MEDICAL MARIJUANA COMMUNITY ON EDGE AFTER RAIDS

Some dispensary owners express need for more state
regulations

Montana Cannabis Company, a medical marijuana dispensary in Evergreen,
was oddly empty last Wednesday. The glass cases that usually display
owner Matthew Wymer's products stood void, housing only tie-dyed shelf
liners and a piece of paper listing marijuana strains.

Wymer, who said he has been a caregiver for a couple years and opened
his storefront last month, said he usually sees 10 to 15 patients a
day.

"Yesterday and today I've seen zero," he said.

The medical marijuana community in the Flathead is spooked, he said,
after federal agents executed 26 search warrants on several medical
marijuana facilities throughout the state on March 14.

"It's sketchy right now; there's a whole lot of people running around
like chickens with their heads cut off," Wymer said.

Several warrants were issued for the Flathead, including on businesses
in Kalispell, Olney, Whitefish and Columbia Falls.

Michael Cotter, U.S. attorney for the District of Montana, said in a
prepared statement that the raids were the culmination of a specific,
18-month investigation into drug trafficking and criminal enterprises
operating in the Big Sky state.

The warrants were served where "there is probable cause that the
premises were involved in illegal and large-scale trafficking of
marijuana," Cotter said.

Cotter added that individuals with illnesses who are in "clear and
unambiguous compliance with state law" were not the focus of the
investigation.

Still, for some members of the medical marijuana community in the
Flathead, the raids caused confusion and raised fears about running a
state-sanctioned but federally illegal business.

"I think there's some definite unrest," said Brad McMillan of Four
Seasons Gardening near Columbia Falls. "People are afraid of becoming
criminals doing what they were told they could do."

Montana voters approved the Medical Marijuana Act in 2004, but the
federal government still considers marijuana an illegal substance. The
state law faced repeal in the Legislature this month, but the effort
stalled. It remains unclear whether other legislation aimed at
tightening marijuana rules will be successful.

McMillan said the lack of clear medical marijuana regulations from the
state allows for ambiguity, and it is an issue he hopes lawmakers will
address.

"This whole community has been screaming for guidance for some time
and not getting it," McMillan said.

Mike Lee, owner of the dispensary Westside Medical, LLC, said last
week's raid made him nervous about running a medical marijuana business.

"Everyone was really scared," Lee said, standing in his shop located
near Columbia Falls on U.S. Highway 2.

The raids coincided with a failed 6-6 vote in the state Legislature's
Senate Judiciary Committee to repeal Montana's Medical Marijuana Act,
prompting suspicion among dispensary owners that the raids were
politically motivated. Although that feeling began to wane somewhat as
more information about the investigation was released.

Good Medicine Providers and Northern Lights Medical, two different
businesses located in the same building near Columbia Falls, were
served warrants on March 16. Employees there, who spoke with the
Beacon on the condition that their names are not used due to pending
legal uncertainties, said the federal agents forced patients from
their waiting rooms.

"They scared the crap out of our patients," one employee
said.

The employees said the federal agents took pounds of marijuana from
the facility. One employee said they expected to have their computer
back on the evening of March 16 and that they were confident Good
Medicine Providers would reopen eventually.

Pot plants, computers, files and paraphernalia were seized from many
of the locations around the state during the raids, according to
reports from The Associated Press. The search warrants remain sealed.

One of the biggest raids was at a large greenhouse in Helena owned by
Montana Cannabis. Good Medicine Providers is not affiliated with
Montana Cannabis, the employees said.

As of press time, no criminal charges had been filed as a result of
the raids. However, Ryan Wells, owner of Advanced Farming of Montana,
said that it could benefit the medical cannabis community if illegal
activities are prosecuted.

"A lot of people do work this properly and stay within the legal
limits," Wells said.

The mention of alleged money laundering in the search warrants raised
red flags for some in the community, including Wells, who said the
larger marijuana businesses are likely to get more attention from
federal authorities than small-to mid-level operations.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, civil seizure warrants for
financial institutions in Bozeman, Helena and Kalispell sought to
freeze up to $4 million in assets.

Since the warrants were part of a specific federal investigation,
Wells said he is less nervous that federal agents will show up at his
door.

"I don't think you'll see blatant raids," he said.

Wells is a member of the Montana Medical Growers Association, which
formed about a year ago as a way to present a unified voice for the
community.

The Flathead chapter of the MMGA meets the first Thursday of every
month at the Red Lion Hotel in Kalispell. Discussions include the lack
of specific rules and clarity in state law, he said. Harsher
regulations would help legitimize medical marijuana and illegally run
businesses would have to tighten up their processes to remain viable.

"I think we just need hardcore regulations to weed all the bad people
out," he said. "I want regulations because it would stiffen up the
competition."

MMGA Executive Director Jim Gingery said every profession has a few
bad seeds that it needs to deal with, but the alleged mistakes of a
few are not a reflection on the entire industry.

"That doesn't mean they're all bad; it doesn't mean you don't have to
have some rules in place, which is what we've been asking for,"
Gingery said. "We didn't ask for prohibition, we asked for reasonable
rules in place."

Some of the gray areas in medical marijuana law include
caregiver-to-caregiver transactions, he said, which is something he
hoped the Legislature would help clear up. MMGA has been working with
lawmakers to help craft new industry regulations, he said.

Gingery, however, considers the recent raids a federal intrusion into
Montana law that could have negative effects on the patients the
dispensaries served.

"The result of these raids means that the patients served by those
storefronts may not be able to legally obtain medicine for more than
two months due to the backlog of processing at (the state health
department)," Gingery said.

At his Evergreen store, Wymer said he expects the medical marijuana
community to remain wary for some time after the raids, and is
uncertain what it could mean for the future of his store.

"Everybody's just kind of on red alert right now," he said. "It's
enough to scare the hell out of everybody."