CA MEDICAL MARIJUANA ADVOCATES CONCERNED ABOUT OBAMA APPOINTMENTS

In this year's presidential election, medical marijuana advocates in
California were pretty clear on which candidate they were rooting
for. On multiple occasions, Democrat Barack Obama has pledged to end
the federal raids that have bedeviled the state's dispensaries for
years under the Bush administration.

But some of their relief has turned into concern as the incoming
president has begun to consider appointments to key posts. Obama will
reportedly appoint two men who have been fierce critics of medical
marijuana: Eric Holder, rumored to be Obama's pick for attorney
general, and Donald Vereen as transitional co-chair of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).

If confirmed to run the Justice Department, Holder would have wide
authority to set policy and priorities for the Drug Enforcement
Administration. Under President George W. Bush, the DEA has conducted
dozens of high profile raids on medical marijuana dispensaries that
are allowed to operate openly under California law. Officials have
frequently referred to their operators as "criminals" and "drug dealers."

Holder has a long history of past positions that appear to be closer
to current policy than to Obama's campaign pledge. According to the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, he proposed
stiffening federal marijuana penalties in 1997 while serving as
Deputy Attorney General under President Bill Clinton.

He was criticized by NORML again the next year for failing to take
action against the Washington State Lieutenant Governor's office for
using federal funds earmarked for drug enforcement to create a
website about the "dangers" of medical marijuana while voters of
that state were deciding on a medical marijuana initiative. Holder
has been acceptable enough to conservatives that he was nominated to
a Washington, D.C., judgeship by Ronald Reagan, widely considered the
biggest proponent of the drug war among U.S. presidents.

"He certainly does not appear to have the best drug policy stances,"
Kris Hermes, media relations at Americans for Safe Access, said of
Holder. "But it's fairly difficult to tell what positions he will
take if confirmed."

Vereen appears to have taken even stronger anti-medical marijuana
positions. He served as the deputy director of ONDCP from 1998 to
2001. In the April, 1999 issues of Psychiatric News, the Journal of
the American Psychiatric Association, he called doctors who
prescribed marijuana "irresponsible" and advocated arresting medical
marijuana patients.

He has also frequently gone on record essentially claiming that
marijuana can't be thought of as a treatment because it's usually
smoked and because dosages are difficult to control. This position
has just as frequently been mocked by advocates, who note that there
is not a single documented case of a person dying from a marijuana
overdose.

Of most concern to advocates may be Vereen's opposition to a medical
marijuana initiative which passed in Michigan this year. Speaking in
his role as the director of Community Based Public Health at the
University of Michigan, he said the initiative "puts young people at
risk."

But Bruce Mirken, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy
Project, noted that public opinion polls and votes are trending his
group's way.

"In Michigan, I can't help but notice that medical marijuana
outpolled Obama by six points," Mirken said.

Obama got 57 percent of the vote in the key Midwestern swing state.
But Proposal 1, which will allow patients or caregivers to possess up
to 12 plants and 2.5 ounces of dried marijuana, got 63 percent.
Pre-election polls suggested the outcome was never really in doubt.

Mirken went on to note that the three western states Obama flipped to
the blue column from 2004-Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico-are all
medical marijuana states. There are now 13 such states, the others
being Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Oregon, Rhode Island,
Washington and Vermont. These states cover one-quarter of the US
population, and represent 124 of Obama 365 electoral votes.

Both Hermes and Mirken said that any relaxation of federal
enforcement is likely to be a done without much fanfare, at least in
the short term. Obama is unlikely to step into the kind of public
relations scandals that plagued the first two years of the Clinton
administration, such as the gays in the military brouhaha.

But Hermes said his group will be using medical marijuana's growing
clout to make sure "Obama keeps his word." A pair of other early
presidential candidates-Republican Ron Paul and Democrat Dennis
Kucinich-have been very supportive of medical marijuana, he said, and
even Hillary Clinton took more liberal positions than Obama on the
issue.

Hermes went on to say his group will participate in a "grassroots
campaign" to break the federal government's "monopoly" on medical
marijuana research and push for a national policy on the issue.

"We'll certainly be holding his feet to the fire," Hermes
said.

Mirken said federal pressure has really prevented most medical
marijuana states from fully implementing laws approved by voters-a
situation that is particularly notable with California's Prop. 215,
passed with 56 percent of the vote in 1996. California has been
Ground Zero, he said, "because we have these openly-operating
dispensaries that present ready targets for federal
enforcement."

Other states have sidestepped this problem largely by not being
directly involved in the administration of policies.

"It's hard to set up a system when any information you collect is
potentially evidence in a federal trial," Mirken said. "There really
isn't anyone in charge."

Holder and Vereen are not the only appointees of concern to
advocates. Vice President-elect Joe Biden has been a strong supporter
of the war on drugs in the Senate. While he also opposes federal
raids on dispensaries, at a May campaign stop in Connecticut he said
of pain management that "There's got to be a better answer than marijuana."

"He's been a prominent figure in the war on drugs for several years,"
said Zack Risner, media relations for the Cannabis Club Network, of
Biden. "That doesn't mean it's going to be a direct relation to
Obama's policies."

Obama's new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and another ONDCP
appointee, Christopher Putala, have also been openly critical of
medical marijuana. But Mirken said that is would be difficult for
Obama not be an improvement over Bush.

"The way the Bush administration has operated, they just made stuff
up," Mirken said. "It will be nice, if it happens, to have the
federal government re-enter the reality-based community."