MARIJUANA MEMO IS STARK REMINDER: LAW IS UNCHANGED

Career lawmen and pot smokers don't normally pal around, but Redding
Police Chief Peter Hansen has a surprisingly positive attitude toward
the city's medical-marijuana collectives.

Nearly 20 co-ops operate under a city regulatory scheme that he
oversees. And the chief publicly says they're mainly good businesses
whose owners are trying to comply with the law.

And yet outlaws they remain.

A new U.S. Justice Department memo sent out last week was a stark
reminder that, despite the industry's veneer of normality and even
respectability - city licenses, full-color advertisements, Chamber of
Commerce memberships it remains very much at odds with federal law.
A task force of drug agents could arrive tomorrow and put everyone
involved in cuffs and everyone involved might include not just
collectives' managers and growers, but potentially even city officials.

Following up on a 2009 Justice Department memo that essentially said
federal resources wouldn't be used to prosecute medical-marijuana
users in compliance with state law, the new memo from Deputy Attorney
General James M. Cole points to the explosion in open growing and
sales of marijuana in the past two years. It adds that various cities
have considered permitting "large-scale, privately operated
industrial marijuana cultivation centers." Among those are notorious
proposals that had city politicians' support in Oakland and the small
Sacramento-area town of Isleton, but it could easily apply to
Redding, whose zoning allows collectives to operate indoor nurseries
in industrial districts.

The memo says growers or dealers of marijuana - medical or not -
could face prosecution. So, it adds, could "those who knowingly
facilitate such activities." Would that include the city's planners
and police chief? As far as federal law is concerned, they're as good
as in business with drug dealers.

It's hard to imagine DEA agents kicking down the doors of City Hall.
Even so, it's a pointed reminder that even scrupulously trying to
follow the law - as Hansen and other city officials have - can leave
you leave you on the wrong side of the Controlled Substances Act.