Pubdate: Sat, 08 Oct 2011
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2011 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Vincent Carroll

ECHOES OF PROHIBITION IN NATION'S POT POLICIES

I wonder if Attorney General Eric Holder was able to catch any of Ken 
Burns' latest series on PBS, on the rise and fall of Prohibition. 
Given Holder's growing zeal for suppressing medical marijuana 
commerce, as confirmed by this week's crackdown on dispensaries in 
California, he might have found the second episode, "A Nation of 
Scofflaws," particularly timely.

As the PBS promotional links explain, Prohibition turned otherwise 
"law-abiding citizens into criminals, made a mockery of the justice 
system" and "fostered cynicism and hypocrisy that corroded the social 
contract all across the country."

Hundreds of cities and towns brazenly defied the 18th Amendment's ban 
on booze for more than a decade, just as 16 states and the District 
of Columbia today openly defy federal law on marijuana, permitting 
its use as medicine. And yet the Justice Department can't quite 
decide what to do about today's scofflaws: Should it bow to the will 
of the people in the states that embrace medical marijuana or should 
it defer to Drug War? enthusiasts on its staff?

The die-hard Drug Warriors view commercial dispensaries as an affront 
to the rule of law and the thin wedge of legalization. They want to 
show those of us in the defiant regions who's boss.

At first Holder seemed to reflect the views of his own boss, 
President Obama, who in March 2008 told an Oregon newspaper, "I'm not 
going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent 
state laws on this issue." Holder echoed that sentiment two months 
into the administration, and his department confirmed the policy in a 
memo giving the green light to medical marijuana activity in 
compliance with state laws.

Ha. In the latest departure from that policy, four U.S. attorneys in 
California announced Friday they were taking action to shut down a 
number of dispensaries they described as bad actors, while denouncing 
the entire "for-profit industry" as being responsible for 
"significant public safety issues and perhaps irreparable harm to our 
youth," to quote the breathless words of one of the quartet.

Are Colorado's dispensaries at risk? Of course they are, in the sense 
that the Obama administration has proved itself utterly bereft of 
principle on the issue of medical marijuana. A perfectly sensible and 
understandable policy has been tossed aside and replaced with a 
facsimile from the Bush years, when it was often impossible to guess 
why the DEA chose to raid one medical marijuana outpost and not 
another. Indeed, "medical marijuana raids have been more frequent 
under Obama than under Bush, when there were about 200 over eight 
years," according to Reason magazine's Jacob Sullum.

Meanwhile, U.S. attorneys have spent recent months trying to bully 
jurisdictions such as Rhode Island and Arcata, Calif., into 
suspending approval of dispensaries.

Still, Colorado's dispensary owners aren't altogether whistling past 
the graveyard when they insist they feel more secure than their 
counterparts in some states. Although the California attorney general 
authorized dispensaries operating as patient cooperatives, that state 
doesn't actually regulate them. By contrast, Colorado has "a 
transparent and highly regulated statewide system," Sensible 
Colorado's Brian Vicente told The Denver Post. "I think the federal 
government is more comfortable knowing the state's in charge."

Our state law includes local opt-out, meaning no community has to 
tolerate dispensaries if it doesn't want to. So while voters never 
explicitly approved dispensaries when they gave the green light to 
medical marijuana in 2000, elected officials indisputably have.

Nearly 80 years ago, Prohibition ended because it had become legally 
and morally absurd. Yet how should we describe the spectacle of U.S. 
attorneys and federal agents plotting to bankrupt established 
businesses while intimidating jurisdictions that dare to consider 
medical-marijuana commerce? It seems that turning law-abiding 
citizens into criminals while fostering cynicism has yet to go out of style.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom