REPEAL QUESTIONS RIGHT OF VOTERS TO DECIDE

The 2011 Legislature repealed the medical marijuana bill, arguing that
Montana voters, who overwhelmingly approved this voter initiative,
were too gullible to understand what we were voting about. Instead,
the Legislature took the statute out of voters' hands and imposed
something onto the residents of Montana that they claim to be what
voters really want.

Simultaneously, the Legislature decided on two voter referendums: 1)
Whether a girl under age 16 should be required to notify a parent or
appear before a judge for permission to proceed before getting an
abortion. 2) Whether Montana voters want to prohibit a federal mandate
to buy health insurance by 2014 (Billings Gazette, Sunday, May 1).

Additionally, while decrying the dire addictive, social, and family
consequences of legalized medical cannabis, legislators allowed video
gambling machines to add "line games" to their venues (Billings
Gazette, Sunday, May 1). Shall we presume that providing greater
laxity to the gaming industry, an industry fraught with serious issues
of addiction, mental illness and family degradation, is somehow an
acceptable social ill while medical marijuana is not?

For me the point is not the legalization of medical marijuana. Rather,
it is more fundamentally the preservation of voter
initiatives/referendums in this state and my concerns over lobbying
power of special-interest groups in Helena.

Peggy Barta

Billings