OAKLAND'S POT PLAN GOES UP IN SMOKE

For months, Oakland has struggled with a perplexing dilemma: how can
the city regulate marijuana sales and production - forbidden by
federal law - while providing medical cannabis, as state voters
decreed in a 1996 measure?

Now the hammer has come down. A plainly worded message from the local
U.S. attorney, Melinda Haag, makes it clear that the city's latest
scheme won't fly legally and leaves Oakland open to civil and
criminal lawsuits. What part of "no" don't you understand, Haag is suggesting.

Oakland's nonstop probing for a solution is understandable, even
praiseworthy. Patients want weed, and social norms support the idea.
Some 15 states, including California, have medical marijuana laws.

But next comes the mechanics of growing and supplying, which face an
insuperable challenge. Marijuana is a federally controlled drug, and
until Washington changes the rules, production and sales can't be
taken over at the state or local level, as Oakland has firmly found out.

The best that users can hope for - and it's not much - is
Washington's fitful attention to the contradictions of medical pot
laws. The Obama administration said two years ago that it would go
easy and not raid pot clubs, as the prior Bush administration had
done. But last year Attorney General Eric Holder opposed Prop. 19,
which largely legalized pot and small-scale cultivation, and said
passage would bring a crackdown on growers and sellers. The measure
lost in November.

Oakland's City Council isn't getting the message. Before Prop. 19's
defeat, it spelled out a plan for licensed dispensaries designed to
earn the city millions. Then the plan was recast into its latest
form: just five outlets with linked pot farms. Each grow operation
could be up to 50,000 square feet, the size of a big-box outlet.

The plan came with advantages. The five-outlet limit gave the city
firm control and revenues. The problem of indoor pot farms scattered
across the city, which would pose fire risks and security problems,
would be minimized.

But it's not to be, and Oakland can't say it wasn't warned. Both
Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley and City Attorney
John Russo cast doubt on the council's efforts over the past two months.

If there's a villain here, it's the inconclusive nature of the law.
Pot is only semi-forbidden. It's encouraged as medicine and tolerated
in small storefront operations. But it's barred as an industry,
largely unregulated and avoided in Washington as a hot-button issue.
Until a serious overhaul is mapped out at the national level, it
won't help any city such as Oakland to go its own way.