KIDS' USE OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA STIRS DEBATE OVER FUTURE IN MONTANA

Only 52 people under age 18 legally use medical marijuana in
Montana.

That's not even 2 percent of the total. Yet the debate over its future
keeps circling back to kids.

"The No. 1 goal is to reduce access and availability to the young
people of this state that are being sent an incorrect message that
this is an acceptable product for them to be using," Sen. Jeff
Essmann, R-Billings, said recently in arguing for repeal of Montana's
medical marijuana law by the 2011 Legislature.

"It's a serious problem, no doubt about it," Jim Gingery, executive
director of the Montana Medical Growers Association, said of marijuana
use by young people. "We absolutely believe in protecting children."

Proponents of medical marijuana - they prefer the term "therapeutic
cannabis" - cite that tiny percentage as proof that the state's 2004
voter-approved initiative legalizing medical marijuana has had little
effect on teen marijuana use.

"For the illegal street drug marijuana, it's been a problem and
remains a problem," Gingery said. But he said, "There's very, very few
cases of medical cannabis found in schools."

One of those cases occurred earlier this month at DeSmet School in
Missoula, where at least four eighth-graders ate cookies baked with
marijuana-laced butter allegedly provided by 18-year-old Willard High
student Tyler Pyle, a medical marijuana cardholder.

An anomaly, said Gingery. The real problem, he said, lies in parents'
medicine cabinets. "With the number of pharmaceuticals being traded in
schools now, it is out of hand," he said.

New DeSmet principal Joe Halligan said that in his seven short months
on the job here - he spent 10 years in Billings as an elementary
school teacher - he's only dealt with one case of potential
prescription drug abuse.

Halligan emphasized that in Missoula, he's dealing with older
students. DeSmet includes kindergarten through eighth grade.

Still, he said, "I've definitely seen and heard about (marijuana)
hundreds of more times than I would have in Billings in 10 years. ...

"I've been a deer in the headlights for a lot of what I've
encountered."

Medical privacy laws and regulations regarding juveniles make it
difficult to get details on the young people with medical marijuana
cards in Montana.

Jamie Guerin was one: The 18-year-old with Duchenne muscular dystrophy
died in October in Missoula.

And Kati Welch was the first minor who registered for a card when she
started using medical cannabis at 17 to cope with medical conditions
that resulted in seven brain and spinal surgeries in three years,
according to comments she made on a YouTube video.

"My mom got so much crap from people. What would you do when your
daughter's crawling down the hall, puking, and can't get out of bed
and having to get three Demoral shots a week and ... you've tried
everything the doctor said?" Welch asked on the video released last
year by Patients and Families United. The group promotes reforming the
medical marijuana law, but adamantly opposes repeal.

Welch told Hiedi Handford of Lincoln, who writes the Montana Connect
blog on medical cannabis, last week that she was too ill to discuss
the subject. Handford said few young people who use medical marijuana,
or parents whose children use it, want to talk about it publicly.

Because of the uproar over medical marijuana, Handford said, "people
are worried about having their children taken away."

Mike Hyde of Missoula, though, remains outspoken on the subject.
Hyde's 2 1/2 -year-old son Cash is likely the youngest medical
marijuana cardholder in the state, if not the country.

Cash Hyde was diagnosed last year with a brain tumor and his father
said that 3-milliliter doses of marijuana oil in the boy's gastric
tube allowed his son to stop using powerful painkillers and start
eating again following intensive rounds of chemotherapy.

"We're off the chemo. We're cancer-free. We beat Stage 4 cancer," Hyde
said. Cash goes back to the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the
University of Utah next month for a brain scan, he said.

Mike Hyde said that long before it was legal, he self-medicated with
marijuana as a teenager because it gave him better results than
Ritalin. "I'd just smoke a little cannabis before school and I'd be
fine," he said.

When it comes to young people using marijuana, he said, "I'd be more
concerned about kids eating McDonald's or playing with plastic toys
with lead-based paint from China. Cannabis is the last thing they need
to really worry about."

Glen Welch, a Missoula County Youth Court probation officer, worries
about it a lot.

"Kids who smoke marijuana damage their brains," he said. "Just because
you have a card doesn't mean you don't damage your brain."

Welch wants to be clear that he's not against the medical use of
marijuana, and that he's not naive about the fact that kids smoked
dope long before its therapeutic use was legalized.

But he said that legalization - especially the free-form Montana
variety - "has opened up a can of worms" by making marijuana use
socially acceptable.

It's also made marijuana more available, said Missoula Police Officer
Jim Johnson, the school resource officer at Hellgate High School.

"I really feel that having medical marijuana (legalized) has really
made it easier for kids to get the drug," Johnson wrote in an email.
"I have several sources who have told me that they have bought
marijuana from a person with a green card."

Deputy Missoula County Attorney Andrew Paul, who prosecutes drug
cases, likewise said the high visibility of medical marijuana in
Missoula County coincides with a rise in marijuana use by young people.

"Now that we've seen medical marijuana really take off, we're seeing
more and more marijuana in the schools and in the hands of students,"
Paul said. "... Look at the message we're sending young people: 'It's
not dangerous. It's benign.' "

State and national studies back up that anecdotal information.

An increase in the availability of marijuana, along with a decrease in
the perception of its risk, paralleled a rise in teens' use of
marijuana, a 2010 Montana Department of Health and Human Services
study showed.

Last year, marijuana surpassed cigarettes as the second-most abused
substance by Montana eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders. In Missoula
County, one in three high school seniors reported smoking pot in the
previous 30 days, compared to just under one in four statewide.

And a 2010 National Institutes of Health Study, "Monitoring the
Future: National Results on Adolescent Drug Use," said its most
important finding was the rise in marijuana use by teens over the
last few years, after years of decline.

Both surveys show alcohol, by far, continues to be the most abused
substance by teens.

But the NIH study found that for the first time since 1981, more high
school seniors had reported smoking pot than drinking in the previous
30 days.

"Nearly one in 16 high school seniors today," it reported, "is a
current daily, or near-daily, marijuana user."