Pubdate: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 Source: Missoulian (MT) Copyright: 2011 Missoulian Contact: http://www.missoulian.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/720 Author: Charles S. Johnson, Missoulian State Bureau MONTANA SENATE SUBCOMMITTEE CONTINUES WORK ON MEDICAL POT RULES HELENA - A Senate subcommittee continued its work Tuesday on a new bill seeking to create a much tighter medical marijuana system in Montana, with the goal of greatly restricting the number of people eligible for cards to legally use it. The three-member panel will meet again Wednesday morning with hopes of completing work on the bill, which would be introduced later in the day. The plan is for the Senate Judiciary Committee to schedule a public hearing Friday morning on the new bill. The bill would be debated on the Senate floor Saturday, Monday or Tuesday at the latest. "I anticipate under this new approach we're going to have a significantly diminished number of cardholders," said the panel's chairman, Sen. Jeff Essmann, R-Billings, said at the meeting. "I'm anticipating less than 2,000." As of February, 28,739 people were authorized to use medical marijuana in Montana. The lion's share of them obtained cards citing various kinds of severe and chronic pain categories. The proposed bill, which would follow New Mexico's model, would make it much harder for people claiming severe and chronic pain to obtain cards. A patient would be required to see his primary physician at least four times over six months for the doctor to be allowed to recommend that the person use medical marijuana. The patient then would have to get a second physician with experience in serious pain modulation to sign off on their primary physician's recommendation. * Essmann said the new bill is intended to be adopted in conjunction with another bill, House Bill 161, by Speaker Mike Milburn, R-Cascade, that would repeal the current law. Voters approved an initiative in 2004 to legalize medical marijuana. Although HB161 passed the House, the Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocked over it last week. It remains in committee. "I think they both need to pass to make this work," Essmann said after the meeting. The proposed bill also would forbid storefront businesses from selling medical marijuana and would ban any advertising and promotion. The bill would allow a licensed patient to grow a specified number of marijuana plants and seedlings with the help of a volunteer assistant. For those licensed patients who are in hospices, nursing homes or rental properties where they are forbidden to grow marijuana, they could buy it from certain entities run by a five-member advisory boards that would sell it to them. However, the sales would be on a "reimbursed cost basis, not for a profit," a move intended to take squeeze some of the money out of the current system. Licensed couriers would have to deliver the medical pot to patients. Other members of the subcommittee are Sens. Cliff Larsen, D-Missoula, and Chas Vincent, R-Libby. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.