MEDICAL POT LAW CALLED 'ILLEGAL'

County Supervisors to Vote on the Issue

Medical Marijuana Is Legal in California but All Marijuana Is Illegal in the U.S.

Riverside County's top lawyer wants to rectify what he sees as a contradiction in the law.

District Attorney Grover Trask issued an opinion Wednesday that medical marijuana is illegal under federal law, despite a voter-approved California initiative legalizing medical use of the herb.

The opinion, issued as a "white paper," comes just as the Riverside County Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on an ordinance that would allow medical marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated parts of Riverside County. The county's Planning Commission recently approved the ordinance at a meeting in La Quinta.

"He's trying to scuttle this (ordinance)," said Lanny Swerdlow, director of the Coachella Valley based Medical Marijuana Antiprohibition Project, a medical marijuana advocacy group.

Kevin Ruddy, Riverside County deputy district attorney, said the white paper's timing has nothing to do with the ordinance, which he learned of two weeks ago. Trask's opinion is something the district attorney's office has been working on since July.

"(We did this because) there have been a lot of questions for some time about how these storefront operations fit into the Compassionate Use Act (that California voters approved in 1996)," said Ruddy.

Ruddy said Trask's white paper is simply a detailed analysis of the Compassionate Use Act, passed by the Proposition 215 initiative. The initiative made medical marijuana available to people with certain illnesses. The initiative was later supplemented with the 2004 Medical Marijuana Program Act.

Since then, according to the Trask white paper, counties have reacted by either allowing medical marijuana facilities to open, while others have banned the shops from operating. In Riverside County, there are four dispensaries, two in Palm Springs, one in Palm Desert and one in Corona.

Federal law, however, states that all marijuana-related activities are illegal and people engaged in such activities are subject to federal prosecution.

Trask's opinion states medical marijuana facilities being considered in the state are violating federal law and should not be allowed.

"No state has the power to grant its citizens the right to violate federal law," the paper states.

Furthermore, the opinion from Trask says "store-front medical marijuana businesses are prey for criminals and create easily identifiable victims."

It will be up to individual law agencies how they deal with dispensaries, said Ruddy.

Swerdlow said the district attorney's office needs to look at the California Constitution, which provides guidance when there is conflict between state and federal law. State and local authorities are still dutybound to enforce state law, he said.

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STATE AND FEDERAL LAWS DIFFER

STATE LAW:

California's two medical marijuana laws - Proposition 215, passed in 1996, and Senate Bill 420, passed in 2003 - do not mention dispensaries but do allow collectives and cooperatives.

Counties also are required to issue voluntary medical marijuana identification cards to qualified patients.

Riverside County started issuing the cards Dec. 1.

FEDERAL LAW:

Marijuana is considered a Schedule I drug, which means it has a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical value. It is illegal to grow, sell or possess it.

NATIONWIDE

There are 10 states that allow people to use medical marijuana: Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and California.