CHAOTIC AND CONTRADICTORY MARIJUANA LAWS

The local, state and federal laws regulating medical marijuana in
California grew even hazier with the Obama administration's recent
memo that threatened to prosecute anyone in the business of growing
or supplying pot to patients.

The memo represented a significant departure from its sensible
October 2009 guidelines that essentially assured dispensaries and
patients that the federal government was not interested in going
after operations that complied with state law.

Now the clinics are put in the untenable position of wondering
whether the next knock on the door might be from federal agents.

The state of the law could not be more chaotic and contradictory.
Marijuana remains classified as an illegal drug under federal law,
period. California voters sanctioned the use of marijuana for medical
purposes in 1996, but the state has all but looked the other way
about where and how those dispensaries have been obtaining bulk
quantities of the drug. The voter-approved initiative offered little
guidance - other than expressly allowing cultivation for personal use
- - and elected leaders in Sacramento have largely avoided the supply question.

Some cities, notably Oakland, have tried to fill the void by
legalizing large-scale indoor growing operations - but backed off
when the U.S. attorney warned that it would be in violation of state
and federal law.

Meanwhile, dispensaries have proliferated in many cities, classified
ads for friendly doctors are abundant, and patient ID cards are not
much more difficult to obtain than a box of Sudafed. Personal
possession of less than an ounce of marijuana without a doctor's
recommendation has been reduced to an infraction, with a $100 fine.

California voters wisely rejected Prop. 19 last year, which would
have legalized marijuana without sufficient controls and restraints.
It would have made no sense to replace one form of chaos with another
- - and almost certainly would have attracted an aggressive federal response.

The feds are raising fair questions about whether a see-no-evil
approach to the growing and supply chain has allowed cartels and
other crime operations to exploit the lax oversight.

Perhaps the feds might be more willing to defer to state laws if they
were more structured and realistic. But that would require a level of
leadership that has been missing on this issue at the state level
over the past 15 years.