According to the Great Falls, Montana
Tribune, at an October 2009 medical marijuana health
screening in that city, a Dr. Patricia Cole of Whitefish examined
150 patients in 14 and a half hours. That’s an average of one
every six minutes. Dr. Cole is affiliated with the Missoula-based
“Montana Caregivers Network” (MCN), which promotes the traveling
“Cannabis Caravans” in the Treasure State. And these aren’t
conducted in hospitals or clinic settings. They can be set up in
a conference room in a local hotel. For a fee ($150, or $100 for
veterans and low income people) a doctor examines you and decides
if you are eligible — depending on your specific physical or
psychological complaint — for a card that permits you to be
prescribed medical marijuana from a personal “caregiver.” Some
submitted paperwork and payment for the “examination” and an
additional $25 registration fee is all it takes to be issued a
card, as no formal medical records are required, only a stated
complaint such as chronic headaches or insomnia or back pain. And
a card permits not only access to the marijuana retail outlets
and licensed caregivers, but also allows one to grow a limited
amount of the weed for one’s own use.
The Tribune goes on to relate that the Montana
Board of Medical Examiners has frowned on Dr. Cole’s
entrepreneurial adventures amongst the stoners, and fined her
$2,000 for promoting “inadequate standards of care.” It further
noted that Dr. Cole “did not document medical histories.[or]
discuss proper dosing… [or] document a risk analysis of medical
marijuana.” Dr. Cole is Montana’s first physician to be so
disciplined. The Montana Caregivers Network supplied her with
legal counsel and paid her fine. The above is illustrative of the
problems Montana is now dealing with as a poorly written law
light on regulation is currently implemented.
In 2004, 62% of Treasure State voters approved Initiative
148, which legalized medical marijuana for “certified patients”
with a “debilitating medical condition” (i.e. cancer, AIDS,
glaucoma, etc.). In October 2009, the Obama Administration
ordered federal prosecutors to cease prosecuting medical
marijuana patients in the legalized states. Montana — one of
fourteen states and the District of Columbia to have legalized
medical marijuana — now has 15,000 registered “patients,” up
from 3,000 a year ago. It turns out there’s a lot of sick folks
riding the Cannabis Caravan in Montana. “Before the doors even
open the parking lot has 300 kids throwing Frisbees and playing
Hacky-Sack,” Mark Long, narcotics chief for the Montana
Department of Justice told the Wall Street
Journal.
However, the brave new world of medicinal dope has a darker
side than hippies tossing around Frisbees. In Kalispell a man was
murdered who was tied to the theft of medical marijuana. There
have been related assaults in the Missoula area. In Billings,
Montana’s largest city, there have been two firebombings of
medical marijuana outlets and “Not in our town” spray painted on
the walls. The Billings City Council, with 80 licensed weed
dispensaries already in the city of 100,000, has lately
instituted a six-month moratorium on an additional 25 more. “It’s
an absolute nightmare,” Billings Mayor Tom Hanel told the
WSJ. “My prediction is that it’s only going to get worse
if we continue to allow it.” Kalispell and Great Falls have also
followed the moratorium route, as have the small towns of
Anaconda near Butte, and Cascade near Great Falls. These last two
(and scores of others in the state) underscore the simple fact
that small municipalities lack the law enforcement capability to
deal with criminality related to the dispensing of medical
marijuana. And here’s an interesting set of statistics: Montana
has roughly 1,000 licensed pharmacies, from small town drugstores
to those found in chain retail stores such as Walmart; and in the
last few years it’s accumulated 5,000 caregivers (mostly growing
marijuana at home) and storefront outlets. And another: 9% of
Montanans on probation or on parole from the state correctional
system are in possession of medical marijuana cards.
The Montana Caregivers Network is an interesting entity.
It’s a nonprofit whose executive director Jason Christ is the
poster boy for medical marijuana in the Treasure State. Christ
has attracted much media attention leading “smoke-ins” around the
state, where he has made a show of lighting up in front of the
State Capitol in Helena and within sight of police headquarters
in Missoula. For Christ, medical marijuana (and it would seem
legalization in general) is a public crusade. A typical quote: “I
honestly feel like this has become a civil rights issue.” MCN has
recently instituted online “TeleClinics,” physician exams via
webcam; that is, it is now possible to access the Cannabis
Caravan via cyberspace. That’ll certainly save MCN rental fees
for all those hotel conference rooms. But one wonders what the
Montana Board of Medical Examiners thinks of such an impersonal
and medically unethical doctor-patient encounter?
There is a definite dichotomy seen in Montana’s medical
marijuana controversy. Initiative 148 was very popular in urban
Montana; cities such as Billings, Helena, Great Falls, Butte, and
the liberal college towns of Missoula and Bozeman. Not so much in
small towns across the vast rural reaches of the Treasure State.
Urban Montana mustered the votes to pass 148. What is it about
medical weed and university towns, not only in Montana, but
across the country?
Missoula, population 70,000, is home to the University of
Montana. There are a dozen storefront outlets and 400 registered
caregiver/growers serving 1,800 (and growing) card carriers.
According to a
story in the Missoulian, many residents laud the
fact that medical marijuana is giving a previously moribund
commercial real estate market a boost, as more storefront outlets
open. And garden supply stores are booming. Bozeman, population
35,000, and home to Montana State University, has 500 caregivers.
One in 70 people in Bozeman is a caregiver. These are two cities
populated for much of the year by thousands of young, vigorously
healthy college students. Maybe there’s a high rate of card
carriers among the more long-in-the tooth administrations and
faculties.
Montana seems to be learning the lessons of California, a
state always incubating bad ideas. After a decade of dispensary
expansion, Los Angeles has now started to tightly regulate
medical weed, and is closing many outlets (L.A. has more of these
than it has Starbucks) that are home to criminal activity and
gang infiltration. Missoula isn’t Los Angeles, but the same sort
of problems are already cropping up there.
The Montana State Legislature will join the fray during its
next session in January 2011, when it will take up legislative
reform related to filling the many abuse-ridden regulatory holes
in the 2004 Initiative. And there are calls from some of its
Republican members to simply repeal the whole mess. So the
question remains: Who — if anybody — will be permitted to get
high under the Big Sky?
