Feds Keep Fooling Around With Medical Marijuana: Full Cannabis Legalization or Bust!

It’s getting ugly and NORML needs your help now more than ever to stand up for the rights of responsible adults cannabis consumers. The Administration that promised to base drug policy on science and respect state marijuana laws is ignoring medical facts, the needs of patients, and the economic benefits that regulated dispensaries bring to medical cannabis-friendly states.

There is no way to sugar coat the terrible past two weeks we’ve had at the hands of Prohibition-loving federal and state governments.

Yesterday, the four U.S. Attorneys from California–along with their respective counterparts here in Washington D.C. from the DEA and IRS–declared that a statewide crackdown against large-scale medical cannabis cultivators and sellers with national implications is currently underway.

Question: Will U.S. Attorneys in the other fifteen states and D.C. with medical cannabis laws pursue similarly aggressive enforcement?

But wait! There’s more. Much more.

• Earlier this week, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued a long-awaited $2.5 million ruling against a major medical cannabis dispensary in California. Citing an obscure part of the US tax code meant to target drug cartels, the federal agency is barring dispensaries, even those licensed under state law, from taking any business-related tax deductions and is seeking millions in dollars in back taxes.
  This adverse ruling has the very real potential to stop the regulated sale of cannabis currently underway in California, Colorado, Maine and New Mexico; and planned in Arizona, Montana, Delaware, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C
  
• The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) issued a heavy-handed one-page memo to every gun and ammunition dealer nationwide informing them that they must, by law, deny sales to lawful patients who possess a physician’s recommendation to use medical cannabis–many of whom posses state-issues medical cannabis ID cards–effectively denying their Second Amendment rights to have a gun to hunt or for personal safety.
• Federal regulators cracked down on banks in Colorado, California and Michigan that had previously conduct business with medical cannabis dispensaries, forbidding these financial institutions from allowing cash deposits or processing credit/debit cards from state or locally approved canna-businesses.
• U.S. Attorneys in California sent warnings to local dispensaries in San Francisco, San Diego, and elsewhere warning that locally compliant facilities still may be subject to federal prosecution for violating federal ‘drug free school zones’ legislation — leaving these facilities with no choice but to either move or close.
• Also, federal attorneys in California have sent hundreds of legal warnings to the landlords of properties that rent to medical cannabis businesses (retail, delivery, cultivation and testing) warning that their properties and assets are subject to swift civil forfeiture proceedings, and that they themselves may be subject to decades in prison. Is it likely that federal attorneys do the same in Colorado, New Mexico and Maine; and to the numerous gray area dispensaries in Oregon and Washington?
• Rhode Island’s governor Lincoln Chafee pulled the plug on the state’s nascent medical cannabis dispensary program, despite it having been previously approved 102 – 3 by the state legislature. Why? Governor Chafee cites recent memos from the Department of Justice threatening to federally prosecute employees involved in the state-licensed production or distribution of cannabis.
• Michigan courts, the legislature and the state’s Attorney General are steadily dissembling the state’s medical cannabis program, despite the law having passed with 63 percent public approval.

* * * *

There are only two things to say after reading such an alarming list of recent setbacks to ending Cannabis Prohibition:

1. Rather than pour millions of dollars and human energy into creating a legally and politically contentious policy that allows some cannabis consumers who can obtain a physician’s recommendation to be immune from state (but not federal) prosecution during a time of general Cannabis Prohibition, all cannabis consumers, patients, cultivators and sellers and their families should focus their full attention and resources to once and for all legalizing cannabis for all responsible adult consumers.
2. Make a donation to NORML now, join a local NORML chapter (there are nearly 200 of them nationwide!) today or purchase a NORML-related product and show the country that you support ending Cannabis Prohibition in our lifetime.

Everyone at NORML has known that 2012 was going to be the busiest year in our 40-year civil rights efforts to legalize marijuana.

…However, with the Obama Administration’s new and aggressive assertion of federal primacy over states and cities that have crafted superior, public-endorsed, free market-oriented public policies, we’re now assured long and difficult political and legal battles in the coming year with a federal government that still does not ‘get it’ regarding the public’s desire to retire the 74-year-old Cannabis Prohibition right next to the last ‘great social experiment’, Alcohol Prohibition.

Anticipating yesterday’s federal actions in California, members of the NORML Legal Committee (NLC), a nationwide network of over 600 lawyers, is already organizing and poised to challenge federal and state governments who seek to kill patients’ access to medical cannabis and to defend citizens egregiously charged by their own government for law violations.

If you watched the three-part PBS series this week on Alcohol Prohibition, it is impossible not to draw similarities to the absurdity of alcohol’s prohibition to that of the ongoing, heavy-handed criminalization of cannabis, and that ultimately only politically organized citizens came to end the federal government’s folly by putting sufficient legal and political pressure on their elected policymakers.

Our generation must do the same to end our nation’s long-suffering Cannabis Prohibition.

Get (More) Active. Donate now. Be NORML. Every contribution helps.

Thanks for caring and sharing,

Allen St. Pierre
Executive Director
NORML
Washington, DC
director@norml.org

Federal Government Announces Escalation Of Its War On Cannabis

“This is not an idle threat. … What we’re trying to do is send a message as broadly as possible. … We are serious about enforcing federal law. … We are not just talking about it, but we are doing something about it. … Prosecuting marijuana cases is a higher priority now.”
–statements of the US Attorneys for the four federal districts in California

We’ve seen this coming for some time, but today the gloves officially came off. No more memos filled with false promises; no more phony pledges to respect states rights, no more giggles. Like a caged animal backed into a corner, the federal government is snarling and spitting back. It has no other way to defend its morally bankrupt policy except through a show of strength and intimidation.

California’s Top Federal Law Enforcement Officials Announce Enforcement Actions Against State’s Widespread and Illegal Marijuana Industry

via the US Department of Justice, Eastern District of California

SACRAMENTO, Calif.: October 7, 2011 – The four California-based United States Attorneys today announced coordinated enforcement actions targeting the illegal operations of the commercial marijuana industry in California.

The statewide enforcement effort is aimed at curtailing the large, for-profit marijuana industry that has developed since the passage of California’s Proposition 215 in 1996.

… While the four United States Attorneys have tailored enforcement actions to the specific problems in their own districts, the statewide enforcement efforts fall into three main categories:

· Civil forfeiture lawsuits against properties involved in drug trafficking activity, which includes, in some cases, marijuana sales in violation of local ordinances;

· Letters of warning to the owners and lienholders of properties where illegal marijuana sales are taking place; and

· Criminal cases targeting commercial marijuana activities, including arrests over the past two weeks in cases filed in federal courts in Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento and Fresno.

The enforcement actions being announced today are the result of the four United States Attorneys working with federal law enforcement partners and local officials across California to combat commercial marijuana activities that are having the most significant impacts in communities.

“The actions taken today in California by our U.S. Attorneys and their law enforcement partners are consistent with the Department’s commitment to enforcing existing federal laws, including the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), in all states,” said Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

… Laura E. Duffy, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of California, commented: “The California marijuana industry is not about providing medicine to the sick. It’s a pervasive for-profit industry that violates federal law. In addition to damaging our environment, this industry is creating significant negative consequences, in California and throughout the nation. As the number one marijuana producing state in the country, California is exporting not just marijuana but all the serious repercussions that come with it, including significant public safety issues and perhaps irreparable harm to our youth.”

Melinda Haag, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California, said: “Marijuana stores operating in proximity to schools, parks, and other areas where children are present send the wrong message to those in our society who are the most impressionable. In addition, the huge profits generated by these stores, and the value of their inventory, present a danger that the stores will become a magnet for crime, which jeopardizes the safety of nearby children. Although our initial efforts in the Northern District focus on only certain marijuana stores, we will almost certainly be taking action against others. None are immune from action by the federal government.”

Dozens of letters have been sent over the past few days to the owners and lienholders of properties where commercial marijuana stores and grows are located. In the Southern and Eastern Districts, the owners of buildings where marijuana stores operate have received letters warning that they risk losing their property and money derived from renting the space used for marijuana sales. In the Central District, … prosecutors have sent letters to property owners in selected cities where officials have requested federal assistance, and they plan to continue their enforcement actions in other cities as well. In the Northern District, owners and lienholders of marijuana stores operating near schools and other locations where children congregate have been warned that their operations are subject to enhanced penalties and that real property involved in the operations is subject to seizure and forfeiture to the United States.

… The statewide coordinated enforcement actions were announced this morning at a press conference in Sacramento.

It has been apparent for some time now that the Obama Administration is escalating its efforts to both crack down on existing above ground, medical cannabis operations in states like California, as well as to thwart the establishments of similar operations in additional states.

So why these stepped up efforts now? The answer ought to be self-evident. The intention of these and other recent, well-publicized threats by the Obama administration is to stifle the development of a viable legal cannabis distribution industry, even in states that have enacted legislation to allow for such an industry.

During today’s conference, all four US Attorneys affirmed that their intent is not to target individual, state-compliant medical cannabis consumers per se, but to emphasize that the Department of Justice is opposed to the regulated commerce of medical cannabis. That’s because once this industry has legitimized itself to the public and local lawmakers in California, Colorado, and elsewhere, then voters will become accustomed to safe, secure, well-run businesses that deliver consistent, reliable, tested cannabis products. They’ll appreciate the way well-regulated medical dispensaries revitalize sagging economies, provide jobs, and contribute taxes to budget-starved localities. They’ll realize all the years of scaremongering by the government about what would happen if marijuana were legal, even for sick people, was nothing but hysterical propaganda. And the voting public will eventually ask: ‘Why we don’t just legalize cannabis for everyone in a similarly responsible manner?’

And that is a question this administration has consistently indicated that the President is unable or unwilling to answer.

The Federal Government ‘Ardently Supports’ Medical Marijuana Research?! Who Knew?

Last month we shared with you a letter from Tennessee Congressman Steven Cohen — co-sponsor of HR 2306: The Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011 — to Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, which called upon the Obama administration to support changing cannabis’ status as a schedule I prohibited drug and to respect the laws of states that have legalized it for its medical utility.

“We should not deny the thousands of Americans who rely on the benefits that marijuana provides,” Cohen wrote. “There is no evidence that marijuana has the same addictive qualities or damaging consequences as cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine and should not be treated as such.”

On Monday, October 3, Drug Czar Kerlikowske responded to Rep. Cohen. In his reply, summarized here, Kerlikowske alleged that the Congressman’s concerns regarding the federal scheduling of cannabis are unwarranted because, “We ardently support research into determining what components of the marijuana plant can be used as medicine.”

Kerlikowske added, “In fact, the federal government is the largest source of funding for research into the potential therapeutic benefits of marijuana, and every valid request for the use of marijuana for research has been approved by the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

Really? So how does the Drug Czar explain this headline — from Saturday’s edition of The Washington Post?

Marijuana study of traumatized veterans stuck in regulatory limbo

Getting pot on the street is easy. Just ask the 17 million Americans who smoked the federally illegal drug in 2010.

Obtaining weed from the government? That’s a lot harder.

In April, the Food and Drug Administration approved a first-of-its kind study to test whether marijuana can ease the nightmares, insomnia, anxiety and flashbacks common in combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.

But now another branch of the federal government has stymied the study. The Health and Human Services Department is refusing to sell government-grown marijuana to the nonprofit group proposing the research, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

That’s right, the Drug Czar is claiming that the federal government ‘ardently supports’ medical marijuana research just days after the US government formally denied a request for an FDA-approved clinical trial to assess cannabis’ therapeutic safety and efficacy.

Wait, it gets worse. The ugly truth is that the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the agency that oversees 85 percent of the world’s research on controlled substances, is on record stating that its institutional policy is to reject any and all medical marijuana research. “As the National Institute on Drug Abuse, our focus is primarily on the negative consequences of marijuana use,” a NIDA spokesperson told The New York Times in 2010. “We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana.”

For once a government agency was telling the truth regarding cannabis. NIDA categorically does not support such research — despite the Obama administration in 2010 publicly issuing its “Scientific Integrity” memorandum stating, “Science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration.”

That is why an online search of ongoing FDA-approved clinical trials using the keyword “cannabinoids” yields only six studies (two of which have already been completed) worldwide involving subjects’ use of actual cannabis despite hundreds of favorable preclinical and observational studies clearly demonstrating its benefit.

Just how blatant is Kerlikowske’s latest lie? Consider this. According to the White House’s 2011 National Drug Control Strategy, released in July, only fourteen researchers in the United States are legally permitted to conduct research assessing the effect of inhaled cannabis in human subjects. That’s right, only fourteen! And even among this absurdly limited group of investigators, most are involved in research to assess the drug’s “abuse potential, physical/psychological effects, [and] adverse effects.” So says the White House.

Ardent support for medical marijuana research? Please Gil, don’t make us laugh.

Make Marijuana Legal For Medical Purposes: Help Put Marijuana Reschedule Petition Before President Obama

In 1972 NORML filed the first major lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to change the legal status of cannabis from schedule I to schedule II. Would this make cannabis legal for an adult to purchase and use like alcohol and tobacco products?

No.

All the organization was seeking was an acknowledgement that cannabis had been badly mis-scheduled as a dangerous and highly addictive drug with no accepted medical value. The organization argued in one of the longest (and strangest) legal cases in US history, NORML vs. DEA (1972-1994), that cannabis is a safe, non-toxic herbal medicine that should be within the ambit of choices for a physician to recommend to a sick, dying or sense-threatened medical patient.

In the late 1990s a coalition of cannabis reform groups refiled a petition to reschedule, which was rejected this past summer by the DEA (see below).

Please review and sign a new petition asking President Obama to once and for all listen to the many numerous DEA administrative law judges that have previously ruled in the reformers’ favor and all of the clear science published that cannabis is in fact a medicinal product of great worth, providing maximum safety with minimal unwanted side effects and at relatively little cost for the consumer.

“Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects. But marijuana is not such a substance. There is no record in the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality…Simply stated, researchers have been unable to give animals enough marijuana to induce death…In practical terms, marijuana cannot induce a lethal response as a result of drug-related toxicity…In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume…Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” – DEA administrative law judge, Francis Young, NORML vs. DEA (1988)

About 3,000 more signatures are needed by October 23 to meet the necessary threshold. I’ve been told that the White House may raise the threshold soon to qualify petitions for Presidential review from 5,000 to 25,000. Undeterred-in-the-slightest, I’m totally confident that the NORML community will generate in excess of 25,000 signatures in support for this important and long-suffering cannabis re-scheduling for medical purposes.

Please sign the cannabis rescheduling petition here.

Medical Marijuana Advocates Sue Federal Government Over Rescheduling Delay
MONDAY, 23 MAY 2011 11:34

WASHINGTON–(ENEWSPF)–May 23 – A Coalition of advocacy groups and patients filed suit in the DC Circuit Court today to compel the Obama administration to answer a 9-year-old petition to reclassify medical marijuana. The Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC) has never received an answer to its 2002 petition, despite a formal recommendation in 2006 from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the final arbiter in the rescheduling process. As recently as July 2010, the DEA issued a 54-page “Position on Marijuana,” but failed to even mention the pending CRC petition. Plaintiffs in the case include the CRC, Americans for Safe Access (ASA), Patients Out of Time, as well as individually named patients, one of whom is listed on the CRC petition but died in 2005.

“The federal government’s strategy has been delay, delay, delay,” said Joe Elford, Chief Counsel of ASA and lead counsel on the writ. “It is far past time for the government to answer our rescheduling petition, but unfortunately we’ve been forced to go to court in order to get resolution.” The writ of mandamus filed today accuses the government of unreasonable delay in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. A previous cannabis (marijuana) rescheduling petition filed in 1972 went unanswered for 22 years before being denied.

The writ argues that cannabis is not a dangerous drug and that ample evidence of its therapeutic value exists based on scientific studies in the US and around the world. “Despite numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies establishing that marijuana is effective” in treating numerous medical conditions, the government “continues to deprive seriously ill persons of this needed, and often life-saving therapy by maintaining marijuana as a Schedule I substance.” The writ calls out the government for unlawfully failing to answer the petition despite an Inter-Agency Advisory issued by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006 and “almost five years after receiving a 41-page memorandum from HHS stating its scientific evaluation and recommendations.”

The two largest physician groups in the country — the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians — have both called on the federal government to review marijuana’s status as a Schedule I substance with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. The National Cancer Institute, a part of the National Institutes of Health, added cannabis to its website earlier this year as a Complementary Alternative Medicine (CAM) and recognized that, “Cannabis has been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years prior to its current status as an illegal substance.”

Medical marijuana has now been decriminalized in 16 states and the District of Columbia, and has an 80% approval rating among Americans according to several polls. In a 1988 ruling on a prior rescheduling petition, the DEA’s own Administrative Law Judge Francis Young recommended in favor of reclassification stating that, “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.”

A formal rejection of the CRC petition would enable the group to challenge in court the government’s assertion that marijuana has no medical value. “Adhering to outdated public policy that ignores science has created a war zone for doctors and their patients who are seeking use cannabis therapeutics,” said Steph Sherer, Executive Director of ASA and a plaintiff in the writ. Jon Gettman, who filed the rescheduling petition on behalf of the CRC added that, “The Obama Administration’s refusal to act on this petition is an irresponsible stalling tactic.”

A synthetic form of THC, the main chemical ingredient in the cannabis plant, is currently classified Schedule III for its use in a prescribed pill trademarked as Marinol®. The pill goes off-patent this year and companies vying to sell generic versions are petitioning the government to also reclassify the more economical, naturally-derived THC (from the plant) to Schedule III. The rescheduling process involves federal agencies such as the National Institute on Drug Abuse, HHS, and DEA. On average, it takes 6 months from HHS review to final action, whereas it’s been nearly 5 years since HHS issued its recommendation on the CRC petition, more than twice as long as any other rescheduling petition reviewed since 2002.

Further information:
CRC rescheduling petition
2006 HHS recommendation
2010 DEA Position on Marijuana

Writ filed today
Backgrounder on rescheduling

World’s Largest Drug Policy Reform Conference One Month Away

The Reform Conference is just a month away – have you secured your spot yet?

Click here to register to attend.

If you haven’t, you should soon. Booking your travel a month out will save you money. And you won’t want to miss what former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson and current California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom have to say at the Opening Plenary!

The rest of the conference program is packed full with trainings, roundtable discussions addressing controversies within the movement, and panels exploring and sharing innovative approaches to reform challenges. Thursday evening you can stand up for justice at the No More Drug War rally at nearby MacArthur Park, hosted by dozens of local California organizations and emceed by KPFK radio personality Lalo Alcaraz.

And the activities and highlights don’t stop there…

Very soon we’ll be announcing three special Mobile Workshops – learning sessions that will take a select group of conference-goers out of the hotel and into the local community.

You’re also invited to host informal Community Meetings of your own during the conference. These meetings are meant to be your opportunity to organize reformers around action plans. They take place in open session rooms in the mornings, evenings and at lunch.

What do these Mobile Workshops and Community Meetings have in common? They’re only available to registered conference attendees – and they’ll be limited by space availability!

So register now…and I’ll see you in Los Angeles!

Stefanie Jones
Event Manager
Drug Policy Alliance