PROPOSALS TO FIX POT LAW IRK SOME USERS

HELENA - Limit the number of medical marijuana patients that a
caregiver can sell pot to? Ban caregivers from selling pot to one another?

Make it illegal for anyone other than a licensed caregiver to
dispense medical marijuana?

A panel of lawmakers in Helena brainstormed these and other ideas
Monday as it continued to grapple with a sudden expansion in
Montana's young medical marijuana industry.

Not all of those ideas were good, said some who grow and use medical marijuana.

"You guys are going to take away my profit. I'm trying to make a
living," said Mare Boustead, a caregiver and patient from Bozeman.

Boustead said she has 24 patients as a caregiver and bristled at the
notion that the law should force her to have no fewer than three or
five - one of the ideas lawmakers discussed Monday.

She also questioned why the committee continually brought up the fact
that Montana has more than 20,000 medical marijuana patients as of June.

"How many kids are on Ritalin that you guys don't seem to care about
or think about?" she asked.

Lawmakers "act like it's the end of the world" that 20,000 Montanans
use medical marijuana, Boustead said, but asked what about the
Montanans who use opiate-based prescription drugs?

"I bet you 10 bucks it's more than 20,000," she said. She added: "If
you believe in the free market, the free market will work itself out."

The bipartisan panel is a smaller offshoot of the Children, Families,
Health and Human Services Interim Committee. The group has been
studying the issue of medical marijuana for weeks and intends to
bring some kind of bill to the 2011 Legislature to close the
loopholes of Montana's 2004 citizen-passed medical marijuana law.

Last month, the panel had its first meeting and took particular aim
at the "traveling clinics" sponsored by the Missoula-based Montana
Caregivers Network. Such clinics could provide hundreds of people
with medical marijuana cards in a single day. However, the network
announced this week that it was shutting down the so-called "cannabis
caravans."

Lawmakers on Monday took up other aspects of the business, all aimed
at ridding the system of abuses. To that end, lawmakers agreed to try
to change the law to make it illegal for anyone with a felony
conviction or a misdemeanor drug conviction to become a licensed caregiver.

They also gave preliminary approval to making caregivers submit to
background checks that would look at convictions in all 50 states.

At least one caregiver who sat in the audience of Monday's meeting
said he thought that was a good idea.

But other ideas that dealt with how the industry actually works met
with greater criticism.

Of particular concern is the ability of caregivers to sell marijuana
to each other. Lawmakers have contended that the practice leaves the
too much gray area for marijuana to leave the legal realm.

Several caregivers said banning such transfers would be a bad idea
because marijuana growers are, in a way, farmers and sometimes crops fail.

The committee meets again next month. None of the ideas proposed
Monday is set in stone. Any bill the committee produces would also
have to pass the muster of the full 2011 Legislature, which probably
will have a full slate of bills to consider dealing with medical marijuana.