FEDS RAID MEDICAL MARIJUANA OPERATIONS IN MISSOULA, STATEWIDE

Federal raids hit medical marijuana shops from Columbia Falls to
Billings on Monday, spreading "a horrible mixture of fear and rage"
through a community already roiled by high-profile attempts to
regulate it.

"The reckless and cruel disregard for the patients that count on these
shops is going to cause a lot of heartache," said John Masterson of
Missoula, who heads Montana NORML (National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws), which live-blogged information about the
raids throughout the day Monday.

Advocates for medical marijuana noted that federal agents executed
their search warrants even as a Montana Senate panel collected
testimony on a bill to repeal the state's 2004 voter initiative
legalizing medicinal use of marijuana. (See related story.)

"It sure feels like a blatant, obvious, calculated, bullying
interference by the federal government in Montana decision-making,"
said Tom Daubert, a leading medical marijuana advocate, who was in the
committee hearing Monday morning when he heard about the raids.

The only Missoula business that reported being affected was Montana
Cannabis, which opened in January at the corner of Brooks Street and
Stephens Avenue.

"We're closed," employee Toni Ware said to clients as they pulled up
to the shop early Monday afternoon. "We're closed."

"They even took our cannabis-infused lotion," she said a minute
later.

Montana Cannabis also owns a huge greenhouse along U.S. Highway 12 on
the western outskirts of Helena, where federal agents with guns drawn
handcuffed several employees during Monday's raid, according to an
Associated Press report. Shops in Columbia Falls, Bozeman and
Billings, among others, also reported being raided. (See related
story.) Ware said that no one was arrested during the operation at the
Missoula store.

However, she said agents took plants and products - the business
advertises, among other things, bars of medicinal soap at $20 each -
as well as computers and all client records.

"They're seizing everything - plants, marijuana, grow equipment, files
and computers. It's very, very broad in its scope," said Chris
Lindsey, a Missoula attorney who specializes in medical marijuana
cases and who has a lingering business interest in Montana Cannabis.
Lindsey said he spent much of Monday fielding calls seeking
information about the raids.

Victoria Francis of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Helena said the
search warrants remained sealed Monday.

However, Americans for Safe Access, a national advocacy group based in
California and Washington, D.C., asked the businesses raided Monday to
fax in the warrants.

One warrant provided by Big Sky Patient Care in Bozeman directed
agents to seize items such as marijuana, drug paraphernalia, cell
phones and computers "that are evidence of the commission of drug
trafficking offenses."

"This smacks of officials, whether law enforcement or hostile local
public officials, not getting their way and sidestepping the
democratic process to shut down legitimate providers," said Kris
Hermes, spokesman for Americans for Safe Access.

He criticized federal agents for pursuing cases against medical
marijuana providers despite Attorney General Eric Holder's memo of
October 2009 that termed prosecution of people legitimately using
medical marijuana "unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal
resources." The number of medical marijuana cardholders in Montana
nearly quadrupled in the 16 months after the memo was issued.

The memo specified that it does not apply to businesses that break
state law. Since that federal memo was issued, more than 50 businesses
have been raided in states with flourishing legal medical marijuana
markets - California, Colorado, Nevada and Michigan, and now Montana,
Hermes said.

Daubert said the raids could only hurt efforts to tweak Montana's
marijuana law, which even many medical marijuana advocates term so
vague as to have allowed for abuse.

"Here we've spent nearly a year working cooperatively as Montanans to
define the problems and propose solutions," said Daubert, who was one
of the founders of Montana Cannabis, but has since divested himself of
his interest. "Then at a very critical moment, suddenly the big
brother heel of federal government comes down on growers and
providers. ... It certainly feels like a calculated attempt to
influence Montana decision-making."