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A COMMON SENSE POLICY

Attorney General Holder Announces Hands-Off Approach To Medical Marijuana

After California in 1996 became the first state to permit individuals to purchase marijuana for medicinal purposes as long as they have a doctor's prescription, Nevada and 11 other states followed with similar laws.  Despite opposition from those who consider marijuana a gateway to harder drugs, proponents in the 13 states successfully argued that medical marijuana laws could help patients who suffer from pain or loss of appetite.

The rub has been that the state laws run counter to federal law, which prohibits the possession or sale of marijuana under any circumstance.  A string of court decisions favoring the federal government gave the Bush administration license to approve law enforcement raids of dispensaries where medical marijuana is sold.

But Attorney General Eric Holder last week announced that the Drug Enforcement Administration will be allowed to conduct such raids only when the targets are violating state as well as federal laws.  That means the Justice Department will not prosecute sellers of medical marijuana in the states where it is legal, as long as those sales are legitimate.

Holder told reporters: "Given the limited resources that we have, our focus will be on people, organizations that are growing, cultivating substantial amounts of marijuana and doing so in a way that's inconsistent with federal and state law."

His reasoning is sound.  Federal law enforcement agents have far more serious targets to go after than those who are selling marijuana to qualified individuals with cancer, AIDS or other serious medical conditions.

If marijuana is being produced and sold for uses that have nothing to do with medical treatment, federal agents under this new policy would still have every right to conduct raids, even in states with medical marijuana laws.  That's how it should be, since proponents of medical marijuana initiatives who pitched them to voters and legislators vowed that its sale and use would not be expanded to recreational purposes.