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

We’ve got a Montana NORML Facebook Fan named Sean who regularly engages us in online discussions of strategy and policy regarding marijuana. He took the time recently to publish some of  his core criticisms. I welcome rational debate, and I promised him a reply. Here it is.

I’ll try to address each of his concerns using his section headings. First, you should read his post.

1. “Medical marijuana is needlessly divisive.”

Sean seems to believe that Montana NORML either devised or at least supports the idea that medical marijuana is the best way to get to legalization (or decriminalization).  I voted for I-148 in 2004, and we informed Montana NORML supporters about its substance and progress, but we did not initiate the strategy or gather signatures or otherwise have anything to do with the initiative. I’m not trying to distance myself from the hard work done by those on the ground or the funders who made it happen, I’m just stating a fact.

But I have often wondered if there were downsides to the medical approach, such as:

• The state medical marijuana laws seem to be getting more restrictive with each passage (compare California’s to New Jersey’s). Will “medicalization” of marijuana eventually become “pharmaceuticalization” and make adult spiritual/social/personal use even harder to legalize?
• Will people get their “medical cards” and then become ambivalent about efforts to make marijuana legal for any adult?

I understand and share some of Sean’s concerns that medical marijuana is “needlessly divisive”. The line that brings me around though, coined by MPP I believe, is: If we must have a war on people who use marijuana, shouldn’t we at least remove the sick and dying from the battlefield?

Sean goes on to say that the “fabrication” of a “medical” usage is “ludicrous”. I’m not sure how he explains away the mountain of scientific evidence of marijuana’s medical benefits in a variety of ailments; he even acknowledges the existence of FDA-approved Marinol, the active ingredient of which is synthetic THC.

2. “Commercialization and regulation are not good for anyone but medical MJ businessmen.”

Sean mischaracterizes my position that marijuana should be responsibly regulated as somehow meaning that the plant should be a “vehicle for venture capitalists”.

Then he tries to create a conflict between my statements about regulating marijuana and national NORML’s.  I’m not saying marijuana is the same as alcohol (marijuana is much safer), but I think alcohol’s general regulatory model makes sense for marijuana: adults only, no driving under the influence, advertising restrictions, licensed producers and retailers, etc.

I particularly like the beer & wine regulatory model because it is legal to create your own at home, and that’s an essential ingredient of future legal marijuana policies for me. Like beer and wine, most people won’t want to go through the trouble and will prefer to simply buy marijuana at a licensed retailer. Regulations could ensure that marijuana is organic (or not), as well as purity and potency.

He makes some good points about capitalist profiteering often resulting in low quality, characterless products, but I don’t think this is inevitable with commercialization. Take the recent surge in microbreweries for example. Or high-end chocolates. Or wines. Or gourmet peanut butter.

In one comment thread, I asked Sean what sort of legal model he envisioned or thought we should be working for. He suggested we treat marijuana like cocoa beans or wheat. That would imply that parents could serve it to their kids for breakfast, and school bus drivers and surgeons could have it on their lunch breaks. I don’t think that’s what anyone really wants.

3. “Partial legalization and regulation create targets for law enforcement.”

You won’t get much of an argument from me on Sean’s points here. Law enforcement has been a foe in nearly all efforts to make marijuana legal, medical or otherwise (but check out Law Enforcement Against Prohibition). However, now that we’re six years into medical marijuana in Montana, I think many officials are coming around to believe that it’s here to stay.

4. “Incrementalism is not a successful path to political reform.”

Actually I think the opposite is true. Social movements for equal treatment of women and minorities, and the gay rights movement, come to mind.

5. “If you have political momentum for medical MJ passage, you have such momentum for decriminalization.”

Sean again seems to to think that Montana NORML is focused entirely on medical marijuana.  We’re not.  Every chance I get, I maneuver medical marijuana discussions into legalization discussions. We are working towards the day that marijuana is legal for all adults, regardless of their medical condition.

Recent polling on medical marijuana versus full legalization shows that public support for medical is a slam dunk at 70-80% approval, but making marijuana legal for everyone has not yet attained majority support nationwide. Voters in western states may support legalization by a small margin, depending on which poll you read, and California will vote on legalization this fall. Support for full legalization has grown considerably just in the last few years. Is that because of the passage of medical marijuana laws? There’s no way to know for sure. But support is growing, and legal marijuana is likely to become a reality in one or more states over the next several years.

There will always be strategy debates within social movements. It’s a healthy part of the process and helps refine and improve defensible positions and arguments. Overall, Sean and I are on the same side. We want adults to be legally allowed to grow, possess and use marijuana responsibly.