EXPERT SAYS TIGHT CONTROLS ON MARIJUANA NEEDED

HELENA -- For medical marijuana to become more accepted by lawmakers,
law enforcement, the medical community and the public, the industry
needs to be based on based on tight controls, good record keeping and
consistent quality, according to a licensed provider in New Jersey.

The industry also needs to keep good records and do in-depth research
about the effectiveness of marijuana as a medicine, said Webster "Dan"
Todd, chairman of the board of Compassionate Sciences, one of the six
licensed medical marijuana providers in New Jersey.

"The medical community is used to writing a script for a known
whatever it is," Todd said.

Todd was one of several speakers who discussed medical marijuana
during Tuesday's Burton K. Wheeler Center Conference in Helena.

The center puts on two conferences every year dealing with subjects
related to public policy.

The goal of this conference was not to discuss the pros and cons of
marijuana used as medicine, said Wheeler Center director Ralph
Johnson. Rather, the state made a commitment to provide access to
medical marijuana for people who needed it after a voter-passed
initiative in 2004. The conference's aim was to look at how best to go
about doing so.

"We wanted to do this conference because there was a clear space
between the initiative process and the policies that emerged from
that, and the work of the Legislature in 2011."

After voters passed a medical marijuana initiative, the issue remained
fairly invisible until 2009, when the Obama administration issued a
memo saying it wouldn't prosecute marijuana users who were following
the law of their state.

At that point, the number of patients and caregivers began to
grow.

"It was very noticeable to a lot of people," said Sue O'Connell,
research analyst for the Montana Legislative Services Division.

Today, the laws surrounding medical marijuana are very foggy and not
growing any clearer, said Josh Van de Wetering, former federal
prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Missoula office and University of
Montana School of Law adjunct professor.

"I think it's very much still a moving target," he said. "If anything,
I think it's getting foggier."

Since the law originally was passed by initiative, there was a lot of
ambiguity, leaving a lot of gray area for criminal law enforcement,
said Blue Corneliusen, detective with the Cascade County Sherriff's
Office.

For Tony Ryan, a retired Denver police officer and board member for
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, the solution is to decriminalize
drugs in general.

If drugs were legalized, government could control them, he said.
Prescription drug abuse is as large, if not larger, a problem than
illegal drugs, but at least there's a regulatory system in place for
prescriptions.

"There are abuses of everything," he said. "Let's deal with the abuse,
but give the people the things that they need," including medical marijuana.

The only clear consensus reached at the conference is that there is a
lot of confusion about how the medical marijuana law currently stands.

However, the voters soon may have another chance to tackle the
issue.

Medical-marijuana supporters are working to gather enough signatures
to place medical marijuana on the ballot again. It should be known
within the next few weeks whether the petition process was successful
and if there will be a ballot initiative for November 2012, O'Connell
said.

Regardless of whether it's placed on the ballot, medical marijuana is
still very much in flux.

"I don't think that anyone thinks Senate Bill 423 won't be changed
down the road," O'Connell said.