5 November 2016
Vote YES! on I-177 and I-182
I-177, the limited trapping ban. I’m voting for I-177, which would ban trapping on public lands, and I-182, which would liberalize Montana’s law on medical marijuana — and I urge Flathead Memo’s readers to do the same.
I-177 bans trapping, a barbaric means of killing that decent people rightly reject, on public land in Montana. Trapping is equally deplorable wherever practiced, so there’s no policy justification for limiting the ban to public land. The initiative’s proponents made a political decision to exclude private land in a failed effort to diminish opposition to the measure, but that mistake does not vitiate the case for I-177. The initiative has strong backing from veterinarians. Historian James Rogers also delivers a powerful argument for banning trapping.
I-182 restores balance to Montana’s medical marijuana law. Twelve years ago, Montana’s voters approved an initiative to allow marijuana to be used as a medication for relieving pain. The legalize-recreational-marijuana immediately tried to hijack the law, prompting a backlash leading to a gutting of the law by our Republican controlled legislature. I-182 restores the law to usefulness.
Former Montana speaker of the House, John Vincent, describes what’s at stake:
The Legislature overreacted to the abuses we saw in 2010, like the cannabis caravans. It’s unfortunate that a few bad actors sparked a massive backlash by the Legislature. Those abuses were corrected well before SB 423 went into effect by proper enforcement of the law. But five years later, sick and dying patients are paying the price for the Legislature’s heavy-handed and politically motivated decision.
Of 12,730 registered patients in Montana, 11,850 lost access to a provider. That’s 93 percent of Montana’s registered medical marijuana patients. It’s worth noting that patients who did not yet get their registration are not counted in that tally. Those patients have given up, and are waiting for the voters to decide on I-182. These are Montanans with debilitating conditions like cancer, epilepsy, Crohn’s disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, chronic pain and multiple sclerosis. These are our friends, neighbors and loved ones. In my case, this is my wife.
I-182’s not perfect, but on balance it deserves support. Pain, especially chronic pain, is a terrible thing that makes the living wish they were dead. At a time when hysterical anti-opioid crusaders are campaigning to limit, or even eliminate, access to Mother Morphine on the long discredited theory that painkillers deprive patients of the opportunity to build character by nobly enduring agony, arguing that cannabis derived relief must also be denied is the ultimate in hypocrisy and cruelty.