Open Letter to Governor Schweitzer Regarding SB423

April 22, 2011 in Montana

Open Letter to Governor Schweitzer regarding SB423,
Medical Marijuana Policy Courtesy of a Keystone Cop Process

A guest post by Kate Cholewa of www.cannabisandculture.com

Dear Governor Schweitzer,

I know you have many issues on your plate and a record number of idiotic bills coming to your desk. I hope you have a moment to consider the process by which the legislature came to develop SB423. The process was like watching the Keystone Cops making law. The result, the conference committee report on SB423, is a thinly veiled repeal of the medical cannabis law in Montana.

An interim committee met over the summer and came up with a bipartisan bill, HB 68, which created a licensing structure for medical cannabis businesses. Rep. Sands chaired this committee and spearheaded the bill. A big part of the discussion from Sands, the interim committee, and at the time, law enforcement, was the need for storefronts so that this system would be out in the open – zoned, yes – but not operating under the radar. So the far-sighted business people did what far-sighted business people do, they opened storefronts, if they didn’t have them already, and positioned themselves for compliance.

Sen. Lewis also forwarded a regulatory bill, SB154. The provisions in it stacked the deck, favoring some in the medical cannabis workforce over others. The overall model didn’t drive quality. But that’s not what did it in. The bill included a 10% tax on growers, some of which was slated to be used to fund senior services. But the tax wasn’t going to fly with Lewis’ fellow Republicans. The bill was D.O.A. At the hearing, Sen. Lewis presented a substitute bill, which has come to be known as the Grey Bill. It was a clunky piece of work though it better represented what kinds of regulations were needed than did SB154. To a lesser degree than SB 154, it also played favorites with the work force. Some provisions were silly. But it really doesn’t matter. Sen. Lewis wasn’t really behind it. He tossed it on the table and turned and walked away just to vote for repeal later. But this isn’t really surprising. This sort of thing is Lewis’ M.O.

(More after the break)

Sen. Essman had a bill to kill the program by making a chronic pain referral impossible to get. Rep. Berry had a bill that repealed the current system and made it so that if you were caught with cannabis but could prove you were using it for medical purposes, you wouldn’t get charged. This bill, HB 429, was then later used as the base for a potential committee bill from the House. But this effort was abandoned.

Sen. Vuckovich had a bill, SB193, which tweaked current law based on provisions Arizona had adopted. His bill was sent to the Senate Public Health committee even though the other bills were going to Senate Judiciary. Then the bill was re-referred to Senate Judiciary but a hearing wasn’t scheduled until it was too late for transmittal.

And then there were the raids timed to coincide with the vote on the repeal bill, HB161, in Senate Judiciary. There is ample evidence that a handful of Republican legislators knew the raids were going to happen. We have yet to hear whether those raided were in violation of state law. But even if they were, or some of them were, the timing and political collusion is deeply disturbing.

Because HB161 to repeal medical marijuana laws in Montana failed, the Senate Judiciary decided they needed to create a committee bill to regulate the program. They formed a subcommittee that claimed to be reviewing all the legislation that had come before them in order to create this new legislation.  But what they ginned up in a couple of meetings was yet another new model. This model eliminated dispensing centers of any sort. It created a ridiculous courier system wherein the patient calls the grower to place an order and then the patient calls a courier to pick the order up. The courier then calls law enforcement and reports that s/he’ll be shuttling a tincture and two brownies – or whatever it might be – between the addresses of the grower and the patient. The business model for the growers was an unclear 5-member Board (sort of) of a nonprofit which could grow up to 95 plants. The bill also cut all chronic pain patients off in August and required them to reapply under more expensive and onerous requirements. The bill did nothing to raise the quality of the medical protocol, product, or business practices. Oh yeah, and it assigned licensing to the Public Service Commission (PSC).

Rep. Sands came in to testify in support of the bill which was troublesome to patients and advocates. After all her work with the summer interim committee it was difficult to understand how a person could go from supporting a structured licensing system with an emphasis on storefronts after months of work to thinking the clumsy model that came out of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee was worth going on the record in favor of.

That was during the committee hearing. During 2^nd reading on the Senate floor, Senators Wazenried, Van Dyke, Erickson, and Caferro all made efforts to amend the bill, SB423, that came out of Senate Judiciary. Wanzenried’s amendment to allow growers to transfer product among themselves succeeded. Van Dyke’s to move it from the PSC to the Department of Agriculture succeeded, at first, but then was changed so that licensing would sit with the Department of Labor. Erickson had tried to fix the onerous chronic pain provisions and Caferro tried to amend in dispensing centers. But those amendments failed.

Then, the bill was transmitted to the House.

Despite the good amendments by Wanzenried and Van Dyke, SB423 was still unworkable. In the House Human Services committee, Rep. Noonan planned to offer a slate of amendments to SB423 that would have gotten rid of the ridiculous couriers and provided a base level of functionality. In the morning, Rep. Sands said she thought they were good amendments. By that afternoon, her position had changed. She slipped into a room with Rep. “Repeal” Milburn, Rep. McGillvray (another repeal guy), and Rep. Berry (go to court, HB429). This group of four came out of that room an hour later with amendments that made SB423 even more oppressive and unworkable. Growers could have one patient only, plus two family members. No compensation for growers. This group did a little press release claiming a bipartisan agreement (much to many Democrats’ surprise).

So the next day at the hearing, there were two sets of amendments that would significantly change the bill. One set, the Noonan set, moved the bill toward functionality. The other set by the group of four moved the bill toward repeal.

The set of amendments that moved the bill toward repeal won out. And by gum, you know it was a good bill by the 200 amendments to it that have been proposed in conference committee since.

How Rep. Sands went from supporting a licensing system, to supporting a nonprofit business/courier model, to supporting a hippie, free weed, grow-your-own model remains a mystery. There’s no internal consistency in her approach, it’s definitely not about party loyalty, and it’s not about her constituents. Her history of working on behalf of reproductive privacy makes it additionally perplexing. Rep. Sands wouldn’t be as pleased with the legislation she’s played a key role in creating if it applied to abortion and required that if you wanted an abortion you would need to find someone who would do it for free, and any doctor who performed more than 15 abortions would be investigated by the Board of Medical Examiners, and for some abortions, you needed two doctors to concur that an abortion would be appropriate. Nothing in Roe vs. Wade talks about clinics and advertising, does it? Then maybe clinics and advertising for abortion services shouldn’t be allowed. That’s the argument they’re using for disallowing medical cannabis dispensing centers, that there’s no mention of them in the initiative thus they shouldn’t be allowed to exist. If a woman committed a felony, what if she could no longer access abortion services? Was the intention of Roe vs. Wade that abortion is available only to women who REALLY need abortions (“need” as defined by legislators)?

(Those other three legislators in that group of four she worked with would be happy to apply all these provisions to a woman seeking an abortion.)

So the bill from the committee of four became the foundation for the conference committee bill. After consideration of 200 or so amendments in conference committee, SB 423 now represents the worst medical cannabis law in the country. Four of the six on the conference committee voted for repeal. SB 423 is not regulation, which is what the voters wanted. It’s repeal in disguise, and despite how time-consuming it was to create, it’s not even a very good disguise. The conference committee bill:

• Makes it virtually impossible for patients with chronic pain to get a referral.
• Requires investigations of physicians making more than 15 referrals (and the physician must pay for the investigation).
• Patients must find someone who will grow cannabis for them for free, and that provider may only provide smokable product or infused products. So a patient has to choose between one or the other.
• Labs for cannabis testing and quality control are essentially banned.
• If you are providing cannabis-infused products made in your kitchen for even just a family member, you must by law use separate pans and cooking utensils in order to produce the products. (Are they going to arrest people for making omelettes in cootied-up “pot pans”?)
• Local government may ban storefronts. This is hilarious. Why would there be storefronts when a provider can only provide for up to three people and must do it for free? Stupid. It’s another example of how divorced from reality these legislators and this legislation is.
• Because you can only provide for up to three patients for free, those saints who choose to do the work will be doing it out of their homes. So “premise” in the bill now refers to people’s homes. So if you provide medical cannabis to someone for free, your private home is now subject to entry by the state or law enforcement and any area of the premises (your home) must be made available for inspection without delay.
• Advertising is also banned. No advertising the fact that you’re willing to grow marijuana for free for three people and that law enforcement can now rummage through your desk and nightstand on demand. Phew. Montanans can now sleep safer.
• Here’s the kicker: As a provider of medical cannabis or cannabis-infused products, you MAY NOT “buy or sell mature marijuana plants, seedlings, cuttings, clones, usable marijuana, or marijuana-infused products.” So good luck finding a seed somewhere and hope the crop is up by the patient’s second or third round of chemo.

There are no patients stepping forward and saying ‘thank you for bringing some standards and quality to the medical cannabis program.’ The people who like this bill are those who like repeal.

Because it is repeal.

It’s a joke.

Kate Cholewa
www.cannabisandculture.com
© 2011