Obama Administration Opposes Oakland’s Medical Marijuana Grow Plan, Threatens Potential Statewide Crackdown

Obama administration officials strongly oppose plans by the city of Oakland to license and tax industrial sized medical cannabis producers, according to a just published report on CaliforniaWatch.org, the website of the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Sources at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the United States attorney’s office in San Francisco said that federal officials would likely pursue criminal or civil litigation against local marijuana growers as well as Oakland city officials if they decide to move forward with plans to license medical cannabis farming. “Oakland would be on the hook for violating state and federal law,” an unnamed administration official told the website.

Oakland City Attorney John Russo confirmed that DOJ officials are opposed to the city’s licensing plan. “They’ve expressed their concerns that the path Oakland is taking is in violation of the law,” Russo said in a prepared statement.

Oakland officials are seeking to license up to four industrial-sized medical marijuana grow operations within the city limits. The permits do not set limits regarding the quantity of cannabis that licensed producers may cultivate at each given site. City officials began accepting applications from prospective growers in November.

According to the California Watch report, federal officials are also planning to initiate a broader crack down on marijuana production and distribution statewide. The story reports that DOJ and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials met with California’s four U.S. attorneys on November 10 “to develop a plan to deal with some of the loopholes and gray areas in the state’s medical marijuana program.”

The administration’s threats appear to be in conflict with an October 19, 2009 DOJ memo stating, “As a general matter, pursuit of [federal law enforcement] priorities should not focus federal resources … on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.” Nevertheless, as previously reported by Americans for Safe Access and others, the administration since issuing that memo has engaged in an estimated 30 federal raids of medical marijuana providers, producers, and laboratory facilities that engage in the testing of cannabis potency and quality.

NORML will have further details on this story in Thursday’s weekly media advisory.

Medical Marijuana’s Lost Man: Bryan Epis

One of the best (or worse, it depends on one’s perspective and physical location!) indicators of the total failure of a law, is when it is woefully and subjectively applied.

When trying to answer inquiries from reporters, columnists, policymakers and medical cannabis patients regarding as to ‘why specifically has Bryan Epis been compelled to return to federal prison–at great taxpayer expense during a steep recession–when there are thousands of cannabusinesses operating at the retail level in states like California, Colorado and Montana?’, there are no satisfactory (or logical) answers to provide them.

Suffice of to say, Bryan Epis’ case is both a dinosaur of sorts as well as a badge of shame for the current, and somewhat medical cannabis-supportive Obama administration in that his was one of the first federal arrests in 1997, and after a hotly contested legal battle, Bryan was one of the first medical cannabis primary caregivers to be sentenced under federal law, to ten years. After serving 24 months in prison from 2002-2004, with the greater social and political acceptance of medical cannabis blossoming around Bryan’s prison cell, he was able to procure an appeal bond, leave prison, argue his case in the appeals court again, re-start his successful business, pay taxes, take care of his mother, be a parent to his child, develop a loving relationship–all with the notion that he’d unlikely have to return to federal prison.

What, in the era of 24/7 medical cannabis vending machines, law enforcement having to return back hundreds of pounds of seized medical cannabis to patient-growers and caregivers, insurance companies paying on medical cannabis crop failure and insuring  dispensaries with standard business liability coverage and President Obama implementing the first steps of recognizing medical cannabis’ safety, utility and need to change its legal status specifically-tailored for medical use?

Could the federal government be so arbitrary and capricious so as to seek his re-incarceration for eight more years to be served in prison, for the ‘crime’ of growing over one hundred medical cannabis plants?

Yes. On April 08, 2009, a three panel judge on the 9th Circuit ruled against Epis and ordered him back to prison.

Bryan may have been arrested under the Clinton administration, prosecuted and incarcerated under the Bush 2.0 administration, but the Obama administration’s Department of Justice can ‘do the right thing’: stop wasting taxpayer’s money, stop being subjective in the application of the law and reason, and stop making the average person seriously question the priorities of government institutions and bureaucracies by immediately reducing his sentence, freeing him from a cage, and allow him to return to his family–and the tax rolls.

Below is a communication from Bryan’s partner regarding the two primary things citizens can do to support Bryan and help end this kind of insanity in the war against cannabis consumers:

1) Sign and distribute the petition necessary to appeal to the federal government to reduce Bryan’s sentence;

2) When booking lodging online, please use a search engine called LodgingSite, which not only benefits its owner (Bryan Epis!), but the company will donate 10% of their profit to public interest groups like NORML.

March 4, 2010

Dear Allen,

My name is Monica and I am writing you on behalf of Bryan Epis. As you know they recently took him back in to serve the remainder of a ten year prison sentence.  He wanted me to contact you in hope that you can help us. I have attached a printable petition. Our goal is to come up with 100k signatures within 4 months.  The lawyer he has is filing a 2255 to try to get his sentence reduced. Bryan is hoping you will put this petition on your website, anyone can print it. It holds 25 signatures per page, once a page is complete, at the bottom of the page is our address. We ask that they send them back to me and I will take them to his lawyer.

We have found a way to raise money for your non-profit organization as well as help Bryan.

We have a website called lodgingsite.com powered by Priceline.  It is a hotel reservation web site.  I would assume that all of your members, book at least one hotel a year, if they go to lodgingsite.com and book a hotel room under the “special rates” section.  We offer 10% cash back to any non profit organization of their choice (as long as when they get their confirmation info and send it to cashback@lodgingsite.com along with a designated non profit organization of their choice. They must include the name of the organization of their choice, plus their confirmation number, their name address, the hotel name and city). BTW, 10% equates to about $20 per reservation. If you multiply that by how many members and supporters NORML has it is potentially a lot of money NORML could get for the cause, as well as to help and promote Bryan’s defense.

If you have any questions please contact me at: monica@lodgingsite.com

Sincerely,
Monica Focht
(in care of Bryan Epis)

Life In Prison For 51 Cannabis Plants?

At a time of heightened national security post-911, a near-depression economy and state government budgets bleeding red coast to coast, what is the moral and economic imperative that compels some in law enforcement to seek lifetime sentences for small-time cannabis growers?

Again, cannabis consumers and activists should never shrink back from prohibitionist (and some in the media) arguments that “no one gets arrested for cannabis in the US (it’s practically legal!)” when over 755,000 cannabis consumers are busted annually for simple possession (94,000 others were charged with cultivation, distribution or conspiracy therein).

Even more so when there are outrageous claims made that ‘no goes to jail or prison for pot’.

Unfortunately for a Jackson Mississippi man named Ronald Sekul, he can attest to how wrong these false claims are as he stares down a lifetime sentence for cultivating 51 cannabis plants.

Man could get life in pot bust, Jackson resident was growing 51 plants, officials say
A 33-year-old Jackson man accused of growing marijuana in his apartment could get up to life in prison if convicted.

In the case of Ronald Christopher Sekul, the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics intends to ask prosecutors to apply a law called the “kingpin” statute, MBN Director Marshall Fisher said.

The statute can be applied to Sekul’s case because he allegedly had a drug operation for longer than 12 consecutive months and had more than 10 pounds of marijuana, Fisher said.

Sekul was arrested Wednesday for allegedly growing 4-foot marijuana plants in the back bedroom of the fourplex he lives in at 1510 Myrtle St., according to MBN.

He is out of jail on $50,000 bond.

Read the entire article here.

Think about, life in prison for cultivating one of the most popular agricultural products in America–arguably the number one commercially cultivated commodity in the country. Think about the annual expense incurred by the taxpayers of Mississippi for the incarceration of Mr. Sekul: $22,000-30,000 a year; think about the total cost to the taxpayers if Mr. Sekul spends 10 years in prison (approx. $275,000), 20 years (approx. $600,000) or 30 years (approx. $1 million).

Rather than tax and actually control cannabis like more dangerous and addictive government-sanctioned drugs like tobacco and alcohol products, is it not remarkable beyond words that the state and federal governments still engages both massive number of annual cannabis-related arrests and the incarceration annually nationwide of an estimated 45,000-65,000 cannabis-only offenders, while still not achieving any of the stated goals of prohibition (view a comprehensive NORML report analyzing cannabis arrests in the US here, read page 45 to see where none of the government’s stated goals are achieved).

Feds Are The Ones Still Stirring Pot With Taxpayers’ Money

However, there is a potential policy silver-lining to buttress the expense to the taxpayers and tragedy of what our society is trying to do Mr. Sekul and that is that President Obama’s new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, along with Attorney General Eric Holder, can stop these kinds of foolish and expensive incarcerations for cannabis by de-funding the federal grants provided to local law enforcement and their ‘multi-jursidictional anti-drug task forces’, like JET, the Jackson Enforcement Team, which boasts of Mr. Sekul’s arrest.

How many fewer Americans would be arrested annually if the federal government didn’t fund local arrests?

Exactly how many taxpayer dollars could be saved if the expense and trouble of local cannabis arrests were not subsidized by the feds?