LEGAL POT: AN RX FOR DISASTER?

The citizens of Montana no doubt had good intentions in 2004 when
they overwhelmingly voted to allow medical use of marijuana.

It was a feel-good initiative designed to allow some patients with
certain medical conditions such as cancer, glaucoma or AIDS to ease
their symptoms with marijuana.

That was all well and good back in 2005, soon after the Medical
Marijuana Act was approved, when there were 119 approved patients on
the state's medical marijuana registry.

Fast forward to today, when a recent explosion of the pursuit of pot
has sent the number of legal marijuana users and growers soaring.

Today there are some 11,000 registered marijuana users statewide --
and more than 3,000 of those have been registered since January of this year.

Would voters six years ago have been so favorable if they had
foreseen what is happening in 2010?

Would Flathead County voters in particular have been inclined to
approve 400 growing operations in this county alone?

Each grower (or, to use the more polite legal euphemism, each
"caregiver") can have six pot plants for each patient and a caregiver
can have more than one patient.

Do the math: 16 percent of caregivers have more than five patients,
so now there is a veritable legal marijuana industry that has sprung
up virtually overnight. The Mexican cartels must be getting worried.

More marijuana math: There are currently 1,500 state-certified
marijuana patients in Flathead County -- or almost 2 percent of the
population here.

As one reader inquired last week: "Are we really that much sicker up here?"

It's more likely that economics and opportunism are at work. There's
money to be made in the marijuana trade and the risk of being busted
has vanished because the federal government is no longer enforcing
its ban on medical marijuana.

We don't mean to disparage the real need that some people have for
the medical benefits of marijuana. But we question whether there are
so many truly in need to justify hundreds of marijuana producers and
dozens of neighborhood pot shops.

The recently developing marijuana free-for-all has tied city
governments up in knots trying to figure out how to regulate an
industry that didn't really exist as recently as last year.

That's at least partially due to the vagueness of Montana law on
medical marijuana -- vagueness that also hamstrings law enforcement's
ability to deal with illegal marijuana.

Those precious and proliferating marijuana registration cards from
the state essentially have become get-out-of-jail-free cards for
some. With so many legal users, it becomes nearly impossible to bust
illegal pot smokers.

We are faced, then, with a choice between having de facto legalized
marijuana for almost everyone or attempting some better regulation
through legislation.

The soonest that regulation would come is next year's Legislature, so
it is recommended that voters question candidates closely about where
they stand on this issue.

If you support the free flow of marijuana in our society, then vote
for people who will maintain the status quo or support legalization.
But if you want to see the genie go back in the bottle, vote for
candidates who support additional restrictions.