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veggie

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
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Montana to Shut Down Medical Marijuana Dispensaries
#14396758 - 05/03/11 08:50 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Montana to Shut Down Medical Marijuana Dispensaries May 3, 2011 - hightimes.com
The ongoing struggle to maintain medical marijuana rights in Montana received a major setback on Friday when Governor Brian Schweitzer announced he would permit Senate Bill (SB) 423 to become law without his signature. SB 423 will severely restrict the state's thriving medical marijuana industry, shutting down nearly 5,000 medicinal cannabis dispensaries and providers, putting thousands of people out of work in an already economically depressed state. Gov. Schweitzer – who earlier this year vetoed a bill that would have completely repealed Montana’s seven-year-old medi-pot law – admitted he was unhappy with aspects of the bill, but that he’d rather SB 423 be implemented over the present medi-pot system, which Schweitzer colorfully termed “the wild, wild West.”
The new law goes into effect on July 1 and will force patients to provide more substantive proof of a qualifying illness in order to receive a medi-pot recommendation from a physician. Approved patients can cultivate their own medicine or enlist a caregiver who can grow for up to three patients max and must supply the medicinal cannabis for no charge – they can’t even make back the overhead costs of cultivation. The new law also bans any advertising/promotion of medical marijuana.
Montana legalized medicinal cannabis in 2004 when 62 percent of voters passed Initiative 148, the Montana Medical Marijuana Act, but during the neo-con Bush years, less than 7,000 patients registered to use medical cannabis. All that changed in October 2009 when former US Deputy Attorney General David Ogden issued the “Ogden Memo,” which stated that patients and caregivers/dispensaries abiding by state law wouldn’t be federal targets. Montana pot patients quickly catapulted to over 28,000 by early 2011, which suddenly drew the attention – and ire – of Republican and conservative state legislators and they eventually crafted SB 423 in response. Federal raids of some Montana dispensaries in mid-March increased the political pressure to amend Montana’s medi-pot law.
Both medi-pot activists and sympathetic legislators expressed their concerns over the new law’s restrictions. Tom Daubert, founder of Patients and Families United, told Reuters the new law was “repeal in disguise.” State Representative Ellie Hill (D-Missoula) told Reuters: “If I was a man in my 70s living in eastern Montana, first of all I don't know who I would ask to grow my medical marijuana for free, or that I would know how to do it myself.” Governor Schweitzer has tried to balance the two opposing interests and expressed concern that some patients would no longer be able to obtain their medicine, and asked state legislators to revisit the medi-pot issue again when they next reconvene in 2013 (the Montana Legislature meets for 90 days every odd-numbered year).
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blackstatis
sycoknot


Registered: 05/14/09
Posts: 604
Last seen: 3 years, 7 months
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Re: Montana to Shut Down Medical Marijuana Dispensaries [Re: veggie]
#14396983 - 05/03/11 09:31 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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ugh...
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tizjack
Tizzy



Registered: 09/20/10
Posts: 618
Loc: Melbourne, Victoria
Last seen: 8 years, 5 months
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Re: Montana to Shut Down Medical Marijuana Dispensaries [Re: blackstatis]
#14397120 - 05/03/11 09:53 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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This is bad..
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iamnotadream
Enis the Penis


Registered: 12/05/10
Posts: 2,599
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Re: Montana to Shut Down Medical Marijuana Dispensaries [Re: tizjack]
#14397465 - 05/03/11 10:56 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
tizjack said: This is bad..
Fuck, right?
It's definitely going to slow down legalization unless the states grows some decent balls.
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LightShedder
Trading currencies



Registered: 08/30/05
Posts: 3,026
Loc: AustinDenverLA
Last seen: 4 years, 7 months
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Re: Montana to Shut Down Medical Marijuana Dispensaries [Re: iamnotadream]
#14397500 - 05/03/11 11:01 PM (12 years, 8 months ago) |
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Back to an even wilder wild west.
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