Montana Supreme Court approves temporary cannabis deletion rules

The Montana Supreme Court on Tuesday issued temporary rules regarding removal proceedings for people previously convicted of a cannabis-related offense.

As reported by local television station KPAX, Montana’s new adult recreational cannabis use law “states that anyone convicted of a crime that would now be legal in the state may request that their conviction be removed from their record.” removed and receive a lesser penalty or have it reduced to a lesser offence.”

On Tuesday, according to Montana Public Radio, the Supreme Court approved “interim rules outlining procedures for setting aside or revising marijuana-related convictions.”

These temporary rules “will become effective upon approval and passage by the Montana Supreme Court,” the state said, adding that they will remain in effect until “a marijuana sentencing court is created as authorized by Montana.” [Montana Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act].”

KPAX, citing a state court clerk, reported that “the greatest clarification [the state] wanted was to let people know that they can submit their request for deletion to the court where they were originally convicted.”

The administrator said there has been “some confusion over a separate misdemeanor deletion process that requires all defendants to go through district courts.”

Montana voters passed a legalization initiative in the 2020 election, and the new law went into effect last summer when Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed House Bill 701 to implement the new adult-use cannabis program.

Gianforte said he was particularly impressed with the HEART Fund, which will use proceeds from the recreational cannabis program to fund substance abuse treatment.

“It was clear to me from the start that we needed to devote more resources to fighting the drug epidemic that is ravaging our communities,” Gianforte said after the law was signed. “The HEART Fund funds a full continuum of substance abuse prevention and treatment programs for communities and provides renewed support for Montanans who want to get clean, sober and healthy.”

Recreational cannabis sales began in January, and the state raked in $1.5 million in cannabis sales during its opening weekend. By the end of its opening month, recreational cannabis sales in Montana had grossed nearly $12.9 million.

Kristan Barbour, an administrator at the Treasury Department’s Cannabis Control Division, said in January that “the rollout of the program for adult use went smoothly with the Department’s supporting IT systems.”

“We were able to successfully verify with (the) industry that our licensing and seed-to-sales systems were working on Friday to ensure a successful launch on Saturday 1st January 2022. The successful launch was a result of the staff’s hard work and planning over the past six months to meet the challenges of implementing HB 701,” Barbour told Independent Record at the time.

But the deletion process has experienced some hiccups since the law began. A January report from the Associated Press found that while some Montana attorneys said “cancellation cases have sailed through the courts and that the process was accessible,” others say “cancellation requests still face a hurdle: stigma of.” Cannabis, which lingers in some state district courts.”

According to the AP, the state’s new cannabis laws “tell judges hearing requests for deletion that they must assume the case is admissible unless a prosecutor can raise a legitimate issue against it,” and that “the entire proceeding is a… May include hearing, but firmly The law does not require that one obtain an erasure.”