As expected, Kalispell City Council voted last week to prevent any new medical marijuana dispensaries from opening up by adopting a zoning ordinance that prohibits establishing businesses within town limits that conflict with federal law. The timing is ironic, since the state of Montana is currently involved in a highly publicized lawsuit that challenges federal law, and especially ironic since the latter involves guns.
Gun-rights and medical-marijuana advocates would seem an unlikely alliance, but in this case, both should be concerned by the council’s actions. The language of Kalispell City Ordinance No. 1175 reads as follows: “No use of land shall be permitted or conditionally permitted within the City of Kalispell that is in violation of federal, state or local law.”
The key word here is “federal.” While this ordinance is specifically aimed at barring any more medical marijuana businesses from opening, it also sets a precedent and makes clear that Kalispell intends to abide by every law in the federal government’s rulebook. Which brings us to gun control.
Since the state Legislature passed the firearms freedom act, Montana is at the front of a legal fight arguing that guns made and sold within the state’s borders should be exempt from federal rules, including those requiring registration and background checks. Seven other states have joined the lawsuit even as many legal scholars believe they have an uphill battle.
Proponents of the act advance a popular Montana narrative, one that emphasizes states’ rights: “The American people and the several states created the federal government, and they now want the federal government constrained to the proper role for which it was created,” Gary Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association that launched the lawsuit, recently told the Associated Press.
The firearms freedom act has enjoyed wide support across the state, including from most Republican and Democratic state lawmakers, the attorney general and the governor. But with their recent vote, Kalispell city council members showed that they have no desire to challenge the feds and actually cited the potential of losing federal funds as their main reason for banning marijuana dispensaries. That, as one valley resident aptly put it during the public comment period at last week’s meeting, is “ludicrous.”
Fourteen states have legalized the use and sale of medical marijuana. The businesses can still operate legally just outside the city’s borders, in Flathead County. Frankly, Kalispell officials decided federal law trumps the will of 62 percent of Montanans for their own moral reasons, not legal ones.
If the state defies the odds and convinces a judge that firearms manufactured and sold in Montana should be excused from federal regulations, Kalispell’s city council – by their explanations for their recent vote – have made it clear the city would continue to adhere to stricter national gun-control laws if money is on the line.
The ordinance says “no use of land” can violate federal law. Would a budding business manufacturing or selling Montana-made guns that defied federal law fall into that category? One gets the impression the city council would be loathe to prohibit a firearms manufacturing business from building a facility on one of the vacant industrial lots on Kalispell’s south side – yet the circumstances are quite similar.
You could argue the council had to act given the dilemmas medical marijuana is causing for police, but unregulated firearms can cause problems for law enforcement as well.
Councilman Bob Hafferman, who was the lone dissenting vote against the ordinance on first reading, said that if the council wanted to regulate medical marijuana businesses on moral grounds then treat them the same way as sexually oriented shops, which are legal to operate and heavily zoned. Instead, his colleagues eagerly succumbed to federal rules for reasons that are unclear. But they should have nothing to do with dollars.