MISSOULA – Recent acts of violence linked to medical marijuana are the result of a lack of state policy regulating the fast-growing business, law enforcement officials in Montana say.
In the last month, a medical marijuana grower in Kalispell was killed in a drug robbery, two qualified caregivers in Ravalli County beat with a bat a man they thought was stealing marijuana, and two medical marijuana businesses in Billings were firebombed, police said.
“Anyone growing medical marijuana is going to be a target because it is a desirable commodity for illicit purposes,” said Ravalli County Sheriff Chris Hoffman. “That’s it in a nutshell.”
Montana voters legalized medical marijuana by passing a ballot initiative in 2004, and the Obama administration announced in September it would not prosecute medical marijuana cases even though federal law lists marijuana as an illegal drug.
But law enforcement agencies say the language in Montana’s law is vague.
“This is exactly what we were concerned about when the initiative passed and we saw the proposed language,” Hoffman said. “This kind of violence is one of the first things that law enforcement as a body was concerned about. In my opinion, the state did not go far enough in terms of regulating this. There are just so many things they did not think about in terms of community safety, and where it (marijuana) is propagated and produced.”
The number of registered medical marijuana patients in Montana since June 2009 has jumped from almost 3,000 to more than 12,000.
Missoula City Council member Bob Jaffe said the recent violence is not that big a phenomenon.
“It’s a whole lot of smoke,” Jaffe said. “I’m not that concerned about it. From a municipal standpoint, it seems that there is no difference between medical marijuana businesses and the long-standing system for legal drug distribution that we have for pharmacies. The demand for illicit oxycodone is much more of an issue, if you ask me. Every month or two we have a pharmacy break-in.”
Tom Daubert is director of Patients and Families United, a group that represents medical marijuana users. He helped promote the state’s medical marijuana initiative.
“The vagueness of Montana’s current law is being deliberately and consciously exploited, and that is not what we envisioned,” he said.