HELENA — Montana is in the fifth year of a legal fight to severely restrict how medical marijuana is grown and distributed, even as attitudes in other parts of the nation appear to be shifting toward more tolerance for the drug.

Attorneys for the state argued Wednesday before the Montana Supreme Court to lift a judge’s injunction that prevents enforcement of a 2011 law that would ban commercial sales of medical marijuana and limit providers of the drug to a maximum of three patients.

The state also wants to lift District Judge James Reynolds’ block of other provisions that ban medical marijuana advertising and an automatic review of doctors who recommend the drug for more than 25 patients.

If that happens, and commercial sales of the drug are banned, very ill patients would be effectively cut off from all access because they don’t have the knowledge or the strength to supply themselves, said James Goetz, an attorney for the Montana Cannabis Information Association, which sued to block the law from taking effect. [Read more at the Billings Gazette]