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Medical Marijuana: Other States Face Same Issues
Posted by CN Staff on May 30, 2010 at 05:32:04 PT
By Charles S. Johnson of The Standard State Bureau
Source: Montana Standard
Helena, MT -- Montana is hardly alone among the states that have legalized medical marijuana and now are struggling over how to regulate a rapidly growing industry. The most common point of regulatory efforts, officials say, is those who provide the drug to approved patients.Moves are afoot in Oregon and Colorado to regulate marijuana “dispensaries,” which are largely unregulated in Montana.
“Since the Obama administration changed federal policy, there’s been a real drive in states with medical marijuana laws to actually regulate their industry at a state level, especially the providers of medical marijuana,” said Mike Meno, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C., a group advocating for lesser state penalties for the medical and non-medical use of marijuana.California blazed the medical-marijuana trail in 1996, and 13 more states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana, most of them through voter-passed initiatives that bypassed state legislatures.A turning point in the industry occurred last October when the Obama administration directed federal prosecutors to back off from pursuing cases against medical marijuana patients in states that had legalized it.In an April report, the National Conference of State Legislatures said some states without dispensary regulations are seeing a boom in these businesses, perhaps to get going before stricter regulations occur.Montana’s law is silent on the issue of dispensaries or stores, said Tom Daubert of Helena, founder of Patients & Families United, a medical-marijuana patients’ support group.“But I think under ordinary business law and circumstances of life, it makes sense for a caregiver with patients to have a location where the patient can come in for their medicine,” he said.Stores cropping up now in Montana can supply it only to patients registered to obtain the drug from a caregiver, and aren’t open to anyone, Daubert noted.A Montana legislative committee is starting to examine whether new regulations are needed here.In Colorado, Gov. Bill Ritter is expected to sign two bills soon affecting doctors who recommend medical marijuana and tightening how the drug is regulated.According to the Denver Post, the legislation would require all dispensaries to be licensed by the state and local governments, with fees to cover costs. The annual fees set by the state are expected to cost thousands of dollars per dispensary; some have predicted they may reach $15,000 annually.Dispensary owners will be required to have been Colorado residents for two years, with some exceptions. People with past drug felonies couldn’t operate dispensaries.Local governments or voters could forbid dispensaries in the respective communities, but not caregivers serving five or fewer patients.Brian Vicente, executive director of Sensible Colorado, said his medical marijuana advocacy group likely will sue over some provisions, including the residency requirements.“We tried to convince the bill sponsors to focus on what’s best for patients,” Vicente said. “I think we came out with a heavy law-enforcement focus, rather than a patient focus. Law enforcement, district attorneys and the governor, a former D.A., wanted to crack down and shut down a lot of these places, and I think they’ve probably accomplished it.”Vicente said he wouldn’t be surprised if half of the existing 400 dispensaries end up closing because of high licensing fees. At least 30,000 Coloradoans have medical marijuana cards.Colorado state Sen. Pat Steadman, D-Denver, said he voted for both bills, but had reservations about parts of the regulatory bill that he considered too “heavy-handed.” Yet he said he felt it was important for the Legislature to “rein in what many in Colorado saw as an out-of-control situation.”“I also anticipate that many dispensaries will fail to survive in the emerging medical marijuana marketplace,” he added. It “will certainly hasten the demise of some dispensaries, but many would have failed on their own once the market stabilized.”In Oregon, which already has approved medical marijuana, supporters of a new initiative to create state-licensed dispensaries have turned in 112,000 signatures or nearly 83,000 more than required to put their measure on the fall ballot, the Eugene Register-Guard reported recently.The initiative would create a series of private, nonprofit, state-regulated dispensaries, which would sell marijuana raised by licensed growers to the state’s 36,000 medical marijuana cardholders. Both dispensaries and growers would face state regulation, background checks, inspections and audits, and be subject to health and zoning regulations, the newspaper said.Oregon cardholders now have to grow their own pot supply, find a caregiver or grower to supply it for them, or buy it on the street, the Register-Guard said.“We think our initiative is going to get on the ballot, will pass and will work well,” John Sajo, executive director of Voter Power, a leading advocate of the initiative, said in a telephone interview.The proposal also is expected to raise $1 billion over a decade for Oregon’s health department by imposing 10 percent taxes on dispensaries and pot farmers and annual licensing fees, Sajo said.“We’ve looked at a lot of different models on how to regulate this industry, from state farms to patients growing their own,” he added. “We’ve concluded the best system is independent producers competing and selling to nonprofit dispensaries.”Under the initiative, any patient can go to any dispensary to buy medical marijuana, just like any patient can go any pharmacy to fill a prescription, he said.Then there is California, where voters in November will vote whether to legalize marijuana. Supporters submitted nearly 700,000 signatures, with about 523,000 deemed valid to qualify the measure for the ballot. A state study says the legalization might generate $1.3 billion in desperately needed state revenue for California.As the Associated Press reported, “…full legalization could turn medical marijuana dispensaries into all-purpose pot stores, and the open sale of joints could become commonplace on mom-and-pop liquor store counters in liberal locales like Oakland and Santa Cruz.”Source: Montana Standard (Butte, MT)Author: Charles S. Johnson of The Standard State BureauPublished: Sunday, May 30, 2010Copyright: 2010 Montana StandardContact: editor mtstandard.comWebsite: http://www.mtstandard.com/URL: http://drugsense.org/url/xDACNpKKCannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml 
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Comment #4 posted by Hope on May 31, 2010 at 17:46:53 PT
Thank you so much, Por1. Thank you so much.
You are so kind and the kindness and caring of people is like a balm. I've never really been on this end of it all, not to this extent, and I am so touched and so encouraged.Again, thank you so much for your prayers and words.I've gone back again to the Nighthawk site again today and reading a lot. It's very interesting and depending on what happens I might have to try some of their stones, even though they sound kind of scary in themselves. Radiation is not a light word. It sounds dangerous... just being radiation. I appreciate your telling me about that site and I am trying to read up there and research that stuff. I'm just getting started on this road... which looks a lot like it goes through that "Valley of the shadow of death"... but I'm not going to forget about it, the Nighhawk site... and most of all, I'm not going to forget that you care about someone you've never met and hardly know and you're praying for me. Thank you so much. I have more treasure than I even realized I had here in the people I've met, and I already knew I had great treasure in knowing the people that post here.Thank you so very much.I wouldn't recognize most of you if we passed on the street... but one word from you that made me realize it was you... I would know I was with a special and dear friend. Someone I knew by their very spirit and who they really are and not just what they looked like.I'm scared... but I'm so encouraged and I'm made braver by knowing that you guys are thinking, and caring, about me. And the prayers. I'm so amazed and so touched and have some sort of healing of the spirit and soul already. Thank you.
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Comment #3 posted by por1 on May 31, 2010 at 10:24:19 PT:
I dont post much becouse
of politics.Although we agree on canabis legaization.My view is more radical maybe.I hate dems and republicans about equally, but not all of eather side of the isle.Im a Ron Paul tea party kind of guy who thinks the less the government is in our lives the better.
 That said I will not get into any argument and will take no afense to anyones veiwpoint.
 I watch all the posts and conssider all of you freinds eventhough you do dot hear from me much.
 Runruff and Hope are special to me Why ? Becouse they care very much for their fellow man.
 Runruff thinks much like me and we have been through much the same thing.
 Hope and I could argue till we were blue and never win.That is what makes this country great.I love her for that.
 Hope I can not get you off my mind I will be offering more prayer.Jay Knighthawk is a native medicine man He dicovered that cure becouse he listens to messages given to him.The same messages most of us have trained ourselfs to ignor.Hope take some time to medditate on this, Everyone else for that matter can benifitt. http://www.nighthawkminerals.com/index.htm 
 If I had met Jay earlier I beleive my father would still be alive. Ahoe 
 Porqupine AKA Por1 
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Comment #2 posted by Sinsemilla Jones on May 31, 2010 at 03:48:07 PT
But it's too dangerous to let farmers grow hemp...
It's perfectly safe to let nuclear plants produce radioactive waste, which will remain dangerous for a 1000 years and which we haven't figured out what to do with till then...But it's too dangerous to let farmers grow hemp.And it's perfectly safe to let coal companies blow off the tops of mountains, scarring the land and polluting the streams and towns below...But it's too dangerous to let farmers grow hemp.And we all now know how perfectly safe it is to let foreign oil companies drill in the ocean off our coasts...But it's too dangerous to let American farmers grow hemp.(After all, a gulf full of oil can't compare to the possible tragedy that a couple of kids might manage to unsuccessfully try to get high smoking hemp leaves.)
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Comment #1 posted by Brandon Perera on May 31, 2010 at 01:49:14 PT:
A hemp ethanol spill would just evaporate!
the article on hemp spill is below here.http://cannabisculture.com/v2/node/23650New strain of bud called black cherry soDA :)))http://cannabisculture.com/v2/node/23676
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