Sep. 11, 2008 - Montana business growing Medical Marijuana
Montana business growing
Medical Marijuana
Homer Terry mixes marijuana plants with ice to harvest trichromes from leafy parts of the plant at Caregivers of Montana, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2008 in Livingston, Mont. (AP Photo/Billings Gazette, Larry Mayer)
By Tom Lutey
The Billings Gazette
LIVINGSTON, Mont. — Downtown Livingston has gone to pot.
In the open garage doorway of a small white warehouse, six blocks from the Park County Sheriff's Office and minutes from the nouveau eateries and art galleries where tourists stroll, Homer Terry churns ice into a five-gallon bucket of marijuana.
It's a hot Friday afternoon. The whir of Terry's power drill and stir paddle mixes with the shovel chucks of a nearby railroad crew spreading gravel. He gives the customary Montana greeting of a slight head nod and an easy smile to passers-by, but otherwise he keeps working, blending bits of marijuana into a potent smokable paste.
Some would say Terry is making hashish, but the man with drill in hand churning an icy drink of cannabis prefers to say he's harvesting "tri-chromes," that is, the secretions of resins rich in THC forming on the exterior of discarded marijuana plant matter. Others would say Terry and the other half-dozen volunteers toiling on the northern edge of a busy thoroughfare in this sleepy railroad town are growing dope.
Terry, a volunteer at the medical-marijuana growing co-op, would say he's making medicine. And the state of Montana agrees.
It has been four years since Montana voters cast an overwhelming vote to legalize medical marijuana. The ballot initiative, allowing patients with a doctor's referral to grow as many as six marijuana plants for medicinal purposes, garnered more voter support that November than Gov. Brian Schweitzer or U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg.
Dave Minnick stands among his "mother plants" in a building behind his Livingston home where he grows marijuana for patients whose symptoms are relieved by using the plant. (DEIRDRE EITEL/CHRONICLE)
In practice, however the law is receiving mixed reviews. Patient groups and legally sanctioned growers say they now navigate a vague legal path with enough unexpected curves to send some, unintentionally, into violation of drug laws.
Likewise, law enforcement officials say they are seeing the emergence of a marijuana culture they didn't expect, with a few large indoor marijuana farms and a shield of confidentiality preventing detectives from determining whether business is being done according to law.
In practice, medical marijuana didn't take root right away in Montana. Even after the law passed with 63 percent approval Nov. 2, 2004, newspaper accounts of the vote suggested that "Montanans suffering from certain medical conditions may be able to legally smoke marijuana" with emphasis on the word "may," not "can." Prior to the vote, Montanans were warned by U.S. deputy drug czar Scott Burns that federal law trumps state law and that Montana wouldn't be a safe harbor for legal cannabis.
Except for a few incidents, however, medical marijuana in Montana hasn't resulted in many arrests by federal or state officials. State registration of patients approved to use medical marijuana has more than tripled in the last year, said Roy Kemp, who issues medical-marijuana licenses for the state Department of Public Health and Human Services.
"We had 1,280 registered patients this July," said Kemp, who receives 40 to 50 applications a week. "We had 358 last July."
State health officials run a registry of patients, Kemp said. It tracks the number of participating doctors, currently 162, as well as the number of appointed caregivers, 386. The state never discloses the names of the people involved to anyone, including police.
What Kemp will disclose are the categories of qualifying conditions into which registrants fall. Patients suffering from severe and chronic pain with nausea or muscle spasms represent 70 percent of those registered for what's conversationally called a green card, a plastic medical-marijuana license good for one year. Patients suffering from severe seizures coupled with severe nausea and muscle spasms are the second largest group, at 11 percent... (Story continued on original page.)
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