If Amendment 64 passes, it will become almost immediately legal under Colorado law for adults to possess, grow, consume and give away up to an ounce of marijuana. It may take more than a year, however, before adults can purchase marijuana legally in a store.

A poll released in early September by Public Policy Polling shows the amendment continues to lead, currently by a 47-38 margin, with 15 percent still undecided. Passage could enable the state to increase tax revenues by $50 million a year or more while also potentially reducing law enforcement costs.

If the measure passes, the parts of the amendment related to individual behavior go into effect as soon as the governor signs a proclamation certifying the results of the election, which he is required to do within 30 days.

Sections related to the commercial cultivation and sale of marijuana would take effect incrementally but marijuana would be available for sale legally no sooner than late 2013 or early 2014.

Even if the state moves forward with implementation in a timely fashion, it is anyone’s guess what the federal response–if any–will be. The feds could do nothing, could move to block implementation, or could wait until legal businesses are set up and then move to shut them down, possibly arresting owners and employees in the process.

The amendment requires the Colorado Department of Revenue to adopt regulations governing the licensing of commercial businesses by no later than July 1, 2013. According to the amendment these regulations cannot prohibit marijuana businesses or make their operation “unreasonably impractical.”

Attorney Brian Vicente, co-director of the pro-64 campaign, says that the amendment was written in such a way that the legislature can choose to address the issue, thus providing guidance to the DOR, or can do nothing and leave the crafting of regulations entirely to DOR staff.

“We left it open so that the legislature can be as active as it wants to be or it can leave the matter entirely to DOR,” Vicente told the Colorado Independent.

DOR must begin processing business applications by Oct. 1, 2013. If the DOR fails to meet the deadline, prospective business owners can apply for local business licenses, thus bypassing the state. Local governments must establish their own regulations, also by Oct. 1, 2013. Local governments may also ban marijuana businesses, but need a vote of the people to do so.

Even if a city or county bans marijuana businesses, residents of the area would still be allowed to grow, possess, consume and give away small amounts of marijuana.

While the amendment legalizes private use of marijuana, public use would remain illegal. Patrons at a ball game, for instance, would not be able to go to the smoking area and light a joint. People would not be allowed to sit on a park bench and light up a marijuana pipe. People growing their own could have up to six plants, with no more than three being mature at any given time. Plants would have to be grown in secured areas that are not visible to the public. Even if it exceeds the legal one ounce, growers would be allowed to possess their entire harvest.

Employers would not have to accommodate people who wish to smoke at work and would still be allowed to test for marijuana use and to fire people who test positive. Driving under the influence of marijuana would remain illegal and it would remain illegal to sell or give marijuana to anyone under 21 years old.

Vicente explains that “employers will still have the absolute ability to retain any policies they have about marijuana use. Once it is legal, it is our hope that they will embrace common sense rules regarding the legal use of a legal product on people’s own time.”

Economic Impact

The Blue Book, produced by the Colorado Legislative Council, estimates the fiscal impact that could be expected if the amendment passes. The book says that sales taxes and licensing fees would be expected to be between $5 million and $22 million per year and that the cost to the state would be $1.3 million in the first year and around $700,000 a year after that. The book makes no estimates of local revenues or costs.

The amendment, though, also requires the legislature to enact an excise tax of up to 15 percent through 2017 and at any rate agreed to by the legislature after 2017. This tax would be collected on sales from growers to retailers and marijuana product manufacturing companies. The Blue Book makes no estimate of how much such a tax could generate. The tax would have to be set by the legislature and then voted on by residents of Colorado.

“It is our strong belief that the legislature will pass such a tax as soon as they can,” Vicente said. He and the campaign estimate that the revenue from such a tax could be as much as $24 million to $73 million a year. The amendment stipulates that the first $40 million a year generated by the tax will go to a state fund for the construction of public schools.

Laura Chapin, spokesperson for the anti-64 campaign, said she doubts the state would ever see anywhere near the amount of money talked about by proponents. “How do you tax an industry that cannot use bank accounts?,” she asked, pointing out that federal law prohibits banks from accepting deposits of money earned by selling a substance that will remain illegal under federal law.

Vicente, though, says some medical marijuana businesses in the state actually do have bank accounts. He notes that there has been lots of press about banks not doing business with marijuana dispensaries, but said numerous banks and dispensaries are “quietly doing business together.”

Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, said Chapin’s argument is “absurd.”

“Many marijuana businesses do have bank accounts, but I guarantee you that even those that don’t, pay their taxes,” he said. “That is simply an absurd statement. They didn’t do their homework,” Smith said.

A study released in August by the Colorado Center on Law and Policy estimates that local governments would generate a combined $14 million a year in the beginning. That study also estimates savings in law enforcement of $12 million a year immediately, increasing to $40 million a year in later years.

While it doesn’t relate directly to Amendment 64, the National Cannabis Industry Association released a study on Sept. 13 that shows tax revenue in Colorado as a result of medical marijuana likely exceeded $10 million in 2011. The study, which looked at only ten Colorado cities, shows that medical marijuana businesses in the cities studied, generated $5.1 million in local tax revenues and nearly $4.5 million in state tax revenues. Business license fees bring in millions more, the study says. In Denver alone, revenue from such fees exceeded $6 million in 2011 alone, according to the study.

Source: Huffington Post (NY)
Author: Scot Kersgaard, The Colorado Independent
Published: September 20, 2012
Copyright: 2012 HuffingtonPost.com, LLC
Contact: scoop@huffingtonpost.com
Website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

In another example of drug war excess, officers raided and vandalized the home of Beach Park, Illinois resident Paul Brown on Friday afternoon of last week. The apparent impetus for the raid was a mysterious package delivered to the house 10 minutes earlier. Brown’s son-in-law, Wilmer Aries, received the package and noted that it was not addressed to any of the house’s residents. Instead, it bore the name “Oscar” and an unfamiliar last name.

Brown, a 58-year-old architect, explained that the officers with the Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group broke down his front door in the no-knock raid, handcuffed him, and pointed a gun at his face. “The garage door was open. They could have just walked in,” he said. “They didn’t have to crash the front door down.”
Although the officers seized the package, claiming it contained marijuana, their two-hour ransacking of the house, including ripping out insulation from the basement walls, uncovered no evidence to incriminate anyone in the house and led to no arrests. “They were upset they didn’t find anything. When I asked them who was going to pay for the door they basically said, ‘Not us’,” said Brown, who noted the door on his luxury home was valued at $3,000 some 12 years ago and the lock set was another $130 from Home Depot.

Brown even noted that the officers, far from apologizing for their mistake, seemed to be congratulating each other on the operation with high fives and fist-bumps. His subsequent calls to the MEG were not returned, nor were calls from news outlets. He has hired a lawyer to file a civil suit and explains that he and his 77-year-old mother-in-law were particularly shaken by the incident. “She’s afraid to even take a nap on the couch now,” he said. “I can hardly sleep. It changes your frame of mind.” His lawyer, Christopher Cohen, characterized the Browns as “innocent bystanders in the war on drugs.”

As Reason.com notes, this is not the first time a wrongful no-knock raid was carried out in the U.S. based simply on the delivery of a package of marijuana. In 2008, the home of Cheye Calvo, mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, was raided by a SWAT team and his two dogs fatally shot. The mayor complained, leading to an investigation, but as the raid was ultimately ruled legitimate, this will likely not be the last such incident.

Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana
advocacy group, is calling for rallies in 15 cities and eight states on
Thursday to protest Department of Justice attacks on the MMJ industry,
ASA said Wednesday.

Protesters will gather at Obama’s Tucson office, 4639 E. 1st Street,
at 5 p.m. today to presumably wave signs, shout and generally chastise
the Choomer in Chief for shutting down some very respectable and
successful businesses in MMJ states in recent years. Rallies are also
planned for Phoenix, Denver, Seattle, San Diego, Oakland and Washington,
D.C.

"Over the past three years, the DOJ has conducted more than 200
SWAT-style federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) raids on
legitimate medical marijuana businesses in at least 6 states – at twice
the rate under the Bush Administration – and indicted more than 70
related to medical marijuana," the ASA said in a news release.

So bring a sign to wave and tell the prez what you think. Mr. Smith plans to attend. See you there.

When Obama’s supporters come to volunteer this evening, they will be
greeted by a crowd holding political signs. It’s not an Occupy protest
or a Republican rally – it’s a rally in support of medical marijuana access,
organized by voters who feel left out of the electoral debate. From
Washington, D.C. to Washington State, from New York City to Denver,
Colorado, patients and their supporters will be asking, how can I vote
against my health in November?

My organization, Americans for Safe Access, has been engaging voters since July with our Camp WakeUpObama campaign,
helping to give a voice to patients and their families. Today campers
mark the end of summer with nationwide rallies outside of Obama’s
campaign offices, because we’re not being invited inside. Things would
be different if the President would apply his campaign slogan,
"Forward," to our cause: stopping the raids and prosecutions of
state-permitted institutions, and moving public health policy forward by
ending the conflict between state and federal law.

I can’t ignore the fact that many responses to Camp WakeUpObama have
been critical and to those of you who disapprove I ask, what else are
patients supposed to do? In asking President Obama to fulfill his stated
policy of respecting state compassionate use laws, we are not asking
him to do anything unpopular: 80% of Americans support safe access to medical cannabis, 74% are against the stepped-up raids and prosecutions and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson is polling at 7% in Colorado campaigning on this issue. Even two-thirds
of Republicans support state medical cannabis laws. With the public on
our side, why should patients and our loved ones be silent?

Camp WakeUpObama is not about encouraging people to vote for Romney
or any other challenger, but about expressing our own points of view.
When I wrote
during the Democratic National Convention that pro-marijuana candidate
Gary Johnson’s poll numbers could make him a spoiler in the crucial
swing state of Colorado, I wasn’t criticizing third-party supporters, I
was showing Democrats the proof that their standard-bearer’s
wrong-headed cannabis crackdown is costing the party votes. I never
thought that Mitt Romney’s campaign would be emailing reporters our talking points or that his vice-presidential nominee would publicly support
state decisions on marijuana law. Though a lot has happened in the past
few months, it’s not too late for Obama to seize the issue.

Many of us want to be supporters of the President, to be a part of
his movement. Obama has done great things for other patients but for my
medical needs, which include cannabis, treatment has become only less
affordable and more limited. When we listened to DNC speakers praise
health care reforms for helping family members receive organ
transplants, it was a painful reminder that our community had just
buried Norman Smith,
a man denied a transplant because of his doctor-recommended medical
marijuana therapy. It was saddening to hear speaker after speaker talk
about Obama expanding access to health care, when the same man ordered
the destruction of our access to vital medicine. And it was frustrating
to watch Obama’s now-infamous
Harold and Kumar video, in which he asked fictional stoners for support
while turning his back on real-life medical marijuana patients.

In four years, Obama’s DEA has taken action against far more medical
marijuana facilities than during the eight years of Bush. Despite
promises to govern according to science rather than politics, his
administration is going to court to contend that marijuana has "no accepted medical use." And all of these raids, prosecutions, threatening letters, and asset forfeitures have occurred while Obama’s Attorney General
denies following an anti-medical cannabis policy. At least George W.
Bush and John Ashcroft admitted they were waging a war on us.

Camp WakeUpObama brings forward the voices of those who feel
conflicted about voting for someone who is prosecuting members of their
community and closing down their trusted sources of medicine. I’m not a
one-issue voter, but I should be able to vote for someone who cares
about my health. I know that ordinary patients can make a difference –
after all, it was the $20 donor who elected Obama.

It’s 46 days before the election, and the President is having a good week.
But support for Gary Johnson and the closeness of the race make Obama’s
unpopular medical cannabis crackdown an unnecessary roadblock to his
reelection.

So today medical marijuana patients rally to wake up Obama and wake
up his supporters. We want the President to apply his campaign slogan
"forward" to medical cannabis: it is popular, it is good medicine, and
it is good policy.

Americans for Safe Access has coordinated nationwide protests today to "remind Obama of his broken campaign promises regarding medical marijuana in places where it is legal at the state level." The press release states:

In solidarity with the over 1 million medical marijuana
patients across the nation, activists will be pushing the message that
patients as well as their families and friends are voters too, and that
this is a vital issue for them when they go to the polls in November.
Obama is the current POTUS and can stop this unprecedented federal
crackdown even before the election.

Many protests are planned at Obama For America headquarters,
while here in Oregon, they are planned for the federal courthouses in
Medford, Eugene and Pendleton. Oregonians are protesting the raids that
have occurred in the last three weeks, in particular: Kannabosm, the 45th Parallel and High Hopes Farm.

Oregon protests are scheduled as follows:

Eugene, OR United States District Court
12pm @ Wayne L Morse U.S. Courthouse
405 East Eighth Ave.

Medford, OR United States District Court
2pm @ James A Redden U.S. Courthouse
310 West Sixth St.

Pendleton, OR United States District Court
12pm @ John F. Kilkenny United States Post Office and Courthouse
104 S.W. Dorion

State Rep. Peter Buckley has thrown his support behind Measure 80, an initiative that would legalize, regulate and tax marijuana consumed by adults.

“Overall, legalization would take the black market out of Oregon,” said Buckley, D-Ashland, who has served as co-chairman of the Legislature’s Ways and Means Committee for the past two sessions. He said he supports regulating marijuana in a manner similar to the regulation of alcohol under the Oregon Liquor Control Commission.

Under current laws, he said, medical marijuana has too many legal loopholes that have frustrated law enforcement and left the door open for abuse.

“I do think it’s a problem with some medical marijuana growers,” he said. “They’ve gotten greedy.”

Oregon voters will decide this November on the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act, a citizen’s initiative campaign to regulate cannabis and encourage production of hemp.

According to the YES on 80 campaign, legalizing marijuana could save $60 million annually in law enforcement costs, while taxing it could bring in an extra $140 million. Under the proposal, marijuana would be purchased through state-run stores.

Buckley, who said he’s not a marijuana user and doesn’t have a medical marijuana card, said the federal government likely would question Oregon’s authority to legalize the drug if voters pass the measure, but he thinks that if enough states pass similar initiatives it could change the national debate.

“Hopefully, the federal government will see the light,” he said.

The new law will provide a clearer legal distinction for law enforcement in how to prosecute anyone furnishing marijuana to minors, Buckley said. The law still would make it illegal to drive under the influence of marijuana or to use it in public places.

Roy Kaufmann, spokesman for the YES on 80 campaign, said the law could add to Oregon’s image as a tourist destination, similar to the effect of the Oregon wine and beer industry.

Also, the initiative would create another growth industry in the state, he said. “Agricultural hemp will dwarf the marijuana market within a decade,” Kaufmann predicted.

Other states, including Washington and Colorado, may take up similar initiatives to legalizing marijuana. If enough states support legalization, Kaufmann said, “It would really force the federal government’s hand on this issue.”

He said the marijuana law has been written in a way to stand up to federal scrutiny.

Kaufmann said the prohibition of marijuana has been a failure in this country.

State Rep. Dennis Richardson, R-Central Point, said Oregon’s medical marijuana laws are “grossly abused,” but said he has too many questions about Measure 80 to support it.

“I am very much troubled by the current medical marijuana law,” said Richardson, who served as a co-chairman with Buckley on the Ways and Means Committee. “It is basically legalization through a back-door approach.”

He said the right to smoke pot is now being advertised as a simple matter of spending $100 to find the right doctor.

Richardson said he doesn’t support legalizing marijuana. But he said the state needs to have a rational debate about whether it wants to legalize cannabis or take a different approach and crack down on violations.

He said Measure 80 will at least get voters talking about medical marijuana laws, though he doubts the voters in his fairly conservative district would support the initiative.

While Measure 80 would raise tax dollars, Richardson said he’s reluctant to create a new state bureaucracy to keep track of the process.

He said he’s also concerned about creating another “sin tax,” in addition to the dollars the state already collects through gambling, cigarettes and alcohol.

Richardson, who doesn’t have a medical marijuana card, said he would consider using marijuana if he had a serious medical condition.

Source: Mail Tribune, The (Medford, OR)
Author: Damian Mann, Mail Tribune
Published: September 18, 2012
Copyright: 2012 The Mail Tribune
Contact: letters@mailtribune.com
Website: http://www.mailtribune.com/

A recently published poll from The Denver Post has good news for pot legalization advocates. According to the survey, a majority of Colorado voters are in favor of Amendment 64, a November ballot measure that seeks to legalize and regulate marijuana like alcohol for adult use.

Of the 615 likely Colorado voters surveyed by The Denver Post, 51 percent are in favor of the measure, while only 40 percent are opposed.

Read the entire poll, exact question wording and results here at The Denver Post.: http://www.denverpost.com/news/marijuana/ci_21548398/colorado-marijuana-legalization-initiative-leads-new-poll

Colorado’s Amendment 64 does appear to be popular among voters. Earlier this month, Public Policy Polling surveyed 1,000 likely voters and found that 47 percent would vote in support of Amendment 64, while only 38 percent would vote against the ballot measure.

That percentage was the exact same that PPP had found one month prior during a similar survey.

The largest percentage in favor of legalization in Colorado ever polled came from Rasmussen, back in June, which found 61 percent of likely Colorado voters in favor of legalizing marijuana if it is regulated the way that alcohol and cigarettes are currently regulated.

According to a report by the Colorado Center on Law & Policy, the passage of Amendment 64 could be a boon for the state economy. Marijuana legalization would produce hundreds of new jobs, raise millions for the construction of Colorado public schools and raise around $60 million annually in combined savings and revenue for Colorado’s budget, the report says.

It’s not just pot advocates that are in favor of legalization. The NAACP recently backed pot legalization measures in Oregon and Colorado not because the group necessarily favors marijuana use, but because members say current marijuana laws lead to a disproportionately high number of people of color being incarcerated or otherwise negatively affected.

“Marijuana prohibition policy does more harm to our communities than good,” said Rosemary Harris Lytle in a statement, president of the NAACP-Colorado-Montana-Wyoming State Conference. “That is why we have endorsed Amendment 64 which presents a more effective and socially responsible approach to how Colorado addresses the adult use of marijuana.”

The NAACP provided this data in a press statement about marijuana arrests in Colorado:

African-Americans made up roughly 4% of the population in Colorado in 2010, but they accounted for about 9% of marijuana possession arrests and 22% of arrests for marijuana sales and cultivation. The numbers in Denver are particularly staggering. According to a report prepared by the Denver Police Department for the the city’s Marijuana Policy Review Panel, African-Americans accounted for more than 31.5% percent of arrests for private adult marijuana possession, despite making up less than 11% of the city’s population.

Politically, the measure has received support from both Democrats and Republicans in Colorado, as well as more than 100 professors from around the nation. However, just last week Gov. John Hickenlooper came out in opposition to Amendment 64, saying in a statement:

Colorado is known for many great things –- marijuana should not be one of them. Amendment 64 has the potential to increase the number of children using drugs and would detract from efforts to make Colorado the healthiest state in the nation. It sends the wrong message to kids that drugs are OK.

To which Mason Tvert, co-director of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol — the organization behind Amendment 64 — responded with strong words for the Governor. “Governor Hickenlooper’s statement today ranks as one of the most hypocritical statements in the history of politics,” Tvert said. “After building a personal fortune by selling alcohol to Coloradans, he is now basing his opposition to this measure on concerns about the health of his citizens and the message being sent to children. We certainly hope he is aware that alcohol actually kills people. Marijuana use does not. The public health costs of alcohol use overall are approximately eight times greater per person than those associated with marijuana. And alcohol use is associated with violent crime. Marijuana use is not.”

Hickenlooper’s statement that Amendment 64 has the “potential to increase the number of children using drugs” is debatable at best. A recent study from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that marijuana use among Colorado minors is going down, while it is simultaneously going up nationally. The drop in usage by Colorado teens as seen in the CDC data — a drop below the national average — coincides with the same period that the medical marijuana industry developed in the state, between 2009 and 2011.

Marijuana legalization advocates point to the data as sign that regulation is helping reduce marijuana use amongst minors. Mason Tvert, co-director of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, told The Huffington Post “that even the partial regulation of marijuana can make it harder for young people to get their hands on marijuana. By regulating all marijuana sales, we can further reduce teen access and use.”

And a 2011 study from economists at University of Colorado Denver and Montana State University may backs that claim up. “Medical Marijuana Laws, Traffic Fatalities, and Alcohol Consumption” by Daniel I. Rees, from UCD, and D. Mark Anderson, from MSU looked at state level data from the more than a dozen states that had passed medical marijuana laws at the time of the study. Rees and Anderson found that there was no evidence of an increase in marijuana usage among minors in the states surveyed.

Amendment 64 will appear on Colorado’s ballot in November, but the state voting guide — the so-called “blue book” — will not include the three main arguments in favor of legalization after the Colorado Legislative Council deleted the text, in apparent confusion, and would not restore the text to the voter guide. The three deleted arguments “For” are as follows:

• Marijuana is objectively less harmful than alcohol.
• The consequences of a marijuana offense are too severe.
• Law enforcement resources would be better spent on more serious crimes.

The campaign says that the “Arguments For” Amendment 64 section of of the blue book is now just 208 words following the deletion, whereas the “Arguments Against” section is approximately 366 words — meaning “Against” has nearly 75 percent more words than the “For” section. “The blue book is supposed to be fair and balanced, and it’s safe to say this is quite lopsided and, thus, unfair,” the campaign said in a statement.

Source: Huffington Post (NY)
Author: Matt Ferner
Published: September 17, 2012
Copyright: 2012 HuffingtonPost.com, LLC
Contact: scoop@huffingtonpost.com
Website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Medical marijuana policy reform advocates will gather across the
country on Thursday to protest President Barack Obama’s aggressive
crackdown on the substance.

Americans for Safe Access, a national group promoting the advancement of cannabis for therapeutic use and research, announced in a release
Wednesday that the demonstrations will take place at select Obama
campaign offices and other locations in at least 15 cities in eight
states, as well as Washington D.C. These states — Arizona, California,
Colorado, Montana, Missouri, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington — have
all legalized marijuana for medical use, but the substance continues to
be classified as an illegal drug at the federal level, causing
widespread confusion and frequent legal repercussions for patients and
purveyors.

ASA says the events are part of its "Camp WakeUpObama" campaign, an
effort to highlight what the organization sees as dishonest or
unfulfilled promises made by Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder
regarding the prioritization of marijuana enforcement.

In 2008, then-candidate Obama claimed
he wouldn’t use the Justice Department to circumvent state laws on
medical marijuana. In 2010, however, Holder said that federal
authorities would continue to prosecute individuals for marijuana
possession, regardless of its legalized status on the state level. And
in 2011, the Justice Department issued another memo promising to crack down on pot shops in medical marijuana states.

And crack down they have. According to ASA’s latest calculations, the
Drug Enforcement Administration has conducted upwards of 200 SWAT-style
raids on medical marijuana facilities that are ostensibly legitimate
businesses, according to state law.

While the clampdown on dispensaries, particularly in states like California and Colorado,
has come at tremendous legal and financial costs to shop owners and
employees, ASA says the point of their protests is to give medical
marijuana patients a voice.

"President Obama must tell the more than one million patients in this
country how he intends to move this issue forward in his next
administration," said Steph Sherer, ASA’s executive director. "We are
sick and tired of being told to vote against our health. … Thursday’s
rallies are aimed at conveying that patients and their families are
voters who may be influenced this November by the president’s broken
promises on this issue."

Read more on Thursday’s ASA events here.

A referendum seeking to
overturn the city law banning medical marijuana dispensaries has
qualified for the ballot in the election next March, the Los Angeles
City Clerk’s office announced Monday.

Clerk June Lagmay said the more than 27,000 signatures
required to qualify were submitted and the City Council now has 20 days
in which to repeal the measure, modify it or schedule it for the
election.

Kris Hermes of Americans for Safe Access, which worked to
qualify the referendum, said he hoped the city would adopt a compromise
allowing more than 100 dispensaries that had applied for permits before
an interim control ordinance took effect.

"That is a reasonable compromise until the state Supreme Court
resolves the issue," Hermes said. "And, that way, the city can avoid
the costs associated with an election."

Councilman Jose Huizar, who authored the ban on the
dispensaries, said the city has tried to work with the medical marijuana
community, without success.

Montana voters will decide on Nov. 6 whether to keep the Legislature’s medical marijuana law that effectively repealed the 2004 voter-enacted law.

Between now and Election Day, additional restrictions from Senate Bill 423 may take effect. Last week, the Montana Supreme Court overturned a District Court judge’s ruling that certain provisions of SB423 violated rights guaranteed by the Montana Constitution. Helena District Judge Jim Reynolds issued a preliminary injunction last year, finding that the new law’s restrictions on medical marijuana providers and users amounted to unconstitutional infringement on citizens’ rights to privacy, to health care and to seek employment (as medical marijuana providers).

In overturning Reynolds’ ruling, the Supreme Court said there is no constitutional right to use marijuana or to sell it.

The 2011 Legislature acted because the voter-approved medical marijuana law was being exploited by a growing number of marijuana suppliers who encouraged people to get state medical marijuana cards. The number of cards issued grew tenfold within three years so that by the time the 2011 Legislature passed SB423, the state had nearly 30,000 registered medical marijuana users and 4,800 suppliers. Medical marijuana storefronts had sprouted along busy streets in Billing and other cities.

What had been promoted in 2004 as a compassionate law to allow seriously ill Montanans to legally access a drug that relieved their pain, glaucoma or nausea was transforming quickly into a marijuana-for-the-masses business.

The 2011 Legislature didn’t act on medical marijuana reform proposals from its interim committee. Instead, SB423 was cobbled together in the latter half of the 90-day session with less public input than the interim committee proposals had received.

Storefronts Shut Down

However, the new law has been effective at reining in legal marijuana suppliers and users. The law also authorized local governments to restrict medical marijuana storefronts, which Billings, Yellowstone County and other jurisdictions have since done. The law narrowed eligibility for medical marijuana cards and restricted the business of supplying card holders.

By August, the number of registered card holders had dropped to 8,849, registered suppliers numbered 399 and doctors recommending marijuana numbered 225. Back in December 2008, there had been 1,577 cardholders and 465 suppliers.

The Supreme Court decision allows the state to enforce a previously blocked provision in the new law that forbids legal suppliers from charging for marijuana. That change is likely to further reduce the number of legal suppliers and card holders.

The Legislature’s repeal of a voter-enacted law is troubling in its disregard of the people’s directive in 2004. However, the initiative proponents weren’t advertising “cannabis caravans,” medical marijuana shops a few blocks from schools or thousands of new users each month.

State-Federal Conflict

In his 12-page dissent from the majority medical marijuana opinion last week, Justice James C. Nelson said the state court simply should have dismissed the challenge to SB423 rather than sending it back to Reynolds.

“Montana’s medical marijuana laws, in effect, purport to make legal conduct that is violative of the federal Controlled Substances Act,” Nelson wrote. “That Montana’s courts have become complicit in this endeavor (by taking up questions regarding the interpretation of Montana’s medical marijuana laws in the absence of an actual underlying criminal prosecution) is shocking.”

Under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Nelson said, state law must give way to federal law “where compliance with both federal and state regulations is a physical impossibility.” If the illegality of marijuana is to be changed, Nelson said, Congress will have to change it first.

Nelson makes a good point: Regardless of what Montana voters decide in November, medical marijuana will remain risky for users and hazy for law enforcement.

Source: Billings Gazette, The (MT)
Published: September 16, 2012
Copyright: 2012 The Billings Gazette
Contact: speakup@billingsgazette.com
Website: http://www.billingsgazette.com/