REGULATIONS COVERING MEDICAL MARIJUANA VARY IN 15 STATES

Fifteen states plus the District of Columbia have legalized medicinal
marijuana: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine,
Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode
Island, Vermont and Washington.

But the laws allowing it in three of those locations Arizona, New
Jersey and the District of Columbia have yet to be formally
implemented, according to Paul Armentano, deputy director of the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

Maryland has a law that requires a judge to consider a defendant's
use of medical marijuana to be a mitigating factor in state
prosecutions involving violations of the marijuana laws. If a patient
who's arrested successfully argues at trial that his or her use of
marijuana is based on medical necessity, the maximum penalty allowed
by law is a $100 fine.

Most of the states that do allow medicinal marijuana do not have
statutes that specifically provide for dispensaries.

And there are moves afoot in some states to repeal laws that are
allowing people to use medical marijuana based on alleged abuses.

The Montana House of Representatives voted Feb. 10 to repeal the
state's 2004 voter-enacted marijuana law. Republican House Speaker
Mike Milburn says that many of the people who've been approved for
medical marijuana aren't terminally ill and that the law has created
a growing trade in illegal drugs. Marijuana grow-factories are
prevalent in Montana. In Michigan, dispensaries have sprouted up in
many places throughout the state even though there is nothing in that
state's medical marijuana laws that allows for them. This has led to
lawsuits questioning their legality.

Right now, Armentano says, there are just two states that have
state-regulated dispensaries up and running - Colorado and New
Mexico. Maine is about to become the third and the first on the East Coast.

Rhode Island is likely to become the fourth. The state Health
Department on Tuesday announced it would allow three dispensaries to
open - one in Providence, one in Warwick and another in Portsmouth.

As a result of legislation passed in Colorado last year, there are
currently about 1,000 medical marijuana dispensaries operating in
that state. The state has just promulgated new rules that will take
effect July 1.

State regulators in New Mexico have licensed 25 private entities to
produce and dispense medical marijuana. But some of the state's
politicians are against medical marijuana. The new governor,
Republican Susana Martinez, pledged during her campaign to rescind
the law. Freshman Rep. James E. Smith, a high school teacher,
introduced a bill Feb. 17 to repeal the medical-marijuana law, saying
it "sends a bad message to kids that somehow marijuana is good for you."

But, Smith has decided not to push for the legislation to be
considered this year, replacing it with a measure that would ask the
Department of Health to conduct a study on the program's
effectiveness, the impact it's had on the state, "to identify lessons
learned from implementation of the law... and whether continuation of
the program is justified," and to deliver it to the legislature by October.

Legislation was passed in Colorado last year which is imposing state
control on marijuana dispensary operators.

Medical marijuana dispensaries operate in other states, but they are
not state-regulated and many are not operating legally, says
Armentano. In California, dispensaries are either allowed or
disallowed by municipalities so they "fall into a legal gray area,"
says Armentano. Legislation has been introduced this term to try to
clarify what the state deems allowable and set clear regulations
statewide for the operation of these dispensaries, he said.

The state's attorney general advised in 2008 that the distribution
and nonprofit sales of medical cannabis is permitted by qualified
"collectives and cooperatives" but that "storefront" businesses that
engage in the for-profit sales of medical marijuana "are likely
operating outside the protections" of state law.

"Of course," says Armentano, "virtually all operating California
dispensaries operate as the latter and not the former."