New York Times
Government lawyers asked a federal judge on Thursday to impose a five-year sentence on the owner of a marijuana dispensary, less than a month after Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced that federal authorities would not prosecute owners of medical marijuana shops if they complied with local and state laws.
But the United States attorney for the Central District of California, Thomas P. O’Brien, argued that the dispensary owner, Charles C. Lynch, had broken state laws because he was not a primary caregiver to his customers — a requirement under California law — and provided no medical services beyond the sale of marijuana.
Judge George H. Wu, a Bush appointee who is hearing his first federal case, postponed sentencing until June 11, by which time he will receive final briefings from government and defense lawyers. Judge Wu seemed inclined at times Thursday to hand down a lighter sentence than the government was seeking but repeatedly said he was constrained by federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws.
Mr. Lynch, who ran a small dispensary in the surfing hamlet of Morro Bay, has become a symbol for the medical marijuana movement since his shop was raided in 2007. A registered business owner, Mr. Lynch has the support of the city’s mayor and the city attorney, both of whom testified on his behalf Thursday.
Medical marijuana advocates see the case as a test of the Obama administration’s policy of noninterference on state marijuana laws. California is among 13 states that allow the cultivation and sale of marijuana for medicinal purposes.
Mr. O’Brien said Mr. Lynch’s dispensary attracted illicit marijuana sales that took place near the business and involved employees and customers. Prosecution documents said Mr. Lynch’s dispensary had “a casual, almost carnival-like attitude towards the use and distribution of marijuana.”
Mr. Lynch’s lawyer, Reuven Cohen, said his client paid taxes and followed California laws. Mr. Cohen argued that if the federal government believed that Mr. Lynch had broken California laws, prosecutors should have consented to have the case moved to state court.
“This is really a states’ rights issue,” said Mr. Cohen, referring to Proposition 215, which legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes. “We voted for this stuff, and for the federal government to do this is undemocratic.”
Mr. Lynch was convicted on five counts related to running a marijuana dispensary, which is illegal under federal law, and selling medical marijuana to customers under 21, who are minors under federal law.
The director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, H. Marshall Jarrett, sent a letter last Friday to Mr. O’Brien guiding him to seek a five-year sentence. Mr. Jarrett was the chief of the Justice Department’s ethics office until Mr. Holder replaced him after accusations of prosecutorial misconduct in the corruption case against former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska.
Justice Department officials did not respond to an interview request Thursday.
Since the passage of Proposition 215 in 1996, more than 100 marijuana dispensaries in California have been raided, virtually wiping out the businesses in some places, like San Diego. But in other cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, the shops have flourished, despite occasional federal crackdowns during the Bush administration.
Kris Hermes, a spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, a national medical marijuana advocacy group, said that about half of the raids resulted in prosecutions and that about a dozen owners received prison sentences.
Mr. Lynch said in a telephone interview that he would appeal his conviction and accused Sheriff Patrick Hedges of San Luis Obispo County of overzealous prosecution of the law.
“The local sheriff wanted to shut me down,” Mr. Lynch said, “and I don’t think they appreciated me putting up a fight.”
The sheriff’s office did not respond to an interview request.
This is after they promised to stop doing that:
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday outlined a shift in the enforcement of federal drug laws, saying the administration would effectively end the Bush administration’s frequent raids on distributors of medical marijuana.
Speaking with reporters, Mr. Holder provided few specifics but said the Justice Department’s enforcement policy would now be restricted to traffickers who falsely masqueraded as medical dispensaries and “use medical marijuana laws as a shield.”
In the Bush administration, federal agents raided medical marijuana distributors that violated federal statutes even if the dispensaries appeared to be complying with state laws. The raids produced a flood of complaints, particularly in California, which in 1996 became the first state to legalize marijuana sales to people with doctors’ prescriptions.
Graham Boyd, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union drug law project, said Mr. Holder’s remarks created a reasonable balance between conflicting state and federal laws and “seem to finally end the policy war over medical marijuana.” He said officials in California and the 12 other states that have authorized the use of medical marijuana had hesitated to adopt regulations to carry out their laws because of uncertainty created by the Bush administration.
Mr. Holder said the new approach was consistent with statements made by President Obama in the campaign and was based on an assessment of how to allocate scarce enforcement resources. He said dispensaries operating in accord with California law would not be a priority for the administration.
Mr. Holder’s comments appeared to be an effort to clarify the policy after some news reports last month interpreted his answer to a reporter’s question to be a flat assertion that all raids on marijuana growers would cease. Department officials said Mr. Holder had not intended to assert any policy change last month but was decidedly doing so on Wednesday.
Ethan Nadelmann, the founder of the Drug Policy Alliance, said Mr. Holder was telling the Drug Enforcement Administration that it should leave legitimate growers of medical marijuana untouched. “The message from the Bush Justice Department was ‘watch out — we have the authority to go after everybody,’ ” he said.
And it's a clear break from his campaign promises:
Would you stop the DEA's raids on Oregon medical marijuana growers?
I would because I think our federal agents have better things to do, like catching criminals and preventing terrorism. The way I want to approach the issue of medical marijuana is to base it on science, and if there is sound science that supports the use of medical marijuana and if it is controlled and prescribed in a way that other medicine is prescribed, then it's something that I think we should consider.
So apparently Obama was lying when he said that. I forget, was his campaign slogan "Change we can believe in" or "Beliefs we can change in"?
