DILLON - The large-scale marijuana bust that law officers here touted as a major success this month was instead the persecution of a terminally ill man who needed the drug to help ease his suffering, a pro-medical marijuana group contends. Patients and Families United, based in Helena, blasted the bust and said it would not stand up in court thanks to Montana's Medical Marijuana Law passed three years ago. And it criticized law officers for making a terminally ill man's last days miserable because of the worry that he would end up in prison.

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DILLON -- Felony charges are expected to be filed next week in a large scale marijuana bust that occurred near here recently.

Local and state law officers seized 96 pot plants from a mobile home north of Dillon, said Blair Martenson, an agent in charge with the Southwest Montana Drug Task Force in Butte.

The home included plants in all stages of growth, which is typical of larger pot growing operations, he said.

"This was a marijuana growing operation that was pretty well sophisticated with the way it was set up," Martenson said.

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City Clerk Sets New Election for May 27

Hailey's electorate gets to do it all over again--vote on four new citizen-driven initiatives to legalize marijuana within the city limits.

Probably. Unless something happens to derail the whole thing.

Hailey City Attorney Ned Williamson is doing legal research to see if three of the four can be knocked off the ballot, and pro-marijuana advocate Ryan Davidson said he's willing to withdraw the initiatives if the Hailey City Council will make an earnest effort to negotiate with him.

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Ever got that feeling that the feds are looking over your shoulder?

Well, they could be. Right now.

All students who aspire to hold a government job in their futures need be aware. The director of the Office of Financial Aid at the University of Montana, Mick Hanson, said that every couple of weeks, at least six special agents from the FBI come into the office and check up on student records.

Primarily, these agents look to confirm information that prospective applicants put down on their job applications and make sure their applicants do not say anything false.

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If the Missouri River Drug Task Force loses the majority of its funding, which is on the table, the communities the unit serves will not only see a rise in drug use but also general crime, according to officials.

Task force detectives were instrumental in solving the last five homicides in Helena, all of which were drug-related. They used networks of informants to gather incriminating information on the murders. Investigators say they also spend many hours a week on assaults, burglaries and other drug-related crimes.

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I testified at a recent public hearing in opposition to a proposal by the Department of Corrections to ban medical marijuana for patients who are on probation. After reading the opinion essay by Pam Bunke in the Jan. 17 Gazette, I reread the department's proposed rule. I can find not a shred of truth in Bunke's essay. Contrary to all her claims, the department's rule is a blanket ban that offers no routes for appeal and makes no exceptions in respect to a doctor's professional opinion.

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I am a member of the board of directors of Patients & Families United (www.mtmjpatients.org), a support group for medical-marijuana patients regardless of their medical condition and for pain patients, whether they use medical marijuana or not. As a result, I am very familiar with the ban on medical marijuana that the Department of Corrections proposes for the small number of patients who happen to be on probation.

The department's opinion essay on this issue, published in the Jan. 17 Gazette, is a bold attempt to mislead the public. I can find nothing in it that is true at all. Contrary to what this "opinion" essay claims, the department's rule would be a total ban, with no specified procedure for making exceptions.

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Montana's new year started with a forward-thinking initiative to address hard-core drug addiction.

Montana has one state-run inpatient addiction treatment center, Montana Chemical Dependency Center, in Butte. The program has struggled (as have private programs and outpatient programs) to deal with the epidemic of methamphetamine addiction over the past decade. The need for inpatient addiction treatment for people who have little or no means to pay has far outstripped the resources at MCDC. There's often been waiting lists several weeks long to get into treatment. Most meth addicts don't wait weeks for treatment; they just don't go.

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The Department of Corrections is not trying to ban the use of medical marijuana by offenders on probation or parole, as some have asserted. The proposed administrative rule change for these offenders does not blindly forbid such use. Rather, as with all standard restrictions placed on probationers and parolees, it allows for exceptions.

The department wants to revise its standard rules of supervision to address concerns over the effect of marijuana use on public safety and the rehabilitation potential for offenders. The department developed these rules in order to maintain an effective system of probation and parole.

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The Montana Department of Corrections is trying to ban the use of medical marijuana by anyone on parole or probation. This proposal is almost certainly illegal for numerous reasons. Among these is the fact that Montana's medical marijuana law clearly allows anyone suffering from certain medical conditions, with a doctor's recommendation, to use medical marijuana.

The law specifies only one exception, and that is people who are "in" a corrections facility. That means that every other qualified patient, even those on probation or parole (who are not in prison or jail), can use medical marijuana as needed. As a state agency, the department's highest obligation is to honor the state's laws.

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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.

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The idea that the Montana Department of Corrections should have any say in the medical treatment of parolees and those on probation defies compassion and the rule of law ("Corrections proposes medicinal marijuana ban for state parolees," Jan. 4).

Plus, it's unnecessary. Doctors and patients are the ones who must carefully weigh the potential harms and benefits of medical marijuana - -- or any treatment, for that matter - given a patient's particular circumstances.

For the Department of Corrections to think they could arbitrarily ban a certain medical treatment for an entire subpopulation amounts to an end run around the law. It also represents a dangerous, unprecedented overreaching of authority: We are not aware of any other state with a medical marijuana law that has allowed such a blanket ban on treatment.

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It is an insult and offensive to Christ God our father, the ecologician, to read that cannabis (kaneh bosm/marijuana) is considered an "illegal drug" (see "No Medicine for Parolees," Jan. 3, 2008).

The Bible doesn't say the Montana Department of Corrections created all the plants on the first page. It says God created all the plants and said they're all good.

No department of corrections or anyone else has the infinite authority to proclaim cannabis illegal for humans as though their decision matters.

Cannabis is good, period. Not according to me or the department of corrections or anyone else; according to God.

A better conversation would be how to stop persecuting humans for using what God says is good.

Stan White

Dillon, Colo.

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The good news: Authorities are finding fewer methamphetamine "cooking" labs in northcentral Montana.

The bad: About 50 arrests are made each year in the region for selling or possessing the drug.

The bottom line:

"We still have a serious meth problem," Cascade County Sheriff David Castle said.

Castle's mixed message on meth was part of an update he gave Tuesday to Cascade County commissioners on the work of the Central Montana Drug Task Force in 2007.

During the year, authorities discovered four labs where meth was made, down from five labs in 2006, 10 in 2005 and 16 in 2004.

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While drug education programs have contributed to the decline of illegal drug use among American youth, the abuse of prescription drugs by teens continues to rise. In fact, according to a federally financed study released last month by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the White House, illicit drug use by teens has continued to gradually decline overall in 2007, but the use of prescription painkillers remains popular among young people. So while we have been fighting a battle to educate our youth about drug abuse on one front, another front has quietly opened and expanded.

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The year 2007 brought encouraging news on many points of drug abuse prevention in Montana and across the nation.

American teens' use of illegal drugs - including methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana and other street drugs - declined, according to multiple, ongoing research surveys. However, a report released last month by the National Institute on Drug Abuse noted that abuse of prescription drugs by U.S. teens remains high with no significant decrease.

The "Monitoring the Future" survey of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-grade students measures prescription drugs, including opiates like Vicodin and OxyContin, amphetamines (including Ritalin), sedatives/barbiturates and tranquilizers, as well as over-the-counter drugs such as cough syrup.

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A Department of Corrections proposal to prohibit all people on parole or probation from obtaining medical marijuana, drinking alcohol or gambling brought stiff resistance from several groups at a rules hearing Thursday.

An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana called the proposed ban on medical marijuana "flawed in nearly every aspect."

It is contrary to current state law, sentencing rules, and runs up against the Montana Constitution, said Elizabeth Griffing.

"It's almost as if the Department of Corrections is trying to obliquely regulate medical marijuana," she told a hearings officer. "This is just an overreaching of your authority and jurisdiction."

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But for the 30 or so people who gathered at University Congregational Church to memorialize Prosser on Wednesday, it's easy to see how her hand was forced.

By pain. By depression. By poverty. By her own government. * "We can't properly honor Robin and her life without recognizing the truth of what the government's marijuana prohibition policy did to her, physically, emotionally, spiritually," said Tom Daubert. "We can't properly honor what Robin struggled for years to achieve without crying out in rage at the forces of insanity and even sadism that destroyed her."

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However, Rate Remains More Than Twice That Of All High Schoolers

Gazette State Bureau HELENA - Montana's American Indian high school students report using the drug methamphetamine at more than twice the rate reported by all Montana students.

However, meth use among Indians has fallen dramatically since 1999, when more than one-fourth of Indian high school students on Montana's reservations reported using meth at least once.

Almost 11 percent of Indian high school students on Montana's seven reservations reported using meth at least once in their lives in the 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a routine questionnaire distributed to high school students around the state every two years. For American Indian students in Montana's urban areas, the rate was 10.5 percent.

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HELENA - Montana's American Indian high school students report using the drug methamphetamine at more than twice the rate reported by all Montana students.

However, meth use has fallen dramatically since 1999, when more than one-fourth of Indian high school students on Montana's reservations reported using meth at least once.

Almost 11 percent of Indian high school students on the state's seven reservations reported using meth at least once in their lives in the 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a routine questionnaire distributed to high school students around the state every two years. For Indian students in urban areas, the rate was 10.5 percent.

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