HELENA— Medical marijuana advocates said Wednesday it’s now up to voters to repeal a state law aimed at stymieing the industry after the Montana Supreme Court ruled there is no constitutional right to access the drug.
Tuesday’s decision lifted a judge’s block of portions of the 2011 law that prohibited marijuana providers from receiving compensation or anything of value for their services and limited them to three registered users each.
Officials with the Montana Cannabis Industry Association, which filed the lawsuit seeking to overturn the law, say their court battle is not over. But now the group’s focus will shift to a Nov. 6 referendum that asks voters to repeal the law, known as Senate Bill 423.
Association president Chris Lindsey said it’s only right for voters to have their say, since they legalized medical marijuana in the first place in a 2004 initiative called I-148.
“Fundamentally, this should be an issue that the voters decide. They put I-148 in place and we think it was wrong for the Legislature to take that away,” Lindsey said.
Lawmakers passed the ban on profits, restricted patient qualifications and added checks to doctors who recommend medical marijuana in an attempt to smother what they saw as an industry run amok. By spring of 2011, the Montana medical marijuana registry had grown to more than 30,000 users and 4,800 providers, and law enforcement officials complained the law as written gave them little oversight authority.
District Judge Jim Reynolds last year blocked several parts of the new law from taking effect, saying it violated patients’ and providers’ constitutional rights to privacy and to pursue employment and health.
The state appealed, and the Supreme Court reversed Reynolds’ ruling. The justices sent the case back to Reynolds with orders to review it under a less strict standard for the state to prove the law was justified.
Republican state Sen. Jeff Essmann of Billings, who sponsored Senate Bill 423, welcomed the Supreme Court’s reversal, Reynolds’ injunction was “an unprecedented approach toward the authority of the Legislature.”
Essmann added he does not believe the results in November’s referendum will be the same as it was in 2004, when 62 percent of voters approved the medical marijuana initiative.
“I encountered many people that said, ‘I voted for the bill but I didn’t vote for this.’ So I think most of the people that I run into are happy the situation is now under control,” he said.
The immediate effects of lifting Reynolds’ injunction and allowing the blocked portion of the law to go forward were not clear. Advocates said some registered providers were already telling their patients they planned to close operations because of the ruling, though Roy Kemp of the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services’ medical marijuana program said he could not confirm such reports.
Kemp declined to answer what it will take to implement the court’s ruling and when it will happen, saying those are questions being analyzed along with the ruling itself.
Patient numbers had been plummeting since a high of 30,000 in June 2011, but they appeared to be stabilizing with 8,849 registered users in August. The number of registered providers stood at 395, but Lindsey said he expects that number will drop further with the ruling and that many users will lose their sources of marijuana.
But one unexpected effect of the ruling is that it may actually help mobilize marijuana advocates. Bob Brigham, a spokesman for Patients for Reform, Not Repeal, the advocacy group spearheading the effort to roll back law, said his phone has been ringing constantly since the Supreme Court decision.
“There is a lot of renewed interest in the campaign. A lot of people are realizing they need to donate now. They’re not going to be saved by the court,” Brigham said.
Regardless of the referendum’s outcome, Brigham and Lindsey said plans are already being made to lobby lawmakers for additional changes to the law when they reconvene in January.
The Legislature owes it to us to come up with a workable system,” Lindsey said.