Billings imposes moratorium on marijuana dispensaries

by: Jay Stevens

Tue May 11, 2010 at 13:59:58 PM MST

A Montana city council has voted for a six-month moratorium on new medical marijuana businesses.

The early Tuesday morning vote came after a long evening of public comment and debate, and followed two arson attempts on two Billings medical marijuana businesses.
Under the moratorium, business licenses won't be issued to new marijuana businesses and existing businesses must stay in their current locations.

The council's 8-2 vote came at 1:35 a.m., after the council flirted with the idea of an all-out ban on all medical marijuana sales in the city.

Despite the appearance of caving in to Billings' pot terrorists, the decision is probably not a bad idea:

Patients & Families United, Montana's patient-rights group, called on Montanans to unite in opposition to "terrorist-styled" violence targeting medical marijuana facilities. But it also called for "more dignified and professional" behavior by facility operators.

Some actions by medical marijuana caregivers are "not what was intended or envisioned by those of us who advocated the medical marijuana law in 2004," Tom Daubert, founder and director of Patients & Families United, said in a statement. "The law needs to be modernized, with regulation and oversight designed to prevent some of the undignified and unprofessional behavior we are seeing."

I can't wait for people to blame pot for the firebombing.

Still, all the craziness around medicinal marijuana should give advocates of legalization of pot some pause - not in their efforts to decriminalize a relatively harmless drug and thereby give the "War on Drugs" a body blow, but in causing them to realize that there needs to be a lot of thought given to how to regulate the drug once it's legal.