Legislation to update the marijuana industry’s regulatory framework advanced out of a House committee Friday, while two other advertising and labeling proposals failed to pass muster.
House Bill 128 is the consensus legislation that emerged from bipartisan work since the 2021 session by lawmakers reviewing the implementation of the recreational cannabis market.
Among its biggest changes would be moving the regulation of testing laboratories from the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services to the state revenue department. The health department once oversaw marijuana providers and the testing labs that examined their product, but medical providers moved under the Department of Revenue along with the recreational industry when lawmakers settled on regulations in 2021.
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Another significant change added Friday in the House Business and Labor Committee will allow roughly 30 medical providers who have been stalled from recreational sales into the market.
Montana voters approved recreational marijuana legalization in 2020, and the 2021 Legislature got to work in writing new regulations into state code. As a measure to keep huge corporations from swooping into Montana’s new market and leveling the local providers, lawmakers put a moratorium on new business licenses until 2023. HB 128 would extend that moratorium into 2025. Anyone who applied for a license after the 2020 election would be allowed to sell only medical marijuana until the moratorium ends.
An amendment from Rep. Katie Sullivan, D-Missoula, moved the application cut-off to Dec. 31, 2021. She told the committee this would help the people who have made investments and followed the right steps get into the market. The change got support from both Democrats and Republicans who said business owners didn’t get a fair shake when the 2021 Legislature made the application date a moving target.
“A lot of times when we’re discussing this bill we heard of, we don’t want big companies coming into Montana, and I can sympathize with that,” Rep. Katie Zolnikov, R-Billings, said Friday. “However, because these are existing businesses within Montana that in good faith did what they were supposed to do, and we switched on them, I’m going to be supportive of that” amendment.
The amendment passed 18-1. The bill passed the committee unanimously. It will next be debated before the full House.
Two other bills that already passed the House, one dealing with advertising restrictions and another dealing with labeling requirements, died in a Senate committee this week.
House Bill 351 would have banned cannabis providers from advertising on billboards, radio, television, inflatable balloon characters or online advertising. Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe, R-Billings, said providers were flaunting the regulations created by the Legislature and revenue department since recreational sales went into effect, but the industry said the bill was punitive against the entire industry when only a handful of providers had skirted the rules.
That bill died in the Senate Business and Labor Committee Tuesday on a 4-6 vote.
That committee also tabled House Bill 611, from Rep. Jane Gillette, R-Bozeman, which would have required package labeling to include a warning that smoking marijuana could create cancers in a pregnant woman’s child. Proponents said it was necessary, but opponents said the claim did not have consensus in the scientific community and went well beyond labeling requirements on alcohol and tobacco.
The Senate committee tabled HB 611 after it died on a 3-7 vote.
Capitol bureau reporter Seaborn Larson covers justice-related areas of state government and organizations that wield power. His past work includes local crime and courts reporting at the Missoulian and Great Falls Tribune, and daily news reporting at the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell.
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