Cures for medical marijuana?

It can’t be soon enough for Montana’s political leaders to start grappling with the unintended consequences of a medical marijuana law approved by voters in 2004.

Thankfully, lawmakers have been meeting in Helena recently to craft some solutions well ahead of next year’s legislative session.

To put it bluntly, the law has been exploited by people seeking marijuana cards to supposedly solve any and every ailment that might qualify them for a card. Sure, there are card holders who have bona fide medical problems that may be alleviated by marijuana.

But it’s obvious that, overall, Montana voters have been gamed.

It’s also obvious that a reckoning lies ahead.

“What did the voters think they were voting for and can we get back to those basic issues of providing limited, controlled access for people who the public thought really needed this as compassionate care?” asks state Rep. Diane Sands, D-Missoula.

Exactly.

They certainly didn’t envision “cannabis caravans,” a sort of traveling road show that allowed a group called the Montana Caregivers Network to sign up hundreds of people a day during stops in Montana cities.

The clinics played a major role in the state’s medical marijuana patient registry jumping from 842 people at the end of 2008 to about 20,000 at the end of last month. They also played a big part in the Montana Caregivers Network raking in more than $1 million over the last year.

An enterprising endeavor indeed, but the network’s leaders now say they are no longer going to do the traveling clinics.

That may have something to do with the state medical board ruling in May that doctors who recommend medical marijuana must follow the same standards that are applied in prescribing other medication. The board subsequently fined a physician who consulted with about 150 people over 14 hours at one of the clinics.

There are plenty of other consequences, particularly for law enforcement officers who have been running into an array of uncertainties when it comes to people in possession of marijuana.

For instance, Flathead County sheriff’s deputies recently responded to the death of a man by natural causes, and found that the man’s home was also occupied by a marijuana care provider and 49 marijuana plants — well over the six that could legally be in his possession.

It turned out that another care provider owned six plants, so 37 plants were seized. This is the type of stuff that officers are encountering frequently.

The Montana County Attorneys Association maintains that there is no way to tell what is legal medical marijuana and what is not.

What law enforcement is looking for “is a clear bright line between what is legal and allowable and what is not,” a spokesman for the association told lawmakers.

That seems reasonable, and the Montana Legislature needs to deliver.