All my politically-connected friends keep telling me that our most recent election is a catastrophe for medical marijuana. The Republicans, who have a majority in both legislative houses in Montana, seriously considered opening the debate with a proposal (sure to win) to either 1) erase medical marijuana from the books, or 2) send it back to the media en-flamed hysterical voters. There is no guarantee that the voters would support the same law, today.

That said, my politically-savvy friends also say that outright appeal is possible, yes, but unlikely.

Of course, our message and goal is that Marijuana Legalization is the Best Thing For Patients. Really, the current controversy in Montana is not about the “marijuana” part of medical marijuana — the problem is the “medical” part, right?

There is no doubt that marijuana will cause vigorous debates in Helena (check out the proposed bills so far) when the legislature convenes in ~45 days. Whether you think that cannabis is a precious medicine for the sick and dying, or a sacred herb that should be available to all, or all of the above, I hope you’ll take a moment and register your location at http://mjdb.montanadrugpolicy.org — this is the primary way we’ll be reaching out to concerned citizens about the upcoming legislative mayhem. Click, register, make a difference, easy.

One of the challenges for medical marijuana preservation is that there are still lots of honest health care professionals who just haven’t been presented with the information that is available on cannabis’ medical benefits.  How can you help?

Buy a copy of the 86-page booklet, Emerging Clinical Applications for Cannabis and Cannabinoids: A Review of the Scientific Literature 2000-2010, and tell us which health-care professional you’d like us to send it to.  Or, join a recent anonymous donor in donating $100 to fund the sending of booklets out statewide.

Click the yellow donate button on our website to help out.

Finally, a bit of gossip. We got a tip this morning that the offices of Jason Christ’s Montana Caregivers Network in Missoula were being raided. I walked over to the MCN office personally, and saw Missoula Police and Missoula County Deputies, and Jason in the middle, smiling and talking.

I anticipate there will be some dramatic media coverage soon, and that’s all I know so far.

Speaking of sensationalistic coverage, here’s the news:

Various Marijuana News

• Billings medical marijuana cardholder(?) has a bad night – break one law at a time (aka, “This medical marijuana thing is is out of control!”)
• Montana NORML: Marijuana Legalization is the Best Thing For Patients
• Brace yourself – a mess of Montana medical marijuana rewrites is headed our way.
• Hamilton man gets deferred sentence in beating of marijuana thief
• Mailed marijuana results in felony charge for Billings woman
• Columbia Falls: Sometimes marijuana comes to high school!
• Montana News Summary: Medical marijuana stories abound
• Time Magazine: How Marijuana Got Mainstreamed
• Despite marijuana cookie, man found mentally fit to stand trial for attempted murder
• Wanna be an MTV reality show “star”? Contact us, they are doing a show about young people in the medical marijuana industry in Montana.
• Montana Cannabis works on opening store in Sidney area
• Montana cannabis politics: good old fashioned values

A moment of silence now, for the Montana outdoor plants that didn’t make it through the cold this week, and the Montana grown-ups who got busted this week.

Good night.

One of the reasons for this is that there’s no agreed-upon definition of what constitutes medical use, and so we get skeptical reports and alarming stories about “fraud” and  “abuse” when apparently healthy 20-somethings stand in line for their scandalous “green cards”.

(I’ll set aside the fact for now that there really are some young adults who show no outward signs of illness but truly suffer from horrible disorders from which marijuana provides some relief.)

There is no solid definition of “medical use” because it’s a continuum, or scale, not an either/or contrast.

At one end of the medical use spectrum, you find proven medical benefits like:

• ocular pressure reduction for glaucoma,
• appetite improvement for wasting syndrome,
• reduction in spasms in MS patients,
• reduction of epileptic seizures,
• chronic pain relief, including migraines,
• preventing and treating cancerous tumors

But should we ignore relief from PMS, PTSD, mild anxiety, depression, and insomnia that marijuana can provide? Or alcoholism?

Taking it a step further, if someone uses marijuana for, shall we say, spiritual introspection, or to enhance their experience of art, exercise, poetry, cinema, food, or sex, are these not therapeutic uses that improve people’s lives? And are there not real health benefits to be had just from laughing and having fun?

Dennis Peron, the “father of the medical marijuana movement”, once said that “all use is medical“.

These things aren’t defined by laws (nor could they be, really), so as long as we have “medical marijuana” on the books, there will be hand-wringing and consternation about “abuse” and “legitimacy”.

A legal regulated market for all adults solves this problem.

By removing medical status as a precondition for legal marijuana use, we will eliminate ambiguity while continuing to protect those individuals who use marijuana to treat their illnesses.

The public generally agrees. It’s just a matter of time and hard work by NORML and other organizations to get us from here to there.

That estimate is based on California NORML‘s solid scientific review of government data, adjusted for Montana’s much smaller population (1 million compared to 36 million) but slightly higher usage rate (86,000 adults (12%), compared to California’s 11%). Many people are understandably hesitant to volunteer information on government surveys about their law-breaking activities, so these usage estimates are probably low.

Roughly 24,000 pounds is consumed by Montana’s 17,000 daily users — an average of about half an ounce a week.

What does 30,000 lbs look like? Check out this story from LA with pictures of a 25,000 lb bust.

Now suppose that all our 30,000 lbs were sold in legal shops as one-ounce packages, each with a $50 excise tax.

That’d be $24,000,000 in direct tax revenues. Now imagine licensing fees for producers and retailers, payroll taxes, additional jobs created, etc.

Given Montana’s budget problems, we’re thinking it’s high time.

In a neurological study of binge drinkers, researchers found that “as expected, the binge drinkers showed signs of white matter damage in all eight brain regions examined by the researchers. But the binge drinkers/marijuana users had less damage in seven out of the eight brain regions than the binge drinkers did…[The researchers] said it’s ‘possible that marijuana may have some neuroprotective properties in mitigating alcohol-related oxidative stress or excitotoxic cell death.’” (“Pot Might Blunt Damage of Binge Drinking,” U.S. News)