ALAS, THERE'S NO FREE POT, EITHER

SUMMARY: Registration fee rankles some medical marijuana proponents,
but hardly is unreasonable.

Adam Smith famously said there's no free lunch, meaning everything
costs something. Were he in Montana today, Smith might add that
there's no free pot, either.

A story first published in the Dec. 22 Missoulian and since found
careening around the world through the Internet quoted a backer of
Montana's new medical marijuana law complaining about the registration
fee for people signing up to make use of marijuana to alleviate pain
and other symptoms from serious illness.

That fee is $200.

"Extortion," declares one participant in the marijuana.com discussion
group. "Heartless monsters," writes another. "Why is it every other
government program gets a budget, but this doesn't?" questions
another.

Montana on Nov. 2 became the 10th state to legalize the use of
marijuana by patients of certain diseases following passage of
Initiative 148. The new law allows certain patients with a doctor's
certification of their condition and potential to benefit from the
treatment to use marijuana, which remains an illegal drug to the rest
of the population. The new law allows qualifying patients and their
caregivers to grow and possess limited amounts of marijuana, but it
also requires them to register with the state.

The initiative didn't include any funding for the program. But, of
course, it costs something to administer. Hence the registration fee.
Is $200 too much? That's hard to say, since it's all so new. Maybe
it's too high. Maybe it's too low. It's likely going to depend on how
many people register and how much trouble it turns out to be to ensure
its integrity. There tends to be some economy of scale to these things
- - that is, the more people who pay the fee, the lower the per-person
fee. Checking with a couple of other states that have medical
marijuana programs up and running, we see Oregon's registration fee is
$150 and Colorado's is $110. If the folks in Helena administering the
program were bent on extortion, they probably wouldn't have started
with fees only marginally higher than other states. In any event, it
should be easy enough to monitor Montana's program to make certain the
fees charged are sufficient to cover the costs of running the registry
but don't generate a surplus.

As for the registrants, $200 isn't a trivial sum. Then again, for
anyone suffering from (as the law specifies) "a chronic or
debilitating disease or medical condition that produces wasting
syndrome; severe or chronic pain; severe nausea; seizures; or severe
or persistent muscle spasms," or suffering from cancer, glaucoma or
AIDS, and looking to marijuana to provide relief that no other
medicine can, well, the $200 probably will seem money well spent.