Growing Pains in Montana
Mary Lou Smart – www.medicalcannabisart.com
Chris Lindsey has a serious case of Crohn’s, an inflammatory disease.
When his condition was diagnosed in 2006, he ended up being hospitalized for four months after doctors discovered more than 40 ulcers in his intestines.
Surgery to remove badly damaged intestines can bring relief, but there is no known cure for Crohn’s, a condition that causes severe abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, and weight loss.
Treatment consists of trying to control the symptoms to prevent relapse.
During his hospital stay, Lindsey’s condition was so desperate that he was flown to a second hospital. He was seen by several physicians.
At one point or another, each of them mentioned that cannabis would probably help control the pain and also stimulate his appetite. A recreational user, he had never considered marijuana’s medical benefits. One of his doctors suggested that smoking for relaxation probably masked the condition for years. Crohn’s usually appears in the teens or 20s; he was 43.
Pain medication such as morphine was prescribed so that he could function during outbreaks. Lindsey is an attorney with a busy schedule.
“Morphine was effective as a pain medication, but it rendered me incapable of being a lawyer the next morn-ing,” he said. “Usually when I had bad pain, it would happen at night, so if I took morphine at night, the next morning I was impaired. I couldn’t practice. I couldn’t drive. Marijuana hit that middle spot for me. It was more than aspirin, but it wasn’t nearly as heavy as a nar-cotic.”
For Lindsey, who is rail thin, eating is no fun. When the Crohn’s flairs up once or twice a month, he stops eating altogether.
“I just don’t like food very much,” he said. “Cannabis helps me keep my appetite up.”
After being released, Lindsey went back to the same doc-tors who had suggested that cannabis might help him to ask for a medical recommendation. One by one, they turned him down. Not one wanted to have his or her name on a medical cannabis recommendation.
“It took me awhile to find a doctor anywhere in the state that would provide me with a recommendation,” he said. “There were very few in 2006, which created a bottle-neck for folks who did want to get their cards, but could not find a doctor. The federal government was going around on a campaign to frankly scare doctors into not giving the recommendations. You could see it in their faces.”
The experience convinced Lindsey that he could make a positive change as an activist, working with the legisla-ture. He focuses on medical marijuana and works with cannabis businesses.
While the sparsely populated state seems to have broad acceptance — 62 percent of voters approved the Montana Medical Marijuana Act, Initiative 148, in 2004 — regulation has not been a top priority for legislators. The result is patients looking for product, and entrepreneurs popping up to fill the void, many of whom obviously have zero interest in maintaining medical standards. No surprise, but the greed and abuse that often dominate cannabis headlines in California and Colorado have come to the Treasure State. One enterprising individual is known to light up a bong whenever the media are near and create circus-like photo ops with traveling pot doc sign-up forums designed to convert hundreds of people in minutes. His cannabis recommendations via Skype, lawsuits by former employees, and seized blank, signed physician recommendation forms added to his notoriety while damaging the image of medical marijuana throughout the state.
In October 2009, when the federal government announced that it would respect states’ rights in reference to medical marijuana laws, the traveling pot doc circus act revved into high gear and contributed to an explosion of patients in Montana. The number of patients tracked by the Department of Health & Human Services, which had climbed from 287 in December 2006 to 1,577 in December 2008, was over 28,000 by January 2011.
“Law enforcement had always, up until about the mid-dle of ’09, taken the approach, like most Montanans, that, well, ‘We’re not totally sure about this, but it helps people and we’re not too concerned,’” said Lindsey. “Unfortunately, all of a sudden we go from 4,000 patients to 20,000. Now that it’s lucrative and there’s a possibility that you can open a storefront and sign up hundreds and hundreds of people, that’s when I think it really started to go wrong, because there was no regula-tory framework for any of it. There was no reporting scheme. There were no requirements for caregivers.”
The inevitable backlash has included dozens of proposals by Montana lawmakers to curtail or even repeal the law.
Jim Gingery, executive director of Montana Medical Growers Association (MMGA), spends all of his time at the state capital in Helena these days. He’s put his paying jobs as a real estate broker and a travel agent on hold while he works for regulation and reform. He’s also a caregiver.
“We are working to make sure that the new legislation doesn’t put us all out of business,” he said. “People are standing up testifying in favor of a prohibition and they have absolutely no idea of what they’re talking about.”
The MMGA is a trade association representing patients and caregivers. The mission of the MMGA is to provide a voice for medical cannabis growers and promote law-ful and ethical conduct of members. To educate lawmak-ers, Gingery has even written and supplied legislators Growing Pains in Montana with a cannabis resource guide. “I’m spending 95 percent of my time on this because it’s too important not to,” he said. “People are stating things like if people smoke marijuana twice in one week they can be permanently impaired. It is like we’re back in the 1930s.”
Indications are that a majority of Montanans not only want a responsible medical marijuana pro-gram, but they are becoming weary of harsh penal-ties for a plant that more and more people are rely-ing on as medicine. In December, prosecutors were shocked when their Missoula County District Court case lost five potential jurors when all voiced discomfort with the idea of a marijuana prosecution. Because of the almost-a-jury nullifica-tion, prosecutors cut a deal to dismiss the misde-meanor possession charge in the case.
In January, in an effort to bring about positive change, the MMGA recommended several modifications to the current law, including a licensing and regulatory board, a seed-to-cultivation tracking system, a code of ethics for caregivers, and a patient standard of care. The MMGA also wants medical cannabis dispensed to patients to be grown only by licensed caregivers in the state.
Hiedi Handford is another tireless advocate for profes-sional standards. Editor-in-chief of Montana Connect magazine, a trade publication for patients and caregivers, she’s also a patient, with carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands as well as tendonitis and bursitis. She relies on cannabis, she insists — not marijuana — for pain con-trol. Don’t refer to weed as anything but cannabis around Handford, who is quick to offer up a refresher course on the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. Way back when, the lawmakers of yesteryear were duped into ush-ering in a prohibition of cannabis, the ingredient used in tinctures, ointments, salves, and numerous other applica-tions and sold in apothecaries around the United States. At that time, Mexicans were some of the few that called it marihuana. Those who knew it as cannabis used it as medicine.
Handford said she hopes that Montana’s fledgling law will be patched up and back on track by April. She encourages fellow Montanans to set the example for medical cannabis programs around the country. She’s even considering a business, Medical Cannabis Solutions, to offer medical cannabis platforms for a turnkey approach to implementation of other state programs to avoid the circus-like atmosphere that temporarily stole the show in Montana. “The lies have to end,” she said. “It’s time for cannabis to be represented in a positive light.”