Quite a lengthy article that discusses enforcement and legal issues surrounding whether or not it is considered legal as the DEA and State governments continue with separate agendas. BD
A little more than a decade after California voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996, making it the first state to approve the use of medical marijuana, the movement continues its slow spread across the country. Now, medical marijuana is legal in 12 states (with varying degrees of protection), and roughly 50 million people -- or about one out of six Americans -- live in those states.
On the Pacific Coast, medical marijuana is legal from the Canadian border to the Mexican border (Washington, Oregon, California), as well as in Alaska and Hawaii. In the intermountain West, Colorado, Montana, and Nevada were joined this year by New Mexico as states where medical marijuana is legal. The other regional medical marijuana hotbed is the Northeast, where Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont allow its use, and only a veto from Republican Gov. Jodi Rell kept Connecticut from joining those ranks this year.
But at the same time, the federal government remains staunchly opposed to medical marijuana. The Justice Department and the DEA continue to harass patients and providers, especially in California, where a loosely-written Prop. 215 has led to the most wide-open medical marijuana scene in the country. While the DEA, sometimes working with recalcitrant state and local law enforcement officials, has been raiding dispensaries for years, this week the agency unveiled a new tactic against them: It sent letters to dozens of Los Angeles area landlords who rent to dispensaries, threatening them with civil forfeiture and possible criminal action if they continue to rent to what the DEA considers criminal drug trafficking organizations.
Medical Marijuana -- A Progress Report - California Progress Report
To further confuse...or add clarity...so few know about this pending lawsuit. Please read on.
ReplyDeleteI work for an organization, MAPS, that recently won a landmark lawsuit against the DEA regarding medical marijuana. With one more step in the approval process, we are urging the DEA to accept the recommendation by their own Administrative Law Judge to grant a license to grow marijuana for FDA trials to determine whether or not it has medicinal value. In an effort to put pressure on the DEA, Reps. John Olver (D-MA) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) are co-sponsoring a Congressional Sign-On Letter urging the DEA to accept the Recommended Ruling.
This legal struggle has taken years. If the DEA rules against granting the license, there’s no telling how many more years will go by before marijuana is evaluated in FDA trials. For decades, the federal government has excluded marijuana from highly-demanded drug development research. Now is a unique window of opportunity to change this!
To learn more about MAPS, please visit our web site at http://www.maps.org -- For background on the case and to contact your Representative, see MAPS' DEA Lawsuit page http://www.maps.org/mmj/DEAlawsuit.html or supportive editorials from The Economist http://www.maps.org/sys/nq.pl?id=1314&fmt=page and LA Times http://www.maps.org/sys/nq.pl?id=1341&fmt=page.