LOBBYIST CALLS FOR REGULATORY OVERSIGHT OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA

The Montana Department of Agriculture is best suited to regulate the
production and sale of Montana's burgeoning and largely unregulated
medical marijuana, said Tom Daubert of Helena, the head of Patients
and Families United, a lobbying group representing medical marijuana
patients.

Oversight of medical marijuana would fit the department's mission
because it already regulates agricultural agricultural commodities and
nurseries, said Daubert, who is also a medical marijuana caregiver who
can grow or provide marijuana for one or more patients.

There was proposed oversight in a bill that Daubert helped write
during the last legislative session, which passed the state Senate but
not the House. Among other things, the bill would have empowered the
state Health Department to audit caregivers.

Regulatory oversight is an essential step that is absent from existing
law and would have helped prevent some of the abuses that occurred
this past year, Daubert said.

"Those producing should be held accountable with good record keeping
on everything they produce and documentation on where it's going,"
Daubert said in a telephone interview from Helena. Daubert's comments
come as a legislative panel is looking to tighten medical marijuana
regulations. The bipartisan panel voted 7-1 to have the bill drafted
and prepared for introduction during the 2011 Legislature, which
convenes in January. The panel has been working for months on a
rewrite of Montana's medical marijuana laws in response to the
dramatic growth of medical marijuana businesses and users.

The League of Cities and Towns also has made it a priority to
encourage the Legislature to do something to clean up the state's
problematic medical marijuana law.

Montana voters approved medical marijuana by initiative in 2004. The
state, which had fewer than 4,000 medical marijuana patients a year
ago, now has about 22,700 people with a medical marijuana card. Growth
and sale of the drug have become a booming business in Montana. The
law allows qualified patients and their caregivers to grow and/or
possess a restricted number of marijuana plants.

A poll released Oct. 29 suggested that 47 percent of Montanans may be
ready to repeal medical marijuana use.

"We're not going backward," Daubert said. "It's a human rights issue.
It's a patient's rights issue and a constitutional rights issue. I
fear the worst if they completely eliminate it. What really matters
more is that I am convinced there are consensus opportunities to fix
the law in ways that will end abuses."

Patients and family members have sought to improve the law during both
of the past two sessions. There is broad agreement that the law has
problems that need to be fixed in order for the intent of the law to
be fulfilled.

"These are opportunities on which lawmakers will want to work with
patients and law enforcement," Daubert said.