MEDICAL POT ADVOCATES CHEER NEW FEDERAL POLICY

WASHINGTON - After California legalized medical marijuana, Charles
Lynch opened his cannabis dispensary nearly two years ago in Morro
Bay, getting a license from the city and joining the Chamber of Commerce.

Even the mayor showed up for the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

One year later, U.S. drug enforcement agents raided his business. Now
Lynch is worried that he will get a minimum of five years in prison
when he's sentenced in federal court in Los Angeles on Monday for
five counts of distributing marijuana. Whatever happens, Lynch said,
he will appeal.

"I don't feel like I deserve going through life as a convicted felon
for doing things the state of California allowed me to do," he said.

The nation's medical marijuana users are breathing a little easier
these days, confident that such stories will soon be a thing of the past.

At news conferences last month and again on Wednesday, U.S. Attorney
General Eric Holder said there will be no more federal prosecutions
of cases involving medical cannabis dispensaries. He said they would
be left alone as long as they comply with state laws.

Medical marijuana advocates, saying President Barack Obama kept a
promise he made on the campaign trail, predict the issue will soon
leave the public realm of politics and become a private issue between
doctors and patients.

Holder said the new policy will be "to go after those who violate
both federal and state law."

"To the extent that people do that and try and use medical marijuana
laws for activity that is not designed to comport with what the
intention was of a state law - those are the organizations or people
who we'll target," Holder told reporters. "And that's consistent with
what the president said during the campaign."

The decision affects California and 12 other states that have
legalized marijuana for medical purposes: Washington, Oregon, Nevada,
Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Michigan, Vermont, Maine, Rhode
Island, Alaska and Hawaii.

Democratic Rep. Lois Capps of Santa Barbara, who lobbied the new
administration on the issue, called it "a welcomed shift" in federal
policy, saying the administration of George W. Bush "foolishly wasted
precious federal resources" to prosecute law-abiding health care providers.

Holder said his department has limited resources and that its focus
will be on people and organizations growing or cultivating
"substantial amounts of marijuana and doing so in a way that's
inconsistent with federal law and state law."

Stephen Gutwillig, California state director of the Drug Policy
Alliance, said the new policy will protect millions of Americans who
benefit from the medicinal properties of marijuana.

"Under the Obama administration, the federal government may finally
be recovering from a long bout with 'reefer madness,' " he said.

Any change in policy comes too late for Lynch, 46, who has already
been convicted. He said he began using marijuana for medicinal
purposes in 2005, when he was suffering bad headaches. He said the
drug helped but he had to drive a long way to get it.

Eventually, Lynch said, he began researching medical cannabis on the
Internet and decided to open his own dispensary. He said he received
nothing but support from Morro Bay officials, with the city attorney
and City Council members stopping by.

"Everybody liked the way I had set up the business," Lynch said,
except for the Drug Enforcement Administration. "They came in, they
took everything. They froze my bank accounts. They began their
propaganda war machine against me. They made it sound like I was
selling drugs to children out in the schoolyard."

Federal authorities said Lynch used his business, the Central Coast
Compassionate Caregivers marijuana store, as a front for a supersized
retail drug-dealing center that sold more than $2.1 million in
marijuana over a one-year period.

The customers included undercover DEA agents who paid from two to
three times the street value for their marijuana, authorities said. A
local doctor was also indicted for writing marijuana recommendations
for minors without conducting any physical evaluations.

Lynch's case is igniting debate over how far the government should go
in either prosecuting or ignoring medical marijuana dispensaries.

Capps said the case "is an example of a big conflict" because he was
operating his business with the full authority of the California
government but was then prosecuted under federal law.

Federal law, which supersedes state laws, makes the distribution of
marijuana a crime and offers no exceptions for medical use.

Gold River Republican Rep. Dan Lungren, a member of the House
Judiciary Committee, said the Obama administration should back a
large-scale research project on medicinal marijuana before changing
U.S. policy. And he questioned whether the administration can pick
and choose which laws to enforce.

"I wonder if you can just turn around policy like that if there is
not a change in the law that you are supposed to enforce," said
Lungren, who served as California's attorney general when voters
approved the state's medical marijuana law in 1996. "As far as I can
see, there hasn't been a change in the law passed by the Congress."

Freshman Republican Rep. Tom McClintock of California's 4th District
said he applauded Holder's decision and that the federal government
should step aside.

"I think wherever you stand on marijuana laws, it's clearly a state's
decision to make," McClintock said. "And the people of California
made it. I've never believed that the federal government had the
right to regulate intrastate commerce."

Lynch isn't sure what to expect when he's sentenced on Monday. He's
not familiar with breaking the law.

"I've got a spotless record," he said. "I've never even had a DUI.
The only thing on my record is a seat-belt violation here in the
state of California."