SENATOR MISREPRESENTED MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAWSUIT GROUP

In guest opinion on May 25, state Sen. Jeff 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, 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 editorial, Senator 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 the local economies.