April 4, 2010 – Medical marijuana is rapidly becoming big business in Missoula, but it has emerged with very distinct growing pains.

Since September, the city of Missoula has processed 28 applications for business licenses related to the commerce of medical marijuana.

“I haven’t seen anything come on like this,” said Scott Paasch, account coordinator for the city of Missoula’s Finance Department, which oversees business licenses.

“We get at least one or two people a day who come in and at least three or four phone calls a day from people who want to know what would it require to get a license in the city to dispense or deliver medical marijuana,” he said. “This isn’t a business boom. It’s more like an explosion.”

In Missoula specifically, the bumper crop of entrepreneurs includes a wide variety of services.

Montana Caregivers Network is a resource service that, among many things, connects patients to caregivers and helps people find doctors who support the use of medical marijuana.

Other businesses, like Zoo Mountain Natural Care Inc., a member of the Missoula Area Chamber of Commerce, have commercial storefronts and offer clinic-like settings with caregivers on staff who help patients choose from a smorgasbord of marijuana varieties.

Still other licensees cultivate the plants that produce medical marijuana in facilities outside the city limits, but deliver the final product in Missoula, and many are individuals who distribute the medicine from their home, Paasch explained.

All of them are certified “caregivers” as required by Montana’s Medical Marijuana Act, Initiative No. 148, which voters approved in 2004.

By state law, each caregiver is allowed to serve an unlimited number of registered patients. For each individual patient, a caregiver is allowed to have six plants and an ounce of usable marijuana.

Likewise, each registered patient who has one of the qualifying conditions (see related graph) and a doctor’s recommendation for marijuana as treatment is allowed to assign one caregiver, grow six marijuana plants and possess an ounce of usable marijuana.

Mark Muir said he isn’t surprised by the rapid acceleration of Missoula’s medical marijuana economy. The city’s police chief believes it is a direct result of a change in federal perspective. While it is still illegal to grow or use marijuana under federal law, Muir explained, the Obama administration announced last fall that federal law on this matter would defer to state law.

“I believe that this was a good-faith gesture that relied on trust that states who passed medical marijuana laws would have controls in place to adequately handle the issues surrounding this drug,” he said. “But with respect to medical marijuana, Montana just didn’t have enough controls in place when the change in policy took place at the federal level.

“Now we are trying to close the barn door after the horses got out.”

As this niche sector continues to boom, everyone connected with it – from patients to caregivers to community leaders and politicians – has a growing list of concerns that revolve around two main issues: regulation and oversight.

While state law allows for possession, use and cultivation of medical marijuana by qualified individuals, it is silent on key issues, said Jason Christ, who launched the Montana Caregivers Network in Missoula and received the city’s first medical marijuana business license.

Among the many gray areas: Do “grow sites” need to be identified? Can patients and caregivers form growing cooperatives? Do renters need to tell landlords about their medical marijuana use? If a patient or caregiver lives within 1,000 feet of a school – which is a drug-free zone – can he or she grow, use or possess medical marijuana?

Adjustments to the law are needed because demand for usable medical marijuana has far outpaced the supply, and it’s illegal to import the drug from out of state, said Christ.

Such issues prompt both skepticism and concern in the law enforcement community, Muir said.

“There’s just no control over sales, over the amount of dosage that is given out, the amount of refills, the pricing of the product. If the law, such as it is, is being followed, who is making sure patients are only getting their supply from one caregiver and caregivers aren’t selling to people who aren’t their card-carrying patient?” Muir said. “There’s no control over any aspect of who can be a caregiver and who can be a patient.

“It’s a joke. The law is so loose, it’s no wonder the list of registered patients grows by the hundreds every month.”

Adding to those many issues is the headache around monitoring the many digestible forms of medical marijuana, such as tinctures, honey, oil and brownies. Aside from the difficulties of ensuring state and federal food production guidelines are followed in the manufacture of such items, there’s no way to determine how much marijuana is in each product and how that plays into the ounce possession rule for each patient and caregiver.

“Our laws around medical marijuana don’t fit with our society’s medical protocol,” Muir said. “There are no medical standards here.”

State Rep. Diane Sands, D-Missoula, plans to bring many of these emerging issues to light this month when she calls together the legislative Children, Families, Health and Human Services Interim Committee she chairs.

Because the state Department of Public Health and Human Services regulates medical marijuana, Sands said she has offered up the committee to help sort through the emerging problems, prioritize them and develop a list of options for the 2011 legislative session.

It’s imperative to do so, Sands said, because the haze and conflicts that surround medical marijuana will only increase.

Consider this: As of March 7, 10,582 Montana residents are legally entitled to use medical marijuana, and  2,635 Montanans can legally provide the drug, according to data from the state Department of Public Health and Human Services.

Compare those numbers, which are expected to be noticeably higher later this month when April’s data are released, with the department’s early records.

In March 2005, Montana had 86 registered patients who qualified for medical marijuana and 35 caregivers. Just a year ago, there were 2,074 patients and 640 caregivers.

“I think everyone is surprised by the volume of increase,” said Roy Kemp, deputy administrator of the state’s Quality Assurance Division in the DPHHS.

Missoula County Attorney Fred Van Valkenburg is eager for the state Legislature to take a hard look at the law and provide clear direction.

He’s not surprised to learn that the largest age group of Montana’s card-carrying medical marijuana patients – 2,635 of the 10,582 patients – are ages 21 to 30. Patients age 51 to 60 comprise the second-largest group, or 2,407 of the total.

“It’s obvious to me that there’s an explosion in this business and to me it’s equally obvious that the law that was passed by initiative is being grossly abused by people who want to smoke marijuana,” Van Valkenburg said. “This law was intended for people who had severe pain or an illness that couldn’t be treated with traditional medical means.

“I think it was probably working in that fashion until the current federal administration said they weren’t going to enforce federal law in states that had medical marijuana laws and people saw the chance to make a lot of money with the quasi-legalization of medical marijuana – and off they went.”

As one would expect, Jason Christ sees things differently. He says the federal government’s change of heart allows him to help a lot of people.

Although he boasted to the Missoula Independent last month that he would be a millionaire by the end of the year, Christ says financial gain isn’t his goal.

Christ said he knows what it is like to suffer and to have conditions that are best treated with medical marijuana, not modern medicine. He has celiac disease and hemorrhoids – and he wouldn’t want anyone else with a delibilating condition to be denied the medicinal plant as a treatment option.

“I do this to help people and end suffering and make it accessible for people to find a doctor who recommend medicinal cannibis,” Christ said. “I’m a patient and I’m a caregiver and I help people get in front of a doctor.”

By Betsy Cohen.  Source.

March 14, 2010 – The vagueness of a law intended to help ease the pain of patients has become a pain for law enforcement.

Keeping tabs on illegal marijuana users as well as protecting legal medical marijuana patients has been no easy feat for the Northwest Drug Task Force and its commander, Russ Papke.

According to Papke, Montana’s Medical Marijuana Act hampers law enforcement efforts several ways because it:

– Fails to track the locations of legal growing operations.

– Lacks zoning guidelines about where those operations can be located.

– Is vague on the issue of usage levels when operating machinery or showing up to work.

– Should better regulate caregivers.

The drug, legalized for medical use in Montana in 2004, recently has exploded in popularity.

The number of medical marijuana patients increased from around 100 in 2005 to 10,582 as of March 7, according to data from the Montana Medical Marijuana Program for the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services.

Since January of this year, at least 3,275 patients have registered statewide.

Flathead County alone had 1,436 registered patients at last count.

The number of registered marijuana growers and suppliers — known as caregivers — also has increased statewide. Caregivers are legally defined as people 18 or older who take responsibility for managing the well-being of a person with respect to the medical use of marijuana.

There were from just 66 caregivers statewide in December 2005.

Now there are at least 2,635 in Montana. With 393 registered caregivers, Flathead County has the highest count in the state.

The drug is most commonly recommended for severe or chronic pain.

But not all of that marijuana is going where the law intended.

Papke said marijuana busts are down since medical marijuana was legalized, but not because of decreasing use of the drug.

“Most users are smart enough to go get a card whether they have a legitimate medical need or not,” Papke said. “The non-legit ones were breaking the law before anyway, so it certainly isn’t going to bother them to get a card for non-legitimate reasons.”

As a medical substance that isn’t quite a prescription drug, marijuana hovers between the illegal and the legitimate.

And a lack of clear guidelines about when it is which puts officers in a tricky place.

Although every patient and caregiver must provide his or her name, address and date of birth to the Department of Public Health and Human Services when registering for a card, the Medical Marijuana Act doesn’t expressly stipulate that the medical marijuana for each user or caregiver must be at the physical address listed on the card.

“You could have 20 people using one guy’s card, and he could have grows all over the place,” said Papke, adding that there would be no way for law enforcement to easily track it.

Also at issue is law enforcement access to a list of registered patients and caregivers.

The state health agency maintains a confidential list of people to whom medical marijuana registry identification cards have been issued.

“If we get a call Saturday morning about a marijuana grow, and nobody is there, we can’t confirm whether it’s a legal grow or not,” said Papke. “What I don’t want to do is confiscate a grow and charge people who have it legally. But I can’t find out until Monday whether it’s legal or not.”

Papke said the Northwest Drug Task Force and other area law enforcement would rather err on the side of caution than make an unlawful arrest, and subsequently will wait to investigate a suspicious situation rather than accidentally bust someone who might turn out to be a legal user or grower.

According to the Medical Marijuana Act, law enforcement can access the list of registered card holders “only as necessary to verify that a person is a lawful possessor of a registry identification card.” That means law enforcement must call the Department of Public Health and Human Services each time they investigate a suspicious grow operation. And the government office is only open on weekdays.

Chuck Council, spokesman for the Department of Public Health and Human Services, said law enforcement can get around this by doing prep work ahead of time by calling during the week, before a weekend bust.

But even if a grow operation is legal, its zoning is not addressed in the Medical Marijuana Act.

“I’ll get calls from people saying, ‘Hey, this guy’s got a marijuana grow in his kid’s bedroom’ and I say, ‘Well, the law doesn’t say anything about that. There’s nothing I can do about it,’” Papke said. “The main frustration I get is from parents, landlords, saying somebody has a marijuana grow in their house, and they want us to do something about it, and I can’t do anything about it.”

Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls — along with cities across Montana — are wrestling with the issue of how to implement zoning for marijuana businesses.

The Kalispell Planning Board last week recommended that the city follow federal law and ban all marijuana production, sales and use inside city limits.

The Medical Marijuana Act outlines usage limitations, but not as clearly as some would like.

Each patient and caregiver is allowed to have up to six marijuana plants and one ounce of usable marijuana. But personal consumption of medical marijuana is loosely regulated beyond that.

Smoking medical marijuana is prohibited in a school bus or other form of public transportation, on school grounds, in a correctional facility and at any public park, public beach, public recreation center or youth center.

Patients also may not “operate, navigate or be in actual physical control of any motor vehicle, aircraft or motorboat while under the influence of marijuana or the smoking of marijuana.” However, there is no definition of what renders a person “under the influence.”

This issue has been likened to alcohol laws. Although it is legal to drink, only users with a blood-alcohol concentrations under 0.08 percent are legally able to drive. There is no such scale for marijuana users.

“If you were smoking three weeks ago and you get in a wreck and they [law enforcement] find any THC in your system, technically, they can charge you for driving under the influence of drugs,” said Papke, who added that marijuana can stay in the system of a regular user for up to 30 days.

One unsuccessful Montana Senate bill in 2009 would have established legal limits for the concentration of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the hallucinatory active ingredient in marijuana) in the bloodstream.

BEING UNDER the influence of marijuana at the workplace also is an issue.

The law states that “nothing in this chapter may be construed to require … an employer to accommodate the medical use of marijuana in any workplace.” That phrase was the basis of the Montana Supreme Court’s rejection of a wrongful termination lawsuit in April 2009.

In 2006, Mike Johnson of Kalispell was fired from Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. after he tested positive for marijuana during a random drug test. The company said the longtime employee could return to work if he passed additional drug tests. He refused and was fired.

Johnson filed a lawsuit, but Flathead County District Court ruled against him and the subsequent appeal to Montana Supreme Court was rejected.

Papke said the law also could do a better job protecting patients.

One way would be to provide law enforcement with a cross reference of patients and caregivers, which could help authorities make sure caregivers actually are providing for their patients.

“A lot of these guys who like to sell illegally, they’ll put an ad in the paper saying, ‘I’m a marijuana caregiver,’” Papke said. “They could get 40 cards, but then the patient will never hear from that guy again. He’s selling his weed illegally, but when we go to the grow, he’s got cards for each of those people.”

Of the 14 states that have legalized medical marijuana, nine have amended their laws. Most of these amendments concern patient registry, possession amounts and the medical conditions for which the drug can be recommended.

Six bills addressing the Medical Marijuana Act were proposed during the 2009 legislative session. Four died in standing committee, one was canceled and one became law, effective Oct. 1, 2009.

That law clarified that a person who is a designated caregiver may not use marijuana and may use drug paraphernalia only in limited circumstances.

Tom Daubert, founder and director of Patients and Families United who was involved in the final phase of drafting the 2004 Medical Marijuana Act, said he expects the 2011 Legislature to consider changing the law.

“There is no question there are a number of vague, complicating things in the law,” he said, which has made it difficult not only for law enforcement but for patients and caregivers. “My goal is to come up with a consensus proposal.”

He wants a “cradle to grave” approach that tracks the marijuana from seed to patient, regulating producers and distribution. That, he said, would help to clear up some of the law’s foggy areas.

By Melissa Weaver.