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 veggie
Registered: 07/25/04
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 [MT] Violence swirls around legal medical marijuana 
#12570932 - 05/16/10 12:11 AM (2 years, 12 days ago) |
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Violence swirls around legal medical marijuana
May 15, 2010 - missoulian.com
A beating death, an assault and two firebombings linked to Montana’s burgeoning and largely unregulated medical marijuana trade have prompted more calls by law enforcement and advocates for the state to change how it regulates the drug.
In the past month, a medical marijuana grower in Kalispell was beaten to death in a drug robbery that authorities say was planned for days, and in Ravalli County, several qualified medical marijuana “caregivers” allegedly assaulted a man with a bat because they suspected him of stealing medical marijuana from a dispensary owned by one of the suspects.
Then, this past week in Billings, two medical marijuana businesses were firebombed just before the City Council there considered – and ultimately approved – a moratorium on all new such shops for the next six months. Some blamed the fires on opponents of medical marijuana; others suggested competing providers could have had a hand in the blazes. Police have made no arrests.
Law enforcement officials say the crimes underscore a lack of oversight in state policy that has become evident since Montana legalized medical marijuana in 2004. The vagueness of the law became glaring after the Obama administration softened the federal stance on medical marijuana last September, announcing patients and suppliers who obey state laws would not be prosecuted.
“This is exactly what we were concerned about when the initiative passed and we saw the proposed language,” said Ravalli County Sheriff Chris Hoffman. “This kind of violence is one of the first things that law enforcement as a body was concerned about. In my opinion, the state did not go far enough in terms of regulating this. There are just so many things they did not think about in terms of community safety, and where it (marijuana) is propagated and produced.”
Hoffman said the violence isn’t surprising given that businesses growing and supplying medical marijuana have sprung up across the state, advertising their services on storefront signboards. So long as marijuana remains a valuable commodity, Hoffman said, individuals openly growing and distributing the drug will be at risk.
“Anyone growing medical marijuana is going to be a target because it is a desirable commodity for illicit purposes,” Hoffman said. “That’s it in a nutshell.”
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Montana voters enacted the medical marijuana law in 2004 by passing Initiative 148, with 62 percent of voters in favor. It allows people with a debilitating medical condition, as certified by a physician, to obtain a state registry card allowing them to possess up to 1 ounce of marijuana for medical use. Patients with a card can designate a caregiver who can legally supply marijuana to one or more patients.
Since June 2009, the number of registered patients in Montana has jumped from nearly 3,000 to more than 12,000, and since September hundreds of designated caregivers across the state have hung shingles advertising their medical marijuana businesses and grow operations.
The boom has led some towns to enact ordinances that better define medical marijuana dispensaries and place limitations on where and when they can operate.
In towns such as Stevensville and Hamilton, ordinances have been proposed or adopted that limit dispensaries to certain commercial zoning districts, and impose special hours under which they can operate. In most cases, the dispensaries must be a certain distance from in-home day care centers, churches and schools in an effort to limit potential hazards associated with the businesses.
Such an ordinance has not been proposed in Missoula, said City Council member Bob Jaffe, who also chairs the Plat, Annexation and Zoning Committee. Jaffe said there have been no referrals for any kind of medical marijuana ordinances, and he doesn’t see lumping medical marijuana businesses in zoning districts along with pawnshops or strip bars as necessary.
Zoning districts already exist for pharmacies and medical clinics, which are consolidated in commercial areas, and Jaffe said medical marijuana businesses are more akin to those businesses anyway.
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As for security and public safety issues such as burglaries and robberies, those crimes have already been occurring at pharmacies and medical clinics at an alarming rate, largely because of the illicit use of prescription painkillers, he said. The recent violence associated with medical marijuana clinics may not be as big a phenomenon as it’s being portrayed.
“It’s a whole lot of smoke,” Jaffe said. “I’m not that concerned about it. From a municipal standpoint, it seems that there is no difference between medical marijuana businesses and the longstanding system for legal drug distribution that we have for pharmacies. The demand for illicit oxycodone is much more of an issue, if you ask me. Every month or two we have a pharmacy break-in.”
But there is almost universal agreement that Montana’s medical marijuana law needs new sideboards for regulating and monitoring the production and distribution, and Jaffe said he anticipates at least some change in how building codes apply to medical marijuana grow operations, which in some cases are more industrial than agricultural.
Tom Daubert, director of Patients and Families United, a group representing medical marijuana users, said licensing, strict oversight and better regulatory controls over those who produce medical marijuana for legal patients will “deter unprofessional fly-by-night opportunists.”
“The vagueness of Montana’s current law is being deliberately and consciously exploited, and that is not what we envisioned,” said Daubert, who helped promote the medical marijuana initiative.
Doctor recommendations are essentially for sale at large “so-called traveling clinics,” Daubert said, referring to the moveable feasts of physicians that some businesses have organized, where people can become certified as patients after a brief visit.
“There’s really no oversight in the current law,” said Daubert, who is also a medical marijuana caregiver who can grow or provide marijuana for one or more patients.
There was proposed oversight in a bill that Daubert helped write last legislative session, which passed the state Senate but not the House. Among other things, the bill would have empowered the state Health Department to audit caregivers.
Currently, the Children, Families, Health and Human Services Interim Committee is researching the many sides of the medical marijuana issue so it can recommend proposed changes to the 2011 Legislature.
“All these kinds of proposals can reduce the concerns. They will make the program work more smoothly and as intended, rather than with as much opportunism as we are seeing right now,” Daubert said.
Still, Daubert said burglaries and robberies are not unusual at pharmacies, and the recent high-profile crimes may be less an inherent problem with medical marijuana laws and more a reflection of cultural mores.
“I can’t pretend to say that these changes would prevent illegal acts. It’s probable that no amount of regulation can overcome some of the issues that are inherent to prohibition itself. As long as marijuana is generally illegal and yet very popular with a significant size of the population, and the value of it is artificially inflated by prohibition and the restrictions of our legal medical marijuana law that keep the cost and the value high, there will always be some problems,” Daubert said.
“But I think more regulatory laws would go a long way toward reducing these undignified, illegal behaviors,” he said.
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 orison319
pre op t-squirrel
Registered: 01/19/09
Posts: 2,938
Last seen: 11 days, 6 hours
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Re: [MT] Violence swirls around legal medical marijuana [Re: veggie]
#12571488 - 05/16/10 03:08 AM (2 years, 11 days ago) |
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it like killing someone over dirt.. fucksnot1 !
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