Montana
-------
In a guest column in the Missoulian by Sen. Jeff Essmann on May 27, Essmann asserted that it was "marijuana millionaires" behind the challenge to the new medical marijuana law that dismantles marijuana businesses and requires cannabis patients to secure marijuana through a person who will provide it for free.

But Essmann is backed by millions of dollars provided by the interests of pharmaceutical companies and private prisons. He's been made big promises if he succeeds in destroying access to medical marijuana in Montana. How do I know this? I made it up, just like he made up that the support for this lawsuit comes from marijuana millionaires.

The largest single donation in the fundraising effort to fight the unconstitutional Senate Bill 423 - which blocks patient access, makes referring doctors suspects, and destroys families' businesses - has been $5,000. The smallest was $4.20. The average donation is $315. The Montana Cannabis Industry Association has also received jars of $40 and $60 worth of single dollar bills collected by patients.

The people donating to this cause are fighting for their lives, their health, the democratic process, and their livelihoods - the kinds of things that motivate people.

In the past three months, in five separate warrants, federal agents were authorized to seize in excess of $5 million from five different Montana medical marijuana businesses. But the true amount seized has been less than $72,000 total. There's a difference between what the warrant says can be seized and what money is there to actually take.

Though federal warrants indicate a maximum dollar amount that can be seized, receipts are provided to the businesses for the actual dollar amounts taken. But the feds always feed the press the authorized number, not the true number.

One of the never-mentioned but biggest losses, though, is to the genetics. Some of those strains ripped out of their pots took years of breeding and testing to develop. No receipts are provided for that loss.

And no arrests have yet been made.

The MTCIA is challenging the new law and trying to get an injunction against it going into effect on June 30. The new law requires investigations of physicians making more than 25 referrals, and requires two separate doctors to sign off on chronic pain referrals. It provides no legal way to secure seeds and plants, and it requires that marijuana be provided for free.

In his opinion piece, Essmann states that attorney Jim Goetz was secured by the MTCIA "to prevent them from losing their very profitable business."

But that's not how it was working. The medical cannabis marketplace wasn't making a lot of people in the cannabis business rich. It was making Montana communities richer because more money was circulating in local economies.
Link - https://www.mapinc.org/norml/v11/n368/a01.htm

---

[rckymtnthuglife]

We used to have some of the cheapest, best medicinal cannabis in the country...prices are rising. We will win this in the end...but the industry has taken a large hit. Word on the street is the Judge is gonna throw SB423 out with the trash.

[trichrider]

what an insult to the people.
not just Montanans but anyone is a patient or provider.
perserverence.