OBAMA BREAKS PROMISES ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAWS

Two weeks ago, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire vetoed a bill that
would have clarified the rules for supplying medical marijuana in her
state. She cited an April 14 letter in which Jenny Durkan and Michael
Ormsby, the U.S. attorneys for Washington, threatened to prosecute
not only growers and providers but also "others who knowingly
facilitate" their actions, including landlords, financiers, and even
state employees who license and regulate medical marijuana suppliers.

U.S. attorneys in Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana,
Rhode Island and Vermont have sent similar letters in recent months,
discouraging some jurisdictions from proceeding with plans to
establish licensed medical marijuana dispensaries. These threats,
which are backed by the Justice Department, kill any lingering hopes
that President Obama would keep his campaign promise to respect the
medical marijuana laws that have been enacted in 15 states and the
District of Columbia.

During his presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly said he would call
off the Drug Enforcement Administration's raids on both medical
marijuana users and their suppliers. In a March 2008 interview with
Southern Oregon's Mail Tribune, he said, "I'm not going to be using
Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this
issue." Two weeks after Obama took office, a White House spokesman
reiterated that position, saying, "The president believes that
federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws."

In October 2009, David Ogden, then the deputy attorney general, sent
a memo that seemed to fulfill this promise. "As a general matter," he
told U.S. attorneys, they "should not focus federal resources" on
"individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance
with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana."

Yet the DEA's medical marijuana raids not only have continued but are
more frequent under Obama than they were under George W. Bush.
Americans for Safe Access (ASA), which argues that patients who can
benefit from marijuana should be able to obtain it legally, counts
well over 100 raids in the two years and four months since Obama's
inauguration, compared to about 200 during Bush's eight years in
office. "The Obama administration really is being more aggressive
than the administration of his predecessor," says ASA spokesman Kris Hermes.

At first, it seemed the DEA was targeting growers and sellers who
arguably were not "in clear and unambiguous compliance" with state
law, since the rules for supplying medical marijuana were fuzzy in
jurisdictions such as California, Colorado and Montana. But the U.S.
attorney letters conclusively show that, contrary to the impression
left by the Ogden memo, complying with state law provides no
protection against federal prosecution.

Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler insists there is "no
inconsistency" between the recent threats and the Ogden memo, which
she says "talks about not investigating sick individuals who might be
in compliance with state law." Actually, the memo refers not to "sick
individuals" but to "individuals" generally, and it cites as examples
not only patients but "caregivers" who supply them with marijuana.

In any case, the Justice Department's distinction between patients
and suppliers cannot be reconciled with Attorney General Eric
Holder's description of the new policy. "The policy is to go after
those people who violate both federal and state law," he said in
March 2009. "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."

The new gloss on the Ogden memo, notes Hermes, is "exactly the same
as what Bush said for years: 'We're not targeting patients.' There is
no change."

The problem, of course, is that most of the "sick individuals" the
Obama administration claims to be sparing are not up to the task of
growing their own marijuana. When DEA raids or threats to landlords
shut down dispensaries, Hermes notes, "patients wake up the next
morning wondering where they're going to find their medication."
Obama's position is that patients can have marijuana - they just
can't get it anywhere.