It took me eight minutes to get a doctor's recommendation for medical marijuana. Jason Christ thinks I waited too long. The less time physicians spend with medicinal-pot seekers the better, according to Christ, executive director of Montana Caregivers Network. The controversial group has helped thousands of Montanans sign up for medical marijuana cards at traveling clinics and via Internet consultations. My eight-minute conversation with a doctor over Skype, an Internet video-communication program, was unnecessarily long, Christ said. [continues 1250 words]
Some Billings parents are upset after their children brought fliers home from school this week that address medical marijuana. Headed "Medical Marijuana Crisis," the bright-yellow sheets of paper call marijuana a gateway drug and urge parents to "take back control" by contacting local officials, attending public meetings or volunteering time. "Our community and our children are at risk," the fliers read in capital letters. They went home with students at three School District 2 elementary schools despite being rejected by SD2 officials. [continues 426 words]
Diabetes Patient Gets Aid From Marijuana Traveling clinics that serve hundreds of people in a day make medical marijuana available to sick people who cannot access it through their regular doctors. So says Janna Johnson, a Billings medical marijuana user whose longtime physician refused even to talk to her about marijuana as a possible medical treatment. "We go en masse to where we can get help," Johnson said. "Now they are going to persecute the people helping us." Johnson, 49, has multiple ailments related to Type 1 diabetes, including glaucoma, nerve pain and gastroparesis, a condition in which the muscles of the digestive system become partially paralyzed. [continues 457 words]
BILLINGS - Plenty of Montana doctors supported the voter initiative that made medical marijuana legal, but good luck finding one who supports what is happening now. Medical providers across the state are mystified and angered by the way hundreds of Montanans have secured "green cards," or medical-marijuana cards, at mass clinics staffed by out-of-state doctors. "I think it's being corrupted," said Dr. Jim Guyer, director of the medical clinic at RiverStone Health in Billings. "What I see is there's been a wedge developed and the door's open. The people coming through the door are exploiting it. The people who are going to get hurt are the people the law was intended for." [continues 1069 words]
Plenty of Montana doctors supported the voter initiative that made medical marijuana legal, but good luck finding one who supports what is happening now. Medical providers across the state are mystified and angered by the way hundreds of Montanans have secured "green cards," or medical marijuana cards, at mass clinics staffed by out-of-state doctors. "I think it's being corrupted," said Dr. Jim Guyer, director of the medical clinic at RiverStone Health in Billings. "What I see is there's been a wedge developed and the door's open. The people coming through the door are exploiting it. The people who are going to get hurt are the people the law was intended for." [continues 1069 words]
A Billings couple who have medical-marijuana cards say their landlord is breaking the law by not allowing them to smoke pot in their apartments. But the landlord says the marijuana smoke could harm other tenants in the building and the renters could consume the drug some other way. "They don't have the right to endanger other people in the complex," said Linda Lane, a property manager with Metro Property Management. "If you had a small child, would you want to live next to them?" [continues 481 words]
A $5.6 million federal grant awarded to the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council will help American Indian communities battle addiction to methamphetamine and other substances. The money, to be dispensed over three years, will fund the Rocky Mountain Tribal Access to Recovery, a new program designed to broaden treatment and support systems available to tribal members with addictions. The Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council, made up of representatives from 10 tribes in the two states, competed for the grant with 40 applicants from around the country. [continues 140 words]
Doctors avoid prescribing narcotic painkillers to people who need them because they are afraid of being investigated by the federal government, the head of a Billings pain clinic said Friday. "Many physicians avoid opioids, and that has caused millions of Americans pain," said Dr. John Oakley, medical director of the Northern Rockies Regional Pain Center. "The ability to discern who is an addict and who is not an addict is difficult to do, and treating an addict can be seen as a violation of the law. ... Definitions are sometimes unclear. Definitions can be seen as threatening." [continues 629 words]
Methamphetamine floods the brain with 10 times the pleasure of sex and 20 times the pleasure of food. It's no wonder so many people who try the drug become addicted. "There is nothing we can equate through natural phenomena or we can give through chemical phenomena that gives this rush," said Thomas Freese, a researcher with the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs in Los Angeles, during a presentation for medical staff at Deaconess Billings Clinic on Friday. [end]
The federal government's war on drugs has turned into a witch hunt for doctors who legitimately prescribe legal painkillers, says a California physician who claims he was the target of an unethical federal investigation. "The war on drugs has become a war on sick people," Dr. Frank Fisher said Friday. "The war on drugs has morphed into a war on patients, and the doctors are caught in the crossfire." Fisher said the battle has erupted in Billings, where the Drug Enforcement Administration is investigating neurologist Richard A. Nelson. Nelson treated multiple chronic-pain sufferers with opioids, or narcotic painkillers, until federal agents raided his West End clinic three months ago. [continues 582 words]
A Montana senator has assured a group of chronic-pain sufferers whose Billings doctor is under federal investigation that their medical needs will be evaluated by a local clinic. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., secured a promise from Deering Clinic that the county-run medical center will offer patients of neurologist Richard A. Nelson "the opportunity to be assessed by their staff for a continued pain-management care plan." The Drug Enforcement Administration in April suspended Nelson's privileges to write prescriptions for certain painkillers pending a criminal investigation into his West End medical practice. Nelson has not been charged with a crime and remains in good standing with the Montana Board of Medical Examiners. [continues 726 words]
The Drug Enforcement Administration unfairly targets doctors who prescribe narcotic painkillers - including a Billings neurologist - as a means to justify its existence to the federal government, said a national chronic pain management advocate during a visit to Billings on Wednesday. "What the DEA does is sell drug prosecutions to Congress to say, 'Look what we're doing about the drug problem,' " said Siobhan Reynolds, president of the Pain Relief Network. It is a "desperate effort by an endangered federal agency," she said. [continues 804 words]
Cole Kimber pointed a revolver at his head and pulled the trigger. Click. He pulled again. Click. He wanted to be ready. "You've got to prepare yourself psychologically for it," Kimber said. "Suicide might be an option." It wasn't the only way the Billings man rehearsed killing himself. He also closed the garage door and started his car. He wanted to know how much time would pass before he could no longer smell the exhaust. Without medication to muffle red-hot pain radiating from his back, injured almost 20 years ago moving furniture, "My quality of life isn't worth it," Kimber said. [continues 1333 words]
Editor's note: The teen-agers quoted in this story received permission from their parents to speak with The Montana Standard. Bob Taylor took methamphetamine for the first time on his 14th birthday, and not long after he stayed awake for six days on the drug. He already had been smoking marijuana regularly since sixth grade, and had experimented with cocaine more than a dozen times when he was 13. Ashlee Beardslee began drinking regularly during her freshman year in high school. She and her friends drank every weekend, and she ended up in the hospital after her drunk boyfriend hit her. Staying sober on her 17th birthday was one of the hardest things she ever did. [continues 1211 words]
