POT ADVOCATES EXHALE AFTER POLICY SHIFT SIGNALED

LOS ANGELES -- Medical marijuana users and dispensary owners in
California have held their breath for years -- fearful they would be
targeted for prosecution by the federal government.

They finally exhaled this past week when U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder said federal agents will now target marijuana distributors only
when they violate both federal and state laws, a departure from the
policy of the Bush administration.

It's not seen by many as a move by the Obama administration toward the
legalization of marijuana.

However, it could end much of the confusion among state and federal
authorities dealing with the mishmash of laws in which cultivating,
using and selling pot for medical purposes is allowed by states but
outlawed by the federal government.

"This signals, in my mind, a true kind of federalism," said Jody
Armour, a law professor at the University of Southern California. "The
federal government is allowing states to take chances, to take
experiments and see what happens."

California is one of 13 states that allows medical use of
marijuana.

Over the past 3 1/2 years, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration
has raided about 75 dispensaries in just one of the four federal
districts in California, the Central District that extends from the
Central Coast to down to Orange County and includes Los Angeles.

Medical marijuana advocates say the change in federal policy announced
by Holder mirrors the spirit of the 1996 California ballot initiative
that made it legal to sell the drug to people with a
prescription.

"I think that if nothing else it gives people a sense of optimism that
the federal government is going to back off," said James Shaw,
director of the Union of Medical Marijuana Patients. "But it's not
entirely clear to me if they are going to do that."

Holder didn't specify who would be exempt from future DEA
raids.

And one federal prosecutor said cases will still be filed against
people who violate the law by selling marijuana for non-medicinal
purposes and other actions.

"From the type of dispensaries we have seen over the years, it may be
anticipated this does not signal an end to federal enforcement actions
but instead a refinement," said acting U.S. Attorney Lawrence Brown in
Sacramento.

Times have changed, agreed Elliot Katz, a senior member of a Los
Angeles-based marijuana collective, but necessarily for the better.

He recalled walking into a dispensary when he was first issued a
medical marijuana card in the mid-1990s and finding that everyone was
visibly sick.

These days, marijuana users who have no medical reason to obtain the
drug are taking advantage of the system, he said.

"It's up to the doctor or dispensary operator to weed out those
people," said Katz, 46, who has AIDS. "The government can do all they
want to regulate, but it's up to us to regulate ourselves."