Pubdate: Thu, 11 Sep 2008
Source: Helena Independent Record (MT)
Copyright: 2008 Helena Independent Record
Contact:  http://helenair.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1187
Author: Tom Lutey
Cited: Cited: Patients and Families United http://www.mtmjpatients.org/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Marijuana - Medicinal)

MEDICAL POT LAW NOT CUT AND DRY

LIVINGSTON -- Downtown Livingston has gone to pot.

In the open garage doorway of a small white warehouse, six blocks 
from the Park County Sheriff's Office and minutes from the nouveau 
eateries and art galleries where tourists stroll, Homer Terry churns 
ice into a 5-gallon bucket of marijuana.

It's a hot Friday afternoon. The whir of Terry's power drill and stir 
paddle mixes with the shovel chucks of a nearby railroad crew 
spreading gravel. He gives the customary Montana greeting of a slight 
head nod and an easy smile to passers-by, but otherwise he keeps 
working, blending bits of marijuana into a potent, smokable paste.

Some would say Terry is making hashish, but the man with drill in 
hand churning a slurpee of cannabis prefers to say he's harvesting 
"tri-chromes," that is, the secretions of resins rich in THC forming 
on the exterior of discarded marijuana plant matter. Others would say 
Terry and the other half-dozen volunteers toiling on the northern 
edge of a busy thoroughfare in this sleepy railroad town are growing dope.

Terry, a volunteer at the medical marijuana growing coop, would say 
he's making medicine. And the state of Montana agrees.

Voters Said Yes

It's been four years since Montana voters cast a near supermajority 
endorsement to legalize medical marijuana. The ballot initiative, 
allowing patients with a doctor's referrals to grow as many as six 
marijuana plants for medicinal purposes, garnered more voter support 
that November than Gov. Brian Schweitzer or U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg.

In practice, however the law is receiving mixed reviews. Patient 
groups and legally sanctioned growers say they now navigate a vague 
legal path with enough unexpected curves to send some, 
unintentionally, into violation of drug laws.

Likewise, law enforcement officials say they are seeing the emergence 
of a marijuana culture they didn't expect, with a few large, indoor 
marijuana farms and a shield of confidentiality preventing detectives 
from determining whether business is being done according to law.

In practice, medical marijuana didn't' take root right away in 
Montana. Even after the law passed with 63 percent approval Nov. 2, 
2004, newspaper accounts of the vote suggested that "Montanans 
suffering from certain medical conditions may be able to legally 
smoke marijuana," emphasis on the word "may" not "can." Prior to the 
vote, Montanans were warned by U.S. Deputy Drug Czar Scott Burns that 
federal law trumps state law and that Montana wouldn't be a safe 
harbor for legal cannabis.

Except for a few incidents, however, medical marijuana in Montana 
hasn't resulted in many arrests by federal or state officials. State 
registration of patients approved to use medical marijuana has more 
than tripled in the last year, said Roy Kemp who issues medical 
marijuana licenses for the state Department of Public Health and 
Human Services.

"We had 1,280 registered patients this July," said Kemp, who receives 
40 to 50 applications a week. "We had 358 last July."

State health officials run a registry of patients, Kemp said. It 
tracks the number of participating doctors, currently 162, as well as 
the number of appointed caregivers, 386. The state never discloses 
the names of the people involved to anyone, including police.

What Kemp will disclose are the categories of qualifying conditions 
into which registrants fall.  Patients suffering from severe and 
chronic pain with nausea or muscle spasms represent 70 percent of 
those registered for a medical marijuana license good for one year. 
Patients suffering from severe seizures coupled with severe nausea 
and muscle spasms are the second largest group, at 11 percent.

One Patient's Experience

Included in the remaining 8 percent of registered patients is Donna 
Woodworth, who has struggled with diminishing weight since being 
treated for colon cancer 25 years ago. Appetite loss due to medical 
treatment or chronic condition is one of about a dozen conditions 
covered by the state medical marijuana law.

"Suddenly, I can eat what I call my old lady diet," said Woodworth, 
"yogurt and mashed potatoes and some bread. Basically that's what I eat."

Since being approved for medical marijuana, Woodworth said her body 
weight has increased from 80 pounds to 112. Using cannabis is not an 
easy subject to talk about, said Woodworth, who lives in Livingston 
and receives her marijuana from Montana Caregivers, a registered 
corporation that grows marijuana for some 50 medical marijuana patients.

Marijuana use bares a stigma with or without the state card, said 
Woodworth, who nervously spoke of her experience while standing in 
Montana Caregiver's Park Avenue office. People who casually know she 
uses cannabis assume she's doing something wrong.

At the mention of implied wrongdoing, grower Renita Minnick begins to 
laugh. She, her husband, David, and another grower formed a sort of 
co-op and started growing medical marijuana a year ago. Friends then 
were warning that they were all going to jail. They've been waiting 
for the bad news ever since.

"There were a lot of people saying, 'You're not in jail yet?' " said 
Minnick. "And some are still saying 'You're not in jail?' "

'Caregivers' With Green Thumbs

The Minnicks are registered patients. Renita has a degenerative 
diabetic eye disease. Dave's spine was injured in an auto accident 
that causes him chronic pain. But they're also caregivers, the term 
used by the state to identify people chosen by patients to grow 
medical marijuana.

Caregivers have to be selected by a patient. No selection, no 
authorization to grow marijuana legally.  Each patient is allowed to 
have up to six marijuana plants. A caregiver with several patients 
can have a pretty big crop. The growers in Minnick's co-op are 
raising about 300 medical marijuana plants in multiple stages under 
grow lights inside a secured building.

The operation is legitimate under state medical marijuana standards, 
but the setting mirrors a noncertified operation. There are smoking 
pipes and rolling papers in the break room, along with smoke-free 
marijuana vaporizers for patients concerned about carcinogens.

The varieties of marijuana grown sport names like AK-47, White Widow 
and Kush. Different varieties produce different highs.

"It's a large grow operation," said Tim Barnes, a detective with the 
Missouri River Drug Task Force.  "Minnick was in the newspapers, so 
we've always known what was going on. Dave's pretty much been forthcoming."

Lingering Legal Questions

Dave Minnick not only invited the detectives to check out his crop, 
he said he approached the Park County attorney before he got going so 
law enforcement wouldn't be alarmed. They were still alarmed, Minnick 
said. The county prosecutor first told Minnick to leave, then called 
in a deputy and asked the caregiver to stay once he realized Minnick 
wasn't joking.

Barnes isn't sure large grow operations were expected when the 
medical marijuana initiative passed. It's one of many issues he 
thinks the law overlooked or ignored.  Growers aren't required to 
keep records and because state records are tightly guarded, it's 
difficult to determine if the marijuana is being grown for registered 
patients and if the amount of marijuana grown exceeds the limit of 
six plants per patient.

Barnes also has concerns about caregivers growing a small number of 
plants in homes were children are present. And he's not entirely 
convinced everyone registered for medical marijuana needs it. There 
is no age limit for legally using medical marijuana.

"One of the things that concerns me is that more people are moving 
here because they can have access to medical marijuana," Barnes said. 
"It's all over the state, not just here."

Patients and caregivers have concerns, too, said Tom Daubert, with 
Patients and Families United, an advocacy group for medical marijuana users.

Working with law enforcement, Daubert and others are trying to work 
some of the kinks out of the state law.  Patients and Families United 
would like to see some allowances for transportation by nonpatients. 
Patients too ill to travel now must rely on caregiver home delivery 
or courier, which poses problems because only patients and caregivers 
can possess the drug. Barnes and other detectives want more 
accountability written into the law.

One Missoula patient committed suicide last year after drug 
enforcement agents seized her marijuana because it was sent through 
United Parcel Service.

The group would also like to increase the amount of marijuana a 
patient is allowed to have on hand from an ounce, roughly a lunch bag 
full, to a larger amount.  The group lobbied the 2007 Legislature to 
make the changes to no avail.

Federal officials would like to put the kibosh on medical marijuana, 
in part because they believe it undermines drug prevention programs 
such as the elementary school program Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or DARE.

"I don't have a lot of huge worries about it because I trust 
Americans to fix what they break, but I'm worried about the message 
we're sending to our kids. That's a tragedy," said Jeffrey Sweetin, 
special agent in charge of the Rocky Mountain Division of the U.S. 
Drug Enforcement Agency. "The kids that flunked DARE are now telling 
your kids, my kids, that this is medicine."

Marijuana is classified as a Schedule I narcotic, meaning the federal 
government believes it has no useful purpose. Doctors can't prescribe 
the drug without breaking the law, they can only recommend it. 
Government agencies like the National Institutes of Health have 
argued for years that marijuana is damaging, Sweetin said. That 
argument was not heard in states where marijuana advocates have 
persuaded voters to allow medical marijuana.

"Please understand, we don't ignore marijuana grow operations," 
Sweetin said. "I assure you, there are thresholds at every U.S. 
attorney's office."

Not all doctors agree that marijuana is harmful. Ed Stickney, a 
retired physician in Billings, has written referrals for several 
patients. He said that particularly in pain cases, marijuana poses 
less of an addiction threat than powerful painkillers like OxyContin.

"I contend that if it were discovered today, marijuana would be 
considered a miracle drug," Stickney said. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake