News » Montana Prosecutors Seek to Overturn Right to Sell Ruling

State prosecutors in Montana have filed with the state’s supreme court in hopes of overturning a district judge’s block of a new state law that bans commercial sales of medical marijuana. The judge ruled that if medical marijuana is legal, then people have a fundamental right to pursue employment in its cultivation, distribution and sale.

The ruling by Judge James Reynolds in June was controversial and met with immediate outcry from state law enforcement officials and prosecutors, who say that the ban on dispensaries was needed in order to comply with federal law. The injunction by the judge was implemented while consideration of a challenge to the law is given by an MMJ advocacy group, the Montana Cannabis Industry Association.

The prosecutors, headed by assistant attorney general Jim Molloy, went to the Montana Supreme Court and filed against Judge Reynold’s ruling, stating emphatically that he was wrong in his findings. The state, argues Molloy, has a right to decide if it’s legal or illegal to sell any substance (legal or not).

“Montana may not have hit the perfect balance yet,” Molloy writes, “but that policy decision should be left to the ‘laboratories of democracy’. Montana has the uncontested power to criminalize marijuana’s use or sale; it may certainly regulate the use and sale of marijuana for medical purposes.”

The MCIA for their part have contested this and will file a response to the court. They say that the restrictive new law, passed by lawmakers over the top of the voter referendum which created the MMJ system in Montana, is an unconstitutional violation of the right to pursue good health and will only increase the number of illegal users. The group is attempting to repeal the law through both its lawsuit and in a 2012 voter referendum.

Other restrictive provisions of the law which the judge blocked included the ban on MMJ advertising, unannounced searches of providers, and investigations into doctors who prescribe more than 25 MMJ cards a year. Reynolds cited constitutional questions regarding freedom of speech and search and seizure. Reynolds did not block provisions which make it more difficult to get an MMJ card, however.

The law the judge stymied was passed in the legislature after attempts to fully repeal the 2004 voter initiative to legalize medical marijuana were unsuccessful.

Tags: cannabis, judge james reynolds, medical marijuana, MMJ, Montana, supreme court