to overturn the stigma that surrounds it.
“There’s always people who use it constantly, or smoke it constantly all day, but they’re not using medical marijuana, they’re smoking pot,” Trego said. “If the rest of us hide in the closets, it doesn’t show us as having a legitimate medical need.
“It’s a legitimate medical thing, and it has helped me so much, I want to get out there and tell other people it might help them, too.”
Source: Just what the doctor ordered
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States struggle to regulate budding industry
Montana is hardly alone among the states that have legalized medical marijuana and now are struggling over how to regulate a rapidly growing industry.
The most common point of regulatory efforts, officials say, is those who provide the drug to approved patients.
Moves are afoot in Oregon and Colorado to regulate marijuana “dispensaries,” which are largely unregulated in Montana.
“Since the Obama administration changed federal policy, there’s been a real drive in states with medical marijuana laws to actually regulate their industry at a state level, especially the providers of medical marijuana,” said Mike Meno, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C., a group advocating for lesser state penalties for the medical and nonmedical use of marijuana.
California blazed the medical-marijuana trail in 1996, and 13 more states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana, most of them through voter-passed initiatives that bypassed state legislatures.
A turning point in the industry occurred last October when the Obama administration directed federal prosecutors to back off from pursuing cases against medical marijuana patients in states that had legalized it.
In an April report, the National Conference of State Legislatures said some states without dispensary regulations are seeing a boom in these businesses, perhaps to get going before stricter regulations occur.
Montana’s law is silent on the issue of dispensaries or stores, said Tom Daubert of Helena, founder of Patients & Families United, a medical-marijuana patients’ support group.
“But I think under ordinary business law and circumstances of life, it makes sense for a caregiver with patients to have a location where the patient can come in for their medicine,” he said.
Stores cropping up now in Montana can supply it only to patients registered to obtain the drug from a caregiver, and aren’t open to anyone, Daubert noted.
A Montana legislative committee is starting to examine whether new regulations are needed here.
In Colorado, Gov. Bill Ritter is expected to sign two bills soon affecting doctors who recommend medical marijuana and tightening how the drug is regulated.
According to the Denver Post, the legislation would require all dispensaries to be licensed by the state and local governments, with fees to cover costs. The annual fees set by the state are expected to cost thousands of dollars per dispensary; some have predicted they may reach $15,000 annually.
Dispensary owners will be required to have been Colorado residents for two years, with some exceptions. People with past drug felonies couldn’t operate dispensaries.
Local governments or voters could forbid dispensaries in their respective communities, but not caregivers serving five or fewer patients.
Brian Vicente, executive director of Sensible Colorado, said his medical marijuana advocacy group likely will sue over some provisions, including the residency requirements.
“We tried to convince the bill sponsors to focus on what’s best for patients,” Vicente said. “I think we came out with a heavy law-enforcement focus, rather than a patient focus. Law enforcement, district attorneys and the governor, a former D.A., wanted to crack down and shut down a lot of these places, and I think they’ve probably accomplished it.”
Vicente said he wouldn’t be surprised if half of the existing 400 dispensaries end up closing because of high licensing fees. At least 30,000 Coloradoans have medical marijuana cards.
Colorado state Sen. Pat Steadman, D-Denver, said he voted for both bills, but had reservations about parts of the regulatory bill that he considered too “heavy-handed.” Yet he said he felt it was important for the Legislature to “rein in what many in Colorado saw as an out-of-control situation.”
“I also anticipate that many dispensaries will fail to survive in the emerging medical marijuana marketplace,” he added. It “will certainly hasten the demise of some dispensaries, but many would have failed on their own once the market stabilized.”
In Oregon, which already has approved medical marijuana, supporters of a new initiative to create state-licensed dispensaries have turned in 112,000 signatures or nearly 83,000 more than required to put their measure on the fall ballot, the Eugene Register-Guard reported recently.
The initiative would create a series of private, nonprofit, state-regulated dispensaries, which would sell marijuana raised by licensed growers to the state’s 36,000 medical marijuana cardholders. Both dispensaries and growers would face state regulation, background checks, inspections and audits, and be subject to health and zoning regulations, the newspaper said.
Oregon cardholders now have to grow their own pot supply, find a caregiver or grower to supply it for them, or buy it on the street, the Register-Guard said.
The proposal also is expected to raise $1 billion over a decade for Oregon’s health department by imposing 10 percent taxes on dispensaries and pot farmers and annual licensing fees, said John Sajo, executive director of Voter Power, a leading advocate of the initiative.
Under the initiative, any patient can go to any dispensary to buy medical marijuana, just like any patient can go to any pharmacy to fill a prescription, he said.
Then there is California, where voters in November will vote whether to legalize marijuana. Supporters submitted nearly 700,000 signatures, with about 523,000 deemed valid to qualify the measure for the ballot. A state study says the legalization might generate $1.3 billion in desperately needed state revenue for California.
As the Associated Press reported, “… full legalization could turn medical marijuana dispensaries into all-purpose pot stores, and the open sale of joints could become commonplace on mom-and-pop liquor store counters in liberal locales like Santa Cruz.”
Source: States struggle to regulate budding industry
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Towns react to marijuana biz with bans, moratoriums
Anaconda — Deer Lodge County Commissioner Robert Pierce was among the 62 percent of Montanans who voted to legalize marijuana for medical purposes six years ago.
“It was compassion,” Pierce said.
But then something showed up in his town that prompted Pierce to take another vote on the issue, this time directing his city and county to withdraw from most parts of the law: a giant marijuana leaf painted on the storefront of a would-be medical marijuana establishment set up right across the street from the Anaconda Dairy Queen.
“And that’s wrong, in my opinion,” Pierce said.
Pierce and his commission, who voted in late May on a six-month moratorium for all growing and selling of marijuana in the county, is hardly alone. As the medical marijuana industry has exploded in Montana, county governments, lawmakers, tribal councils and others have grappled to get their hands around the trend.
In Kalispell and Billings the concern is inflamed by violence and vandalism connected to medical marijuana. But in other parts of state, the concerns are more mundane, focusing on zoning, business licensure and electrical standards for grow houses.
The burgeoning industry has surprised even medical marijuana’s strongest supporters, including Tom Daubert, of Helena, the man behind the successful 2004 initiative that legalized medicinal pot. Daubert says he fully supports state efforts to more tightly regulate the industry. He said what’s happened to marijuana in recent months is nothing like what he envisioned.
Daubert is part of a co-op of growers in Helena. Their offices are discreet and unmarked, nothing like the gaily painted storefronts across the state that so irritate both law enforcement and the general public. Those kinds of displays, Daubert said, are “nails in the coffin of this law.”
Indeed, at least one lawmaker, Sen. Jim Shockley, R-Victor, has proposed nailing up the whole thing: repealing the law and starting completely over.
“I don’t think (voters) knew the pig they were buying in the poke,” he said in a recent interview.
Voters may also get another crack at the issue. A quickly formed group has organized to put repealing the law back on the ballot this fall, although organizers have only weeks to collect 25,000 necessary signatures to do so.
The numbers tell part of the story. If a Montanan has a doctor’s prescription for a traditional drug, he or she has just over 1,000 licensed pharmacists to choose from. But if you’ve got a doctor’s card for medical marijuana, there are about 2,800 licensed “caregivers,” and the regulations and educational requirements for caregivers are nothing compared with the degree and professional licensure requirements of a traditional pharmacist.
Shockley said it’s just that kind of wide-open nature to medical marijuana that needs changing. From growing to distributing, the state has very few regulations on the industry, and laying the groundwork for a functional medical marijuana program will require more than “just tweaking,” he said.
The Legislature will not meet for another six months, meaning any statewide change is not in the near future. Into that void, has stepped a long list of Montana cities and towns.
Take a look:
n After a medical marijuana storefront was firebombed, the Billings City Council voted 8-2 in favor of a six-month moratorium on granting business licenses to any new medical marijuana caregivers.
n Kalispell also instituted such a ban after a medical marijuana grower there was beaten to death.
n The tribal council of the Salish and Kootenai Confederated Tribes voted last month to opt out of the state medical marijuana law entirely, meaning tribal members and members of recognized tribes within the Flathead Reservation are forbidden from growing, selling or using medical marijuana.
n The city of Deer Lodge has banned new medical marijuana businesses, and
n Anaconda-Deer Lodge adopted a similar ban.
The buzz is so hot among local governments reacting to medical marijuana, the state legislative branch has written up a memo for local governments to refer to on how to regulate and zone for the industry.
Mark Sweeney, another Anaconda-Deer Lodge commissioner, was the only person who voted against that county’s ban. He said the county has real concerns about where growing operations take place, what sorts of electrical standards should be in place, where storefronts can be located and had particular concerns about growing operations in residential parts of the smelting town where old houses sit very close to one another.
“It a citizen’s initiative without a lot of direction,” he said.
Sweeney said the issue has been a real education for the commission, which mostly deals with paving roads and hallmarks of municipal regulation. Pot was not on their radar.
“It’s a can of worms,” Sweeney said.
Source: Towns react to marijuana biz with bans, moratoriums
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One man’s stash is another man’s treasure for Realtors, insurance providers, gardening suppliers
Shot in the arm for business
MISSOULA — People who live in pain aren’t the only Montanans benefiting from the state’s medical marijuana law.
In the past seven months, ever since the federal government said it would defer to state medical marijuana laws with regard to determining legal and illegal use of the drug, Montana’s cannabis industry has boomed.
Garden supply companies, real estate agents, insurance providers, irrigation experts, attorneys, web developers and security companies are among the many mainstream businesses that are getting a fiscal high from this fast-growing industry.
When the national recession brought a near standstill to the Missoula real estate market last year, Wayne Smith, a real estate agent with RE/MAX, was juggling several vacant properties.
As a result, Smith was more than willing to work with two men who wanted to turn one of his properties into a medical marijuana dispensary.
Smith looked into what it would take to renovate his Missoula Industrial Park property and meet the codes for such a business, and followed through with the necessary changes.
Although his potential clients bailed on the deal at the last minute, Smith wasn’t ready to give up on all of the time, work and money he had invested in the property, and placed an ad for the turnkey dispensary.
“Things just exploded from there,” Smith said. “I suddenly had 20 clients looking for space.”
Since last fall, Smith has helped fill 12 previously vacant rental locations — some 17,641 square feet of retail and office space in Missoula with medical marijuana businesses. The income produced from those rentals is $13,782 per month, or $165,385 per year, and more than $20,000 was spent with local contractors to improve the properties for his clients.
Smith, who explained he is neither a medical marijuana patient nor a caregiver, said he is OK with this emerging, albeit sometimes notorious, business sector.
“At this time, it’s such a small part of the much larger local economy — a drop in the bucket,” Smith said. “Still it’s better than another pinhole.
“The medical marijuana business has added to my income as a Realtor in a slow housing market and created a few weeks of work for local contractors,” he said. “But the bigger picture is that most of these caregivers are trying to do things right. They are getting city business licenses, hiring bookkeepers and each growing facility has two to five employees on the payroll.”
Aaron Evans, a Missoula web designer, has seen his already-thriving international business grow by 20 percent this past year because of contracts related to medical marijuana.
“I’m pretty busy. I have about 40 medical marijuana websites I’m working on right now, and I’ve definitely seen an uptick in business,” Evans said. “I build websites all over the world and wasn’t really attached to the local economy until this hit.”
Evans is so busy these days, he’s hired several part-time employees to help with marketing, web development and other in-house projects, and he will likely hire more in coming months as Montana’s medical marijuana sector continues to expand and businesses keep hiring his firm, Website Clarity.
“There is definitely a lot of opportunity popping up with this new industry,” Evans said. “I think it’s great, especially during a down economy and in a town like Missoula that’s been hurting with big closures like Smurfit-Stone (Container Corp.) and Macy’s.
“This is one of the bright spots.”
In Billings, Don Crawford said he’s happy to get a piece of the state’s new, thriving industry by insuring dispensaries and marijuana crop growers.
“It is just like any other business. I got involved with it when I saw an opportunity,” Crawford said. “I see this is as an emerging market and I feel it’s not going away any time soon.
“If anything, it will be become bigger as it becomes more acceptable, and I saw an opportunity to be in on the ground floor.”
To date, medical marijuana insurance represents just 2 percent of Crawford’s business, but he expects that number to climb once the 2011 Montana Legislature tackles the many vague regulations surrounding the state’s medical marijuana law.
“What I find amazing — and rare — about people in this industry is that they are begging for more regulation,” Crawford said. “They want clear laws in place and the Legislature to act and local municipalities to give them direction because the law right now is so vague and they are at a crossroads about what they want to do with their business. But they won’t make a move or expand until they know how things will shake out.”
Up in Kalispell, James Blair is taking a chance that medical marijuana services are here to stay — and will expand.
Blair, who was laid off from his job with a Flathead Valley wholesale distributor and is struggling to support his family of five, is opening a custom drip irrigation business to assist marijuana growers.
“I saw a demand and it’s putting me and my partner to work,” Blair said. “It gives me an opportunity to own my own business, work for myself and support my family without government assistance.”
Big Sky entrepreneur Chris Mountjoy shares Blair’s sentiment.
Despite a saturated market in Bozeman, Mountjoy saw an opportunity in Missoula to open a garden supply store called Green Miszoo last fall, which offers a specific inventory targeted at growing plants indoors.
Grow lights, plant food, soil and the like can be found in the small shop in the heart of Missoula.
His goal isn’t to have a dynasty in the growing business. Rather, he sees it as a relatively safe way to cut his teeth as an entrepreneur and gain the confidence to open other kinds of businesses.
“I’ve got bigger plans,” Mountjoy said, “like opening a snowboard company and building a skateboard fun center. I opened Green Miszoo because I thought it was the right time to get involved with that market and hopefully it will produce a business that will make me feel confident to make moves toward my other goals.”
Because he lives and works in Big Sky, Mountjoy hired Luke Rieker to be his store manager in Missoula.
Rieker knows about business. He co-owns the city’s specialty kayak shop, Strongwater.
“This place is busy every day,” Rieker said. “I can’t say for sure if our customers are growing marijuana, because we don’t ask them.
“But we do get a lot of questions about how to grow marijuana,” he said. “I tell them, ‘Don’t you have a computer? All the information you need is there. We are a garden supply store, not marijuana tutors.’ ”
Source: Shot in the arm for business
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Butte tobacco shop diversifies with marijuana
BUTTE — Alone on the choppy and uncharted waters of Montana’s medical marijuana laws, Butte entrepreneur Glenn Erickson attempts to stay afloat while making the industry into legitimate commerce.
Thus far Erickson, 55, admitted it has been an adventure.
“From a business standpoint, there are a lot of unknowns,” he said. “Let’s be honest, there is a lot that still needs to be cleared up.”
Erickson has had success doing business in Butte. In 12 years he grew Gilligan’s Tobacco Shop, at 916 E. Front St., into one of the state’s largest single-location retailers of cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and liquor.
Last month, in the second floor of his store, in a room that had been previously as a restaurant and bar, Erickson opened MarMed of Montana. Before doing so, he met with Butte-Silver Bow law enforcement and the county attorney’s office. He said he wanted to make sure he was doing nothing illegal and was operating within the confines of the law.
MarMed Butte is a place where those with medical marijuana cards can pick up their medicine, seek advice and smoke. Any customer with a valid card, and with MarMed as their designated caregiver, can order anything from a single-use joint to a month’s supply of the drug. A doctor will be on-site every two weeks to speak with patients and possibly prescribe medical marijuana.
The space resembles an Amsterdam coffee shop, replete with dozens of varietals of marijuana kept in jars behind the bar. It is clean and quiet and the mood is relaxed. On a warm afternoon earlier this month, more than a dozen people gathered inside MarMed, talking and joking. Some stepped outside onto a deck to smoke. It is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. seven days a week.
“We wanted to provide a safe, secure atmosphere,” Erickson said. He said the same tenets that make his tobacco business successful — product availability, product freshness and low prices — are what can make him successful in the world of medical marijuana.
“When it comes down to it, it’s a business like any other,” Erickson said.
But even he admits there are issues with medical marijuana that he would not face if he were selling something more traditional, like televisions or tea kettles.
“I’m having a hard time buying insurance,” Erickson said. “No one wants to insure this, which leaves me in a difficult position.”
Erickson said security is paramount in his business plan. He wants to make sure his plants, of which he has more than 600 scattered across the state, are safely hidden. In the store, he wants his employees and patients to feel secure and he wants to protect the privacy of his customers.
Erickson hired Mark Gibbons to be the manager of the dispensary. Gibbons, 44, has a background in landscaping and previously worked as an emergency medical technician. He has grown and supplied medical marijuana as a licensed caregiver for more than a year.
“We want to be responsible, legitimate,” Gibbons said.
He talks to his patients regularly, and makes suggestions on certain varieties that can help with certain ailments. He said that in his experience, individuals react differently to different strains of marijuana and users should try a number of them to determine what works best for their symptoms.
“My ultimate goal is to have the best strains of marijuana from all over the world,” Gibbons said.
As for Erickson, his goal is just as ambitious. He would like MarMed to have a statewide presence, with franchises open in Montana cities both large and small.
“I don’t see why not, to have a well-known, well-respected chain of places people can come in and know what to expect,” he said.
But he sees the problems in the 2004 law, and is expecting changes when the Legislature meets next year. Though the initiative was passed by a 62 percent majority six years ago, it can be called vague at best and Erickson wonders how it even got on the ballot without basic problems being addressed.
He said there are opportunities to improve the system. He said marijuana caregivers should only be able to operate in commercially zoned establishments, no different than a pharmacy. He said he would recommend more regulation of dispensaries and doing away with the “patient-caregiver” system, which he called “silly.”
“I think if you have your card, you should be able to buy from any licensed provider,” he said. “That’s just good open market business.”
Though he has moved conservatively forward with his business plan, he thinks medical marijuana is here to stay in Montana. And he thinks that is a good thing.
“I’ve seen a cloud of darkness shift away from people that were stuck underground,” Erickson said. “These people had social issues, physical issues, but the stigma of being a marijuana user is going away.”
Source: Butte tobacco shop diversifies with marijuana
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Highway patrol teaching officers to determine if drivers are under influence of prescription drugs
BUTTE — As more and more people obtain medical marijuana cards, Montana law enforcement is focusing its training on detecting drugged drivers.
While police are trained to detect if a motorist is drunk, the Montana Highway Patrol is also teaching its officers how to determine whether a driver is under the influence of prescription drugs or marijuana.
Kurt Sager, a drug recognition expert for the Montana Highway Patrol, said some motorists are putting the public in danger by driving after ingesting prescription drugs or medical marijuana. He said it is illegal to driving under the influence of any drug, whether the drug is legal or not.
“People think if it’s a prescription or recommended by a doctor, that it can’t be bad (to drive on),” Sager said.
Marijuana and some prescription drugs can impair a person’s ability to drive and can lead to crashes. Sager said that marijuana-related crashes have increased over the past three years in Montana.
In 2007, 32 traffic fatalities involved cannabis, according to Sager. Fatal accidents involving marijuana increased by one to 33 in 2008, and last year, the patrol tallied 39 marijuana-related fatalities, according to patrol statistics.
The Montana Crime Lab in Missoula received 1,480 blood samples in 2009 for DUI-related investigations, Sager reported. Of those samples, 231 tested positive for marijuana, which is about 15 percent of the samples.
“We have to let people know that it’s not socially acceptable to driving under the influence of any drug or alcohol,” Sager said.
Officers determine if a person is drunk by using the Standardized Field Sobriety Test, which involves having a motorist perform three exercises.
Now, officers also are being trained to detect drug impairment through a test called Advanced Roadside Impaired Driving Enforcement, or ARIDE. Under ARIDE, two additional exercises are designed to detect possible narcotics impairment.
The field sobriety test for alcohol impairment requires the driver to walk a straight line and turn and to balance on one leg, along with the horizontal gaze nystagmus, which detects jerky movements of the eye.
The ARIDE tests adds an exercise that has motorists stand with their feet together, arms at their sides, and lean their head back with their eyes closed. Sager said if the officer observes swaying, that could be a sign of drug influence.
A second exercise has the subject follow the officer’s finger in an attempt to make the subject go cross-eyed. Sager explained that some drug effects make it impossible to go cross-eyed.
Butte-Silver Bow Chief Deputy Assistant County Attorney Samm Cox said the more training police have in drug detection, the better chance he will have getting DUI convictions.
“We get convictions by the better collection of evidence from a trained officer,” Cox said.
And while alcohol-related DUI charges often come with blood-alcohol test results, Cox said he is just as likely to get convictions of those suspected of driving under the influence of drugs or marijuana.
Capt. Gary Becker of the patrol’s Butte District said officers probably encountered motorists who were under the influence of some type of drug, but didn’t have the proper training to recognize it.
The updated training is helping that.
“The better we are at detecting impairment, the safer everyone on the road is,” Becker said.
Source: Highway patrol teaching officers to determine if drivers are under influence of prescription drugs
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Parolees with cards pose dilemma for system
More than 9 percent of Montanans on probation and parole, including those who were previously arrested for drug offenses, carry registered medical marijuana cards, according to statistics released last week by the Department of Corrections to Lee Newspapers of Montana.
According to Corrections, 786 of the 8,710 probationers and parolees here have medical marijuana cards. Of the 967,440 residents in the Treasure State, 12,081 — or roughly 1.25 percent of the total population — had obtained a marijuana card as of March 31, according to the state Department of Public Health and Human Services. That figure rose to nearly 15,000 in April and May.
“It’s a ridiculously large amount,” said Andrew W. Paul, deputy Missoula County attorney, who specializes in drug offenses.
By law, medical marijuana is available to people who suffer a “debilitating medical condition.” Nearly 7,000 people with medical marijuana cards suffer from severe or chronic pain, and another 3,000 list their ailments as severe or chronic pain/muscle spasms. According to the latest records, 355 card holders in the state have cancer, HIV or glaucoma.
However, justice officials are concerned that many people are skirting the law by falsely reporting they suffer from chronic pain in order to receive a prescription. They worry that the public’s image of an elderly glaucoma or cancer patient as the primary receivers of medical marijuana prescriptions is far off mark.
“I’m all for the cancer patient who is wasting away who needs it. That was how this initiative was sold,” Paul said. “To call it medicine for 80 percent of the people with cards is just a farce.”
Paul isn’t alone in his field. County attorneys across Montana are seeing similar trends in the distribution of medical marijuana.
“My main concern is the abuse we’re seeing,” said Mike Menahan, a state legislator and deputy county attorney in Lewis and Clark County. “There are people it’s beneficial for, but the people we see the most are scamming the system for their own benefit. I’m afraid it will ruin it for the people who are legitimate.”
The legalization of medical marijuana also changes how law enforcement officials look at probable cause in order to obtain a search warrant for illegal growing operations or drug dealers. Paul said if police officers receive information on an indoor grow operation, they must first check to see if the person is a caregiver and how many cardholders the person is supplying. Each grower, or “caregiver,” can have up to six plants for each patient they supply.
Paul said in his experience, many caregivers are going over their limit with anywhere from a dozen to 100 more plants than they can legally have.
“Every single search warrant, they’ve had more than their limit,” he said.
Growers who possess more than the legal limit are charged with manufacture or distribution of dangerous drugs. A person with a felony drug offense on their record can’t be a caregiver, but can have a prescription card.
Paul said one of the answers to these issues is complete transparency. Lists of caregivers and their patients should be available to law enforcement officials 24 hours a day. Officers can call DPHHS during business hours to check, but after hours, there is currently no way to check. This would also help those with legitimate prescriptions to ensure they aren’t unjustly thrown in jail if they are found with marijuana and aren’t carrying their card, he said.
Menahan agrees that there is a lot of gray area when it comes to the green.
“Montana’s wheat crops face more scrutiny,” he said.
In probation and parole’s Region 2 — the largest of six regions, which includes Lewis and Clark, Broadwater, Powell, Granite, Deer Lodge, Silver Bow, Beaverhead, Madison, Jefferson, Gallatin, Meagher, Park and Sweet Grass counties — 172 people under parole supervision have medical marijuana cards.
“It’s a big concern for us,” Region 2 Administrator Monty LeTexier said.
One of the largest issues for probation officers is that there is no distinguishable line for abuse of marijuana like there is with prescription painkillers such as oxycodone.
“How can we tell if they are using at a therapeutic level and who is abusing it? That makes it very hard for us at a supervisory level,” said Annette Carter, state probation and parole officer.
Another problem is court-ordered treatment for people with medical marijuana prescriptions, LeTexier said. Many treatment programs won’t work with people under the influence of any mind-altering medication. The probationer must then seek a licensed addiction counselor who will work with people currently using medical marijuana.
Boyd Andrew Community Services, which provides services across the state and is the primary provider of chemical dependency outpatient services to residents in Lewis and Clark, Broadwater and Jefferson counties, will not provide services for people under the influence of medicinal marijuana.
Mike Rupert, chief executive officer for Boyd Andrew, said its programs discourage the use of any mind-altering medications, but medicinal marijuana is the one substance with which it has a zero tolerance policy.
“People are just realizing how it’s being abused,” Rupert said. “The vast majority of these people are scamming the system. It’s a joke. It’s got to be 90-something percent are scamming.”
Although Montana voters passed the medical marijuana initiative in November 2004, not many cards were issued for the first couple of years. In the year after it passed, 176 people were issued cards, according to a study prepared for the Children, Families, Health, and Human Services Interim Committee in April.
In June 2008, the number of cardholders reached 1,000.
By December 2009, the number had jumped to 7,339.
DPHHS has issued nearly 5,000 more cards in the first three months of this year, according to the study — with almost 15,000 now. About 2,800 people are registered to provide marijuana on behalf of one or more patients.
Mineral County has the highest population of cardholders with nearly 3 percent of the total population. Probation and parole officers reported that in Mineral, Ravalli and Missoula counties, 213 people currently under supervision have medical marijuana cards.
The actual number of probationers and parolees who have cards may be higher given that some report every six months and may have obtained a card in the meantime, and sometimes it is only revealed that an offender has a card after failing a urinalysis.
The Department of Corrections in 2008 proposed banning anyone on probation from using medical marijuana. That was abandoned when it was realized the state’s medical marijuana law does not allow for any penalty for using medical marijuana, regardless of a person’s criminal history.
“The problem is we’re really on the cusp of this issue,” said Bob Anez, spokesperson for Corrections. “It has incubated in the background for quite some time.”
Source: Parolees with cards pose dilemma for system
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Movement leader says flaws of law can be easily fixed
MISSOULA — Years ago, as Tom Daubert envisioned a medical marijuana initiative for Montana, one thing never crossed his mind.
“I guess as I thought about the language from laws in other states, I always saw medical use of marijuana as something that would happen in private,” said Daubert, one of the leaders of the movement that led to passage of the state’s medical-marijuana initiative in 2004. “I didn’t really see that we’d be having a discussion about the public use of something being used as medication.”
And yet, where medical marijuana can be used is just one of many questions surrounding a law that many think is far too vague.
The law itself does set some guidelines, but they don’t go quite as far as the Helena-based Daubert saw them going.
“I felt like the law set it out pretty well, but I see now that it’s perhaps not as specific as it could be,” he said. “This is something we need to fix. I don’t think we expect to see diabetics standing on the sidewalk taking insulin shots and I don’t think we should see medical cannabis users standing on the sidewalk smoking.”
The law certainly pre-empts medical marijuana use in some public areas:
-- In a school bus or on school grounds.
-- In a correctional facility.
-- At any public park, public beach, public recreation center or youth center.
Some of those terms — public recreation center, for instance — are so vague that no one really knows what’s intended by the language.
Public park is a little clearer, though establishing boundaries for such places creates complexities. Where, for instance, does Missoula’s Caras Park begin and end? Are the banks of the Clark Fork River or the shores of Flathead Lake “public” beaches?
“There are enough holes in the law to make it difficult to interpret in some areas,” said Missoula Police Chief Mark Muir. “But there are parts that are plenty clear, and what that means to us, for the most part, is that if you can smoke tobacco there, you can smoke medical marijuana.”
That means you can smoke in your car, although you can’t be impaired if you’re driving, Muir said.
State law clearly regulates indoor smoking and the Indoor Clean Air Act prohibits tobacco smoking inside most buildings. That law covers medical marijuana, as well.
“The fact that it’s being used as medicine doesn’t create an exception from the clean air act,” said Linda Lee, supervisor of the Montana Tobacco Use Prevention Program. “The act talks about combustible product and that includes marijuana. It creates smoke and that creates at least some level of toxicity.”
Despite that apparent clarity, the Missoula City-County Health Department has fielded questions about the possibility of setting up an indoor smoking “clinic.”
“We had someone ask us about the viability of a medical marijuana clinic, where people would be able to smoke indoors,” said the department’s Greg Oliver. “This person had already hired an attorney to look into it. We told them no, it’s not possible under the indoor smoking law.”
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But let’s say you were a medical marijuana patient who also had an interest in Missoula’s recent effort to pass an anti-discrimination ordinance. Could you testify at City Hall, then step outside and smoke medical marijuana on the sidewalk next to the police station, then go back to the meeting?
“Absolutely,” said Chief Muir. “There are businesses that have rules about smoking within some number of feet of an entrance, but on the public sidewalk, you can smoke. I don’t have to like it, but that’s the way it is.”
But could you walk across town, head for the University of Montana Oval and relieve your pain by smoking a bowl by the Griz statue?
“Absolutely not,” said UM attorney David Aronofsky. “There is no room whatsoever for discretion on our part, because we are an institution that receives federal funding.”
The university receives federal dollars for a host of reasons, and that means UM must certify to the government that it is both a drug-free school and drug-free workplace. And that goes for all schools in the Montana University System.
“That pretty well eliminates anything other than strict compliance,” said Aronofsky.
The restriction applies to dorm rooms, which are considered private residences for purposes of search-and-seizure laws but not for drug laws.
“Basically, it’s off-limits on any university-owned-and-operated premises,” Aronofsky said. “We are doing what we can to help faculty and students find accomodations off campus if this is something that would help them, but anything on campus is not acceptable due to federal law.”
The federal designation also puts the kibosh on smoking medical marijuana on the state’s millions of acres of U.S. government land.
Despite the Obama administration’s directive that it’s not really interested in prosecuting users of small amounts of personal marijuana, it remains against the law to smoke the weed on federal land, even if it’s for medical reasons.
And that means that it’s still illegal to fire up a bowl on the Snowbowl ski lift, a restriction that’s never done much to prevent the practice.
All of which prompted a little lightheartedness from Muir.
“I don’t think there are enough restrictions in the law, but I think if your place has ‘bowl’ in the name, people ought to be able to smoke one,” the chief said.
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Rather than treating medical marijuana like tobacco, Muir and Daubert would prefer the open-container model that applies to alcohol.
“That essentially confines it to private homes because of the indoor smoking act,” said Muir. “Then we don’t have people walking up and down the sidewalks smoking joints. I understand the medical aspect of using it, but what people are really talking about in terms of public use is flaunting it.”
Agreed, said Daubert.
“What’s happening is that the medical aspect of this is starting to take a back seat to the activists who are pushing to legalize marijuana,” said Daubert.
Daubert is sympathetic to the move toward legalization, but his primary interest lies in bringing pain relief to those who suffer. If the campaign to legalize marijuana threatens its use by those who need it medically, Daubert won’t be happy.
“I feel like what’s happening is that the activists are hijacking the discussion essentially,” he said. “I think they’re misleading the public and they are inviting public misunderstanding and jeopardizing the patient rights of Montanans.”
In the interest of clearing up problems caused by loose language in the law, Daubert has been meeting with an interim health committee at the Montana Legislature.
“I do think ... the law can be fixed, and it needs a comprehensive effort based on consensus,” Daubert said. “The public-use aspect is just a perfect example of something that needs to be repaired and can easily be repaired. We’ve got to get the discussion back on track and back on what it was supposed to be about in the first place.”
Source: Movement leader says flaws of law can be easily fixed
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Cardholders OK in Canada, but pot cannot pass border
Having a medical-marijuana card cannot affect a Montanan’s ability to visit Canada; however, all drugs found at the border crossing will be confiscated.
Lisa White, spokeswoman for the Canada Border Control Services Agency, said that despite rumors to the contrary, a traveler’s enrollment in Montana’s medical-marijuana program is not a reason for them to be refused entry into our northern neighbor.
“In and of itself, it is not a valid reason to deny entrance,” she said.
Health Canada, the federal department that runs the country’s health care system, has a medical-marijuana program, and the drug is allowed for those suffering from “grave and debilitating illnesses” like cancer, HIV and multiple sclerosis.
However, according to White, Health Canada does not recognize the medical-marijuana programs of any other country. Therefore, a person could not bring a personal amount of the drug across the border, despite the fact that it was medically prescribed.
White said any marijuana found at a border crossing would have to be “abandoned to the crown.”
She said that officers would not turn the car back, because that would violate the country’s drug laws.
“They have to confiscate it,” she said.
Source: Cardholders OK in Canada, but pot cannot pass border
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How to get a Montana medical-marijuana card
1. A person must get a written recommendation from a doctor that he or she qualifies for using medical marijuana. The doctor uses a state-issued form to write the recommendation. It is not a prescription.
2. The applicant submits the doctor’s recommendation along with a one-page application form, the name of his or her caregiver (if any) and a $25 fee to the state Department of Public Health and Human Services. Patients under 18 must have a parent or guardian sign their application form and act as their caregiver.
3. The DPHHS processes the application and enters the patient into the state registry of medical-marijuana license holders. The registry is not available for public review. If the patient has a caregiver, that person undergoes a background check and cannot be a convicted drug felon.
4. The DPHHS mails a medical-marijuana card to the patient, who can then begin using the drug. The patient (or his caregiver) is allowed to possess no more than six marijuana plants and one ounce of usable marijuana. The card must be renewed annually for a $10 fee.
Source: How to get a Montana medical-marijuana card
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