A COMMON SENSE POLICY

Attorney General Holder Announces Hands-Off Approach To Medical Marijuana

After California in 1996 became the first state to permit individuals
to purchase marijuana for medicinal purposes as long as they have a
doctor's prescription, Nevada and 11 other states followed with
similar laws. Despite opposition from those who consider marijuana a
gateway to harder drugs, proponents in the 13 states successfully
argued that medical marijuana laws could help patients who suffer
from pain or loss of appetite.

The rub has been that the state laws run counter to federal law,
which prohibits the possession or sale of marijuana under any
circumstance. A string of court decisions favoring the federal
government gave the Bush administration license to approve law
enforcement raids of dispensaries where medical marijuana is sold.

But Attorney General Eric Holder last week announced that the Drug
Enforcement Administration will be allowed to conduct such raids only
when the targets are violating state as well as federal laws. That
means the Justice Department will not prosecute sellers of medical
marijuana in the states where it is legal, as long as those sales are
legitimate.

Holder told reporters: "Given the limited resources that we have, our
focus will be on people, organizations that are growing, cultivating
substantial amounts of marijuana and doing so in a way that's
inconsistent with federal and state law."

His reasoning is sound. Federal law enforcement agents have far more
serious targets to go after than those who are selling marijuana to
qualified individuals with cancer, AIDS or other serious medical conditions.

If marijuana is being produced and sold for uses that have nothing to
do with medical treatment, federal agents under this new policy would
still have every right to conduct raids, even in states with medical
marijuana laws. That's how it should be, since proponents of medical
marijuana initiatives who pitched them to voters and legislators
vowed that its sale and use would not be expanded to recreational purposes.