MEDICAL POT PROVIDERS JUST SAY NO TO LIMIT IDEA

Limit the number of medical marijuana patients a caregiver can sell
pot to? Ban caregivers from selling any marijuana to one another?
Make it illegal for anyone other than a licensed caregiver to handle
medical marijuana?

A panel of lawmakers brainstormed these and other ideas Monday in
Helena 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 more 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 said. Lawmakers "act like it's the end of the
world" that 20,000 Montanans use medical marijuana, Boustead said,
but what about the Montanans who use opiate-based prescription drugs?

"I bet you 10 bucks it's more than 20,000," she said. "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 law to the 2011 Legislature designed to close the
loopholes of Montana's 2004 citizen-passed medical marijuana law.

The panel had its first meeting last month, taking 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, Montana
Caregivers Network announced this week 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 on their record - or a misdemeanor drug conviction - to
become a licensed caregiver.

They also gave preliminary nod 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 that may allow marijuana to leave the legal realm.

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

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