Caregiver-to-caregiver transfers of medical marijuana - a practice widely used by some providers - is illegal under Montana's medical marijuana law" a judge in Missoula ruled this week. Caregiver-to-caregiver transfers of medical marijuana - a practice widely used by some providers - is illegal under Montana's medical marijuana law" a judge in Missoula ruled this week.

The Medical Marijuana Act, passed by voter initiative in 2004, "particularly prohibits a caregiver from providing marijuana to anyone other than a qualifying patient who has registered that specific caregiver," District Judge John Larson wrote in an opinion issued Wednesday.

Larson's opinion backs up the Missoula County Attorney's Office, which issued a memo in August that such transactions run afoul of the law.

"We were hoping to stop them from doing that," said Chris Lindsey of Missoula, the attorney who pursued the case against Missoula County Attorney Fred Van Valkenburg on behalf of Missoula caregiver Kevin Kerr. Lindsey also is part of a similar suit filed two weeks ago in Flathead County.

The suits, said Lindsey, aimed to clarify what he called "a gray area" in the law, which specifies that a caregiver "signs a statement agreeing to provide marijuana only to qualifying patients who have named the applicant as caregiver."

The county attorney's stance that the provision outlaws all caregiver-to-caregivers sales or exchanges "creates an impossibility," according to Kerr's complaint.

Caregivers have to get plants from someplace, it said.