Judge on Feds’ New State-Friendly Medi-Pot Policy: Can I Get That in Writing?
A California federal judge has requested that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s justice department explain, on paper and in black and white, just precisely what in blazes the administration has in mind regarding its much buzzed-about shift in medical marijuana policies.
Pot law reform advocates have been flying high on rumors that Obama’s kinder, gentler Drug Enforcement Administration – in a 180-degree reversal of Bush- and Clinton-era policies – is set to turn over a new leaf and start respecting the democratic wishes of state voters regarding cannabis laws.
However, the sentencing judge in a high-profile California medical marijuana case seems a tad skeptical – or maybe just a little confused. U.S. District Judge George H. Wu wants to know if Obama’s federal law enforcement braintrust has actually devised a legitimate, coherent new states’ rights-respecting prosecutorial policy.
Wu on Monday postponed sentencing the owner of a Morro Bay medical marijuana dispensary convicted of five federal counts, including distributing drugs.
(Wu) said he will hold off sentencing Charles Lynch, 47, until prosecutors provide a written clarification from the Justice Department on the Obama administration’s newly revised position that federal agents target marijuana distributors only if they violate state and federal law.
Judge Wu may suspect the administration is just blowing some capricious smoke into the air, hoping it’ll narcotize the medical marijuana activist constituency, most of whom no doubt Voted for Change, without actually doing or indeed changing anything of substance (or in writing) at all.
But if indeed there’s been a true and documentable shift in federal medical marijuana policy, then there are likely a whole lot of federal prosecutors around the country who aren’t even close to being on the same page as the newly minted higher-ups on the issue. For example, Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, was quoted just Monday after Wu issued his request saying that the Lynch case “involves a violation of federal law, and that’s really all that matters.”
Lynch’s attorney, Reuven Cohen, reminded reporters on Monday that throughout his client’s trial, the federal government did all it could to keep any discussion whatsoever of medical marijuana’s legality under California law entirely out of jury earshot.
“At least the statements that we have from Attorney General Holder thus far indicate that somehow state law is now relevant to these prosecutions,” said Cohen. “Well, the government, as everyone here who covered the trial knows, argued for days to keep state law out of it. And the reason they did that is that Charlie was in complete compliance with state law.”
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[...] DOJ said over the weekend that after considering a California federal judge’s request for an explanation from the feds regarding their alleged new policy on the persecution of state-approved medical [...]