DON'T BUY ESSMANN'S FICTION ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

In a guest column in the Missoulian by Sen. Jeff Essmann on May 27,
Essmann asserted that it was "marijuana millionaires" behind the
challenge to the new medical marijuana law that dismantles marijuana
businesses and requires cannabis patients to secure marijuana through
a person who will provide it for free.

But Essmann is backed by millions of dollars provided by the interests
of pharmaceutical companies and private prisons. He's been made big
promises if he succeeds in destroying access to medical marijuana in
Montana. How do I know this? I made it up, just like he made up that
the support for this lawsuit comes from marijuana millionaires.

The largest single donation in the fundraising effort to fight the
unconstitutional Senate Bill 423 - which blocks patient access, makes
referring doctors suspects, and destroys families' businesses - has
been $5,000. The smallest was $4.20. The average donation is $315. The
Montana Cannabis Industry Association has also received jars of $40
and $60 worth of single dollar bills collected by patients.

The people donating to this cause are fighting for their lives, their
health, the democratic process, and their livelihoods - the kinds of
things that motivate people.

In the past three months, in five separate warrants, federal agents
were authorized to seize in excess of $5 million from five different
Montana medical marijuana businesses. But the true amount seized has
been less than $72,000 total. There's a difference between what the
warrant says can be seized and what money is there to actually take.

Though federal warrants indicate a maximum dollar amount that can be
seized, receipts are provided to the businesses for the actual dollar
amounts taken. But the feds always feed the press the authorized
number, not the true number.

One of the never-mentioned but biggest losses, though, is to the
genetics. Some of those strains ripped out of their pots took years of
breeding and testing to develop. No receipts are provided for that
loss.

And no arrests have yet been made.

The MTCIA is challenging the new law and trying to get an injunction
against it going into effect on June 30. The new law requires
investigations of physicians making more than 25 referrals, and
requires two separate doctors to sign off on chronic pain referrals.
It provides no legal way to secure seeds and plants, and it requires
that marijuana be provided for free.

In his opinion piece, Essmann states that attorney Jim Goetz was
secured by the MTCIA "to prevent them from losing their very
profitable business."

But that's not how it was working. The medical cannabis marketplace
wasn't making a lot of people in the cannabis business rich. It was
making Montana communities richer because more money was circulating
in local economies.