HELENA — A bill that would increase the amount of medical marijuana that registered patients can possess cleared its first hurdle on Friday as the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Safety Committee passed the measure on a 5-2 vote.
The bill also adds to the list of chronic or debilitating medical ailments the drug could be used to treat, including diabetes, post-traumatic stress disorder, hepatitis C, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, agitation of Alzheimer’s disease, nail-patella syndrome, dysmenorrheal, anxiety and insomnia.
The original form of the bill sought to increase possession limits from 1 ounce to 12 ounces. The committee passed the measure after adding an amendment by Sen. Dave Lewis, R-Helena, which limits to 3 ounces.
Lewis told the committee that he didn’t intend to look carefully at the bill until after hearing from a friend and constituent who suffers from ovarian cancer.
“She slipped a note in my pocket that said this method of treatment was the only thing that was keeping her sane,” Lewis said.
He said he then spoke with law enforcement officials who said they would be satisfied with a 3-ounce possession limit.
“I’m hoping to … at least try to get some support for the bill,” Lewis told the committee.
The measure passed with Lewis and Sen. Terry Murphy, R-Cardwell, siding with the three Democrats on the panel to vote in favor of the bill.
via Panel OKs medical marijuana expansion | greatfallstribune.com | Great Falls Tribune.
I am really happy to see anxiety, insomnia, and PTSD being added to the qualifying conditions. A three-ounce limit is still too restrictive for the neediest patients, but any increase from an even crueler one ounce limit must be applauded. When these law enforcement types oppose higher limits, I wish they could understand that lower limits just help subsidize black marketeers.
At a 24 ounce limit, a patient can grow and store enough medicine to make it through a few months, and donate medicine to other patients, keeping all of them away from the small-volume street dealer. At a one ounce limit, a patient is constantly forced to keep acquiring small amounts of medicine. Since marijuana plants don’t produce one ounce at a time in a time-released fashion, this means patients sometimes have a bounty of so much medicine they are in violation of the law. But most of the time they have to go without or try to find an ounce or less from a dealer. A weed dealer would love to have a returning customer buying the smallest amounts that net the highest markup.
