Sesso said the problems with medical marijuana law snuck up on the Legislature because at first the program was working as designed.

In 2009, five years after the referendum passed, 1,500 Montanans used medical marijuana. Those patients suffered from cancer, glaucoma, AIDS and other serious ailments. But in 2010, fueled by an "explosion" of touring clinics and doctors that gave out thousands of scripts, more than 4,000 patients were joining the rolls each month.

That is when Sesso said he realized there was a problem with the system.

He said he still wants legitimate users to have access to marijuana if they wish. But he warned the thousands of patients that signed on in the wave of 2010, many of whom cited vague health problems, should prepare to do without legal access to marijuana.

The thousands of new caregivers, too, may find that the drug is not going to be the moneymaking industry they may have imagined. Caregivers may be limited to the number of customers they can have and the federal government, which recently conducted raids on two of the largest producers in the state, may have a say in that matter, too.

"The word is out that the federal government is not going to make medical marijuana a low priority, but will enforce the law as it is intended - as a Tier 1 drug subject to prosecution," he said.

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