Tuesday, October 11, 2011
(graphic: weedtracker.com)
The Obama administration’s top prosecutors in California are implementing a joint campaign to go after the state’s biggest medical marijuana operations, claiming businesses are flouting the law and making an illegal profit.
For the first two and half years of Barack Obama’s presidency, the Department of Justice left pot dispensaries well enough alone, arguing that it needed its limited anti-drug resources to fight organized crime cartels and meth labs. But now the Justice Department has taken a dramatically different course. All four of California’s U.S. attorneys declared last week that they would pursue legal action against large-scale growers and dispensary owners making millions of dollars, which flies in the face of state law that does not allow for-profit sales.
“That is not what the California voters intended or authorized, and it is illegal under federal law,” Andre Birotte Jr., the Los Angeles-based U.S. attorney for the Central District, told the media.
During 2009 and 2010, federal prosecutors avoided targeting medical marijuana users and caregivers, they said, because industry people largely followed the law. But since then, dispensaries and growers have allegedly expanded their operations way beyond the letter and intent of the law, prompting the crackdown from U.S. attorneys.
The U.S. attorneys are targeting not just the dispensaries, but the landlords who rent to the dispensaries.
Advocates of legalized marijuana see the actions of the Obama administration as an attack on state laws that conflict with federal laws and, since marijuana dispensaries pay taxes, an attack as well on revenue sources at a time when beleaguered state and local governments are desperate for funds.
They cite as an example the case of the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana (MAMM) in Fairfax, which has been operating with the support of the city since 1996. The Justice Department threatened MAMM's landlord with 40 years in federal prison unless he evicted the dispensary because it is located within 1,000 feet of a public park: Bolinas Park.
Greg Anton, the lawyer for the Marin Alliance, told StoptheDrugWar.org, “This is nuts. There's a dispensary near where I live that sells guns, narcotics, alcohol and tobacco and it's full of children. It's called Walmart.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
Federal Crackdown on Medical Pot Sales Reflects a Shift in Policy (by John Hoeffel, Los Angeles Times)
Obama DOJ Ratchets Up War Against Medical Marijuana (by Phillip Smith, StopTheDrugWar.com)
Feds Announce Calif. Pot Dispensary Crackdown (by Don Thompson, Associated Press)
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