marijuana

The state health department is reporting another new case of vaping-related lung illness in Montana. The Department of Public Health and Human Services says a person in their 20s from Cascade County was hospitalized in January.

Two competing plans to ask Montana voters to legalize and tax recreational marijuana are underway in the state.  A group called MontanaCan is the latest initiative sponsor calling for a change in the state’s policies for marijuana.

A statewide campaign working to legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana submitted two proposed 2020 ballot initiatives for state review Monday.

A Montana group pushing to legalize recreational marijuana by a citizen vote next year now has support and financial backing from two national groups. The campaign to set up a tax structure and regulations for recreational use plans to spend millions in Big Sky Country.

The national political action committee that’s successfully pushed for the legalization of marijuana in California, Maine, and Massachusetts is coming to Montana.

Margot Fickett is principal cellist for the symphony orchestra in the (fictional) college town of Deaton, Montana. Injured, out for the season, she is waylaid by twenty-year-old Eva Baker who claims that her son is Margot's grandchild. Now involved with a divorced veteran, Eva wants to invest in his medical marijuana business. Gatekeeper to this scheme is the peculiar money man, a dark horse known only as "Dutch." Beguiled by this cast of misfits, Margot's measured, organized world quickly dissolves. Forced to rely on one another to escape serious threat, Margot and Eva two women discover an unlikely friendship that transcends family ties.

An Oregon company has acquired a Missoula-based biotech firm to help meet ballooning consumer demand for CBD and other hemp products.

Since passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, hemp is legal to grow again. Its various byproducts are big business, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

HELENA -- Montana’s budget will return to the House of Representatives after it was amended in the Senate last week and passed 28-21 Monday.

Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Carl Glimm, a Republican from Kila, says it’s typical for the Senate to tweak House Bill 2, the legislation that outlines the state’s $10.3 billion, two-year budget.

HELENA -- The 2018 Federal Farm Bill legalized industrial hemp production and Montana lawmakers are considering the best ways to integrate it into the state’s agriculture economy.

Sen. Tom Jacobson, D-Great Falls, is sponsoring two hemp-related bills. Senate Bill 176 would allow the Montana Department of Agriculture to create a hemp certification program plan. Senate Bill 177 would eliminate the criminal background check requirement to grow hemp. The Montana Senate passed both bills this week and they now head to the House of Representatives.

Montanans could vote in 2020 to legalize recreational marijuana in the state. There’s no official ballot measure proposed, yet. But lawmakers are expecting one, and are now considering studying the possible impacts ahead of time.

Federal legislation introduced this week by Montana Democratic Senator Jon Tester and Alaska Republican Dan Sullivan would require the Veterans Administration to study medicinal cannabis as an alternative treatment for veterans.

The "VA Medicinal Cannabis Research Act" Directs the VA to begin clinical trials to test the effects of medical marijuana as a treatment for chronic pain and symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress.