CROWD CALLS FOR VETO OF MARIJUANA RESTRICTIONS

A crowd of people lined the streets near the Whitefish Performing Arts
Center on Thursday to urge Gov. Brian Schweitzer to stop a bill that
is expected to effectively bring an end to the state's medical
marijuana industry.

With T-shirts and placards that read, "Veto 423," the crowd swelled to
more than 200 people of all ages at one point just before Schweitzer
was scheduled to speak at a forum.

"I'm not even a medical marijuana user. I think it's just a matter of
personal liberty," Whitefish resident Josh King said. "There were
hundreds of jobs in this state that were built on this law."

King added that House Bill 423 is "repeal disguised as
regulation."

Schweitzer has stated he's not willing to veto HB 423. He vetoed a
bill that would have completely repealed the medical marijuana law,
but he has said that vetoing HB 423 would lead to continuation of a
"wild West" medical marijuana environment for another two years.

Voters approved the state's medical marijuana law in 2004, but in the
last couple of years the number of card-holding patients has
mushroomed to nearly 30,000 and the number of caregivers has grown to
nearly 5,000.

Advocates of repeal or regulation say the law didn't turn out the way
voters wanted.

Whitefish resident Morgan Phelps said House Bill 423 is so draconian
it doesn't reflect what voters wanted, either.

Phelps contends that the original law allowed for the state to
regulate the industry through administrative rather than legislative
powers, but that never happened.

"I think there was certainly some problems," he said, most notably
that there are "way too many pain patients between 18 and 25."

But HB 423 is too severe, according to Phelps, who predicted there
will be a ballot initiative response to restore some measure of the
industry.

Phelps said he's concerned the state could experience an even more
"wild West" environment with black-market marijuana.

That's partly because people who have invested thousands of dollars in
medical marijuana business ventures "are stuck, and they don't have
any options."

"I was probably one of the biggest players in this industry," said
Ryan Blindheim, who owned the Black Pearl dispensary in Olney, one of
26 across the state that were raided by state and federal law
enforcement in mid-March.

Blindheim said he invested about $300,000 in the business, including
the purchase of an 18,000-square-foot warehouse and advanced growing
equipment and technology.

He said he's effectively been out of business since the
raids.

Blindheim said he believes the state has failed the industry by not
adequately regulating it over the last few years.

"I'll be honest. This industry will attract a lot of people with bad
intentions," he said. "We were let down by our own state ... We were
asking, if not begging for guidelines. The bottom line is there are
people out there who needed this."