A leading medical marijuana supporter, Tom Daubert, voiced disappointment over Berry’s bill, while acknowledging the current law needs fixing because of some unacceptable abuses.

“He thinks it’s important that few people be allowed to be cannabis patients,” said Daubert, an author of the 2004 ballot measure and founder of Patients & Families United. “My goal, in contrast, is to fulfill voter intent to protect genuine patients without regard to how many that is.”

Daubert also voiced disappointment that House leaders “don’t really want to work on a consensus on fixing the law to meet all concerns by law enforcement, local governments as well as patients.”

“Instead, they seemed focused on punitive approaches from repeal to near repeal,” Daubert said, suggesting they instead ought to take up HB68, by Rep. Diane Sands, D-Missoula, which an interim committee prepared.

Here’s how Berry’s bill would work:

“Your treating physician has to validate that you need medical marijuana,” Berry said. “He’s got to validate that he’s used other sources of pain medication, which did not work. Then you take that to a district court and the judge would give you an affidavit saying you are exempt from the banned substance law for marijuana.”