Despite passing a bill that promises to stabilize Montana’s haphazard medical marijuana program, a series of recently proposed changes to that bill may, paradoxically, bring the program to a screeching halt.

Ever since it was first enacted in 2004, Montana’s medical marijuana program has been rife with chaos: there have been periods of exponential growth, federal raids, a failed attempt to repeal the program, and even a law that forbade a dispensary from serving more than three patients, total. Currently, the program employs a policy called tethering, which limits each patient to purchasing cannabis from a single provider.

A law passed last May, however, paved the way for long-lasting and meaningful change: Senate Bill 265 puts an end to tethering, giving patients infinitely more choices among providers.

Untethering is scheduled to go into effect later this year, at an unspecified date before July 1. Yet this February, the state’s Department of Health and Human Services (DPHHS) unveiled a series of proposed changes to the bill that, if implemented, could undermine any progress made by untethering.

Among the most egregious proposals are a ban on any form of advertising, a ban on all out-of-state CBD at dispensaries, and a ban on hemp flower. It’s not merely the fate of the state’s burgeoning cannabis industry that hangs in the balance, but the lives and wellbeing of the state’s roughly 35,000 patients.

DPHHS received public comments on these changes until February 28; now, patients, activists, and industry leaders are holding their breath as they wait to hear which of them will actually be implemented.

“Our medical marijuana program has gone through ridiculous amounts of growing pains and fights. SB 265 was a good law, it was what we needed. Then DPHHS went in, did their own interpretation of things, and screwed the pooch, so to speak,” Tayln Lang, the owner of Heirloom Remedies in Victor, told Leafly. “I just don’t think the department knows what they’re doing when they create these kinds of rules.”

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