Today the Children, Families, Health and Human Services Interim Committee met in Helena to discuss the state of Montana’s medical marijuana program. Here are some notes on what transpired.

There were four panels of invited guests: bureaucrats, law enforcement, community leaders, and stakeholders.

Bureaucrats: They were from DPHHS and pretty much just went through the basics of how the law works and what their role is. They double-check paperwork, send out cards, send out renewal notices, and confirm patient status upon law enforcement request.

Law Enforcement:  Mark Long (the state’s top narcotics cop) and the chief of police from Lewistown were  on this panel. Long mentioned a few times the wasted resources associated with marijuana enforcement efforts – seriously.  His examples were that any time the police get a report about marijuana growing, they must investigate. So they rally the guys, make some calls, set up a stake-out, do some background checks, clean their machine guns, whatever else they do. Then they bust in and find out the garden is 100% legal under state law. Wasted resources, indeed.

His other example was when they nail someone for carrying cannabis, take them to jail or issue a citation, seize the evidence, have it tested and securely stored, prepare the prosecution case, and then the person produces their patient card (having failed to carry it at all times), and the whole thing is dropped. Wasted resources.

Their complaints and suggestions about the law included:

• Locations: they want all locations of legal gardens published so they can avoid the wasted resource problem above.
• Safety concerns: they say medical marijuana is a mostly-cash business, so there can be stacks of cash and valuable bud around, increasing likelihood that knuckleheads will commit a robbery. They also say indoor gardens are doing dangerous things with electricity, and sometimes there are children around.
• Diversion: the provisioning of medial marijuana by registered patients for the purposes of resale. They pointed out that the law does not prevent a patient from buying an ounce every hour of every day, for example.
• DUI: They say there has been a 1200% increase in DUI arrests at which marijuana is present. If I recall correctly, he phrased it sort of carefully. He didn’t say that the DUI was for cannabis-related impairment specifically. I intend to track down these data.
• Marijuana delivery drivers:  sometimes caregivers’ drivers get pulled over with large quantities of cannabis and the cops just don’t know what to do. Sometimes they have photocopied cards, but their name is not on them,. Interestingly, the Lewistown chief of police said that  prosecutors are hesitant to really move on any marijuana case because of the Affirmative Defense provision of the law.  This provision allows anyone to argue in court that their marijuana charges should be dropped because their activity was consistent with the medical marijuana act.
• Hash & Edibles: a representative from the state crime lab cited criminal laws which “equate” 60g of cannabis to 1g of hash. (Does anyone think this is a valid analysis? Which bag would you rather have, assuming the price was the same?)  She went on to express the crime lab’s confusion over how to interpret the law regarding hash and edibles.

Community Leaders: This consisted of the city attorneys of Great Falls and Bozeman, and some guys from the Montana School Board Association. Some random notes from their comments:

• Great Falls city attorney proposed caregiver patient count maximums, asked for deeper background checks, including national records, and proposed that any felony conviction should bar someone from being a caregiver, not just drug felonies. He asked dramatically, “What about sex offenders?” Not sure what his point was there.
• Bozeman city attorney directed people to the city’s website for their position statement on regulating medical marijuana, as well as information about a series of public meetings the city is conducting to get community feedback on the issue (the next one is May 5th). He also rehashed (ha!) the state/federal conflict, and pleaded with legislators to ensure that cities and counties retain some local control over medical marijuana, rather than a dictate from the state.
• The school board guys said that marijuana is always illegal on any school property, due to federal law. They are getting questions from local school boards about things like 18-yr-old students loading up on brownies before coming to algebra class, and about whether Individual Education Plans (developed for certain struggling students) could include cannabis consumption at school.

Stakeholders: These were people in the business of medical marijuana: Jason Christ of MCN, Jim Gingery of MMGA, and Tom Daubert of MTPFU & Montana Cannabis.

• Jason:  We need to clarify whether caregiver-to-caregiver transfers are legal. We think 2oz usable, 8oz medibles would be a good change. And please add PTSD, depression, anxiety as conditions.
• Jim: Growers could live with inspections, records-keeping requirements, and a doctor and patient list on site (identified only by their state-issued patient number).
• Tom:  Patients and the cops are really not too far apart. The voters did not envision travelling clinics, did not envision 2-minute doctor visits, and did not envision flashy marijuana billboards on main street. Everyone wants clarity, so let’s work together to fix the law.

Thus concluded over two hours of scheduled panels, and so the thirty minutes of public comment were next. Maybe 20 people spoke, here are a few random recollections:

• Talyn Lang of Zoo Mountain in Missoula spoke briefly about the economic development potential.
• A mom and her weeping teenage daughter talked about how the demon weed destroys everyone’s lives. I sympathized with their story of systemic and destructive family substance abuse, but the melodrama and “gateway” connection to pills and meth was really too much, especially that there’s emerging evidence that cannabis can be an “exit ramp” for people dealing with more serious addiction.
• An elderly psychiatrist expressed his opposition to medical marijuana in general.
• Our friend Katrina talked about her experience with a variety of herbal remedies, including cannabis.
• A middle-aged woman told her marijuana miracle story about how cannabis allowed her to get out of the house and work after many years on disability.
• A caregiver talked about his ailing cancer patients and urged the committee to always remember the patients when crafting new policies.

Here’s what I had to say (lifted mostly from our Getting Past Medical post, of which I distributed hardcopies to all present):

Thank you for the opportunity to be heard, and thank you for taking up this important issue thoughtfully.

At the core of our current medical marijuana conundrum is a problem. The problem is that “legitimate medical use” cannot be defined objectively.

The solution? A regulated market for all adults, as most taxpayers now agree.

A legal market solves many problems at once and acknowledges the scientific truth that cannabis is safer than alcohol and cigarettes, and many over-the-counter drugs.

• First, the best way to protect patients is to remove the barriers currently posed by the medical marijuana registration and renewal system. As medicines go, marijuana is perhaps the safest medicinal herb known in human history; lethal overdose isn’t possible, and it is less addictive than caffeine.
• Second, we have already developed a working system of taxation and regulation of marijuana — in our beer and brewery laws. Adults are allowed to purchase from licensed retailers who are responsible for verifying the age of the buyer and acquire wholesale product from licensed producers. It’s not a perfect system, but it works. In fact, teenagers consistently say that (regulated) beer is harder to buy than (black market) marijuana!
• Third, we’re experiencing an economic downturn of historic proportions. Projections of Montana’s budget shortfall is in the tens of millions of dollars. We estimate that a $50 per ounce tax on legal marijuana sales would raise $24 million per year.
• Finally, there is simply nothing wrong with responsible adult cannabis consumption, and public policies to the contrary are a waste of our scarce and precious criminal justice resources. With the same law enforcement resources, what other crimes could be solved if cannabis were not a criminal matter?

The work you’re doing today is important. But you will not resolve the debate about what constitutes “legitimate medical use”.

We should embrace this historic confluence of scientific truth, individual liberty, popular opinion, and economic stimulus and regulate marijuana for all adults.

Two legislators stopped in the hall to thank me for presenting our policy suggestions afterwards. I’ll be in touch with them to discuss further.

-JM

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