GOP BASHES MONTANA MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAW; DEMS FIRE BACK OVER REPEAL EFFORTS

HELENA - Republican legislative leaders strongly condemned Montana's
medical marijuana program Thursday, as they spoke to reporters at the
midsession break, while Democratic leaders denounced repeal attempts
as another GOP effort to defy the will of voters.

At a Capitol news conference, House Speaker Mike Milburn, R-Cascade,
talked about his bill to repeal the law, and Senate President Jim
Peterson, R-Buffalo, spoke strongly against medical marijuana,
although he stopped short of saying it should be repealed.

"On marijuana, it's a horse of another color now," Peterson said. "You
know, we started out with a white horse and now we got a black horse.
And we got to do something about it. It's out of control. We don't
need a state run with this kind of activity."

Peterson did say that perhaps Montanans should have another chance to
vote on the issue, and that they might change their mind this time and
reject it.

In 2004, Montana voters, by 62 percent to 38 percent, voted to
legalize the use of marijuana for medical treatment purposes.

Milburn's House Bill 161 would repeal that law. The bill has cleared
the House on a mostly party-line vote and now faces action in the Senate.

Milburn said Montana now is confronted with "an out-of-control
organized drug trade" involving organized crime.

"We're talking about infiltrating into the schools, into the
neighborhoods, taking down whole neighborhoods," Milburn said. "That's
what we're talking about now. So we're talking about a totally
different issue than what the people voted in."

Democratic leaders, however, were adamant against the repeal of the
medical marijuana law.

"That's not what the people of this state told us to do," said House
Minority Leader Jon Sesso, D-Butte. "There are sick and dying people
in this state that deserve to have their drug of choice. We have to
fix the system, not repeal it."

Senate Minority Leader Carol Williams, D-Missoula, called it another
Republican attempt this session to hijack a voter-passed law.

The medical marijuana law needs to be tweaked, not repealed, she
said.

"But to go out and say we're going to repeal it is one more attempt to
thumb your nose at the voters," she said.

Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, consistent with his policy, declined
to say what he will do if a repeal bill hits his desk, but he sounds
as if he agrees with Williams and Sesso.

"I think most people in Montana agree with me that the result of the
imitative that passed is one that we have more people with medical
marijuana cards than any of us anticipated there would have been," he
said in an interview this week. "The people ... said that there are a
certain number of people in our population that need or require the
medical marijuana as part of their treatment.

"I'm not going to say to the people of Montana that you were wrong
about that, but I certainly think that there are people that have got
marijuana cards that just want to smoke pot, not that they need
medicinal cannabis, as it's now called."

At the GOP news conference, Peterson asked if Montanans want one-third
of high school kids with medical-marijuana cards.

Official state statistics show that 51 people under age 18 have been
issued medical marijuana cards as of Feb. 1, or 0.18 percent of the
28,362 people with cards.

Milburn urged repeal of the law to give Montanans a chance to reassess
and reevaluate it "so we can get back on track with the medical part
of it, sometime this session or in the future."

"We have to protect the public safety and welfare of the people of our
state," he said.

Williams said the Legislature should consider HB68, by Rep. Diane
Sands, D-Missoula, which was developed by an interim committee that
studied the issue. That bill, which hasn't been acted on, imposes
stricter licensing and regulatory standards to stop some of current
abuses and charges fees to pay for it.

She cited current and past Republicans legislative efforts to change
voter-passed initiatives.