Dispensers of Marijuana Find Relief in Policy Shift via NYT
We all welcomed the statements by Eric Holder halting raids on Medical Marijuana Dispensaries. But when a policy shift isn’t codified in a law you get different people interpreting the directive in different ways. It’s unclear that anything has actually changed at all.
A spokesman for the drug enforcement agency, Garrison Courtney, pointed out that the attorney general’s statement indicated that the federal authorities would continue to go after marijuana dispensaries that broke state and federal laws by selling to minors, selling excessive amounts or selling marijuana from unsanctioned growers.
So we can most likely expect more raids in the future; this is no moratorium. We can expect local and state law enforcement attempt to entrap dispensary owners with falsified recommendations, fake ID’s, and putting pressure to disclose their supply chain. But at least this is a start, and it appears that the Feds have bigger fish to fry.
Mark Agrast, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning research group in Washington, said Mr. Holder’s statement indicated a more pragmatic and less ideological approach to drug enforcement.
“This is an example of recognizing the limited resources they have, so they have to make decisions about the soundest use of available resources,” Mr. Agrast said.
The attorney general’s comments also indicated that the Justice Department would allocate greater resources for investigations of white-collar crime, including financial crime, and other enforcement areas that received less attention during the Bush administration.
