Missoula County attorney seeks override of marijuana initiative

Missoula County Initiative 2 is "just bad policy," Van Valkenburg said Monday. "Why should a local electorate essentially be able to override the state Legislature?"

Republican Rep. Tom Berry said he's requested that a bill be drafted "to treat all state laws equally and basically to circumvent the law they passed in Missoula."

If other local governments were to follow Missoula County's lead on marijuana or other issues - say, speed limits - Berry said that "the next thing we know we'd have just a bojangle of different laws applying in different places."

In 2006, Initiative 2 passed with the support of 55 percent of Missoula County residents who voted. The next year, Missoula County commissioners - at the urging of Van Valkenburg, and despite vocal opposition - amended it to exclude felony amounts of marijuana.

"It was my impression that he was satisfied with that change, so I'm perplexed as to what problem he's trying to solve," said John Masterson, head of the Montana chapter of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML).

The bill to be drafted at Berry's request would "prohibit local initiatives from establishing priority of enforcement of state law." Van Valkenburg said it would be similar to legislation he sought in 2009.

That proposal, requested by then-state Sen. John Brueggeman, R-Polson, never got past draft form. Van Valkenburg said he couldn't find a lawmaker to actually introduce a bill.

But later that same year, the U.S. Justice Department announced it would no longer target medical marijuana for prosecution in states that had legalized it. In Montana, a statewide voter initiative approved the use of medical marijuana in 2004.

Even though Missoula County's Initiative 2 didn't apply to medical marijuana, it came under greater scrutiny as the number of Montanans holding "green cards" nearly tripled in a little over a year.

"Without a doubt, medical marijuana has really awakened people to the problems associated with marijuana," said Van Valkenburg, a former state legislator. "I think lots of people thought marijuana doesn't really impact our lives and that we should kind of let it slide. I think they've seen that's not the case."

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The 2011 Legislature is working on a package of bills designed to tighten medical marijuana regulations.

Masterson pointed out that Initiative 2 passed "overwhelmingly" in the city of Missoula - the flip side of the argument Van Valkenburg made when he argued in favor of amending the measure in 2007. The initiative applies to the county, where votes against the measure outweighed those in favor by 10 percent, he said then.

Berry said the measure would protect the rights of Missoula County residents "just like the rest of us statewide, and I don't think we should have individual initiatives like that, that circumvent state law."

If the draft being prepared for Berry ever makes it to a legislative committee in bill form, Masterson said NORML's lobbyist in Helena, Cynthia Wolken, would prepare testimony against it.

"It's hard to imagine how some leader in some other city would be so dismayed by what happened with Initiative 2 that he or she felt like they needed to do something about it in their locality," Masterson said.

If the Legislature were to approve such a measure, Berry said Missoula County's measure "would go off the books."

Van Valkenburg wasn't so sure about that, although he said that's what he hopes to see. "The main thing is that it would keep this from happening anywhere else in the state."

Reporter Gwen Florio can be reached at 523-5268 or at gwen.florio@missoulian.com.