MEDICAL POT RAID BAN WINS PRAISE

Local Rise In Use By Patients Seen

California medical-marijuana advocates are celebrating a verbal
promise that federal raids on the state-law-abiding dispensaries have ended.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in a news conference on another
matter last week in Washington with Drug Enforcement Administration
chief Michele Leonhart, said the raids - in many cases, searches and
seizures without arrests - are not part of President Barack Obama's policy.

"What the president said during the campaign, you'll be surprised to
know, will be consistent with what we'll be doing in law
enforcement," Holder said. "What he said during the campaign is now
American policy."

Obama said last year he wouldn't be "using Justice Department
resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue," a stance
reiterated last month by White House spokesman Nick Shapiro.

"Since state law allows (marijuana) collectives to operate, it should
mean that people can operate collectives ... without the threat of
arrest of prosecution," said Lanny Swerdlow, director of the Inland
Empire-based Marijuana Prohibition Project.

Swerdlow said local law-enforcement offices had used the threat of
federal raids to discourage or threaten local collectives from operating.

With that threat apparently no longer viable, Swerdlow predicted the
decision will lead locally to an "increase in the availability of
(marijuana) to patients. And that can only be beneficial."

San Bernardino County spokesman David Wert did not immediately return
a call seeking comment late Friday.

"Today is a victory and a huge step forward," Steph Sherer, executive
director of Oakland-based Americans for Safe Access, said Thursday.
"I'm overjoyed to finally have a press conference with some great news."

Rather than spending a lot of time staving off these federal attacks,
she said, groups like hers can work in earnest with Congress and
federal agencies to iron out conflicts between federal law - which
still bans all use, cultivation and distribution of marijuana - with
state laws such as California's, that permit medical use. Examples
might include legislation to protect veterans' benefits or housing
rights of people using the drug in accordance with state law, Sherer said.

In some cases, the DEA and federal prosecutors have written to
dispensaries' landlords, threatening forfeiture of their properties
unless they evict their tenants.

That's what happened last month to Heather Poet's cooperative in
Santa Barbara, causing Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, to write to
Holder urging a halt to such tactics.

It's still unclear what will happen to prosecutions already in
progress, like that of Charles Lynch, whose Morro Bay dispensary was
raided in 2007, and who was convicted last year on marijuana
distribution charges. He's scheduled to be sentenced March 23, and
federal prosecutors still seem intent on putting him in prison.
Sherer said she hopes the new administration will set a new course in
this and other pending cases.

Staff writer Will Bigham contributed to this report.