MEDICAL MARIJUANA ADVOCATES ARE BREATHING MORE EASILY

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.

A year later, U.S. drug enforcement agents raided his business. Now
Lynch is worried that he'll get at least five years in prison when
he's sentenced Monday in federal court in Los Angeles on five counts
of distributing marijuana.

Whatever happens, Lynch said, he'll 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.

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

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

Medical marijuana advocates predict that the issue soon will leave
the public realm of politics and become a private issue between
doctors and patients. They also said that President Barack Obama had
kept a promise that he made on the campaign trail last year.

Holder said the new policy would 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 said Wednesday. "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: Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii,
Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island,
Vermont and Washington state.

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

"This new policy makes sense and is far more humane," said Capps, the
new vice chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health.

Holder said that his department had limited resources and that its
focus would be on people and organizations that were 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's state director of the Drug Policy
Alliance, said that the new policy would protect millions of
Americans who benefited 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's already been
convicted. Lynch said he began using marijuana for medicinal purposes
in 2005, when he was suffering bad headaches. He said the drug helped
him a lot but that 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'd
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 U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

"They came in; they took everything," Lynch said. "They took all the
money. They froze my bank accounts. They began their propaganda war
machine against me. They put my name up on the DEA Web site. They
made it sound like I was selling drugs to children out in the schoolyard."

Federal authorities charged that 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 year. The customers included 281 minors
and undercover DEA agents who paid two to three times the street
value for their marijuana, authorities said. A local doctor also was
indicted, accused of writing marijuana recommendations for minors
without conducting any physical evaluations.

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

Capps said the case "is an example of a big conflict," because Lynch
was operating his business with the full authority of the California
government but was prosecuted under federal law. Federal law, which
supersedes state laws, makes distributing marijuana a crime and
offers no exceptions for medical use.

Capps said she wanted to respect the wishes of California voters,
adding that the federal government has plenty to do - such as
protecting U.S. borders - and should concentrate on crimes that don't
conflict with state laws.

Lynch said he was forced to close his business when the DEA told his
landlord that the property would be forfeited if Lynch weren't
evicted. Months later, Lynch was arrested and taken to a federal
detention center in Los Angeles, where his family posted $400,000 in
bail to get him released.

Lynch isn't sure what to expect when he's sentenced 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. You know, they've destroyed my life personally.
I'm filing for bankruptcy right now. And friends are scared to talk
to me because the federal government is breathing down my neck."

(McClatchy Newspapers correspondent Marisa Taylor contributed to this report.)