Pubdate: Wed, 29 Feb 2012
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2012 The Sacramento Bee
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/0n4cG7L1
Website: http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: Sam Stanton

SACRAMENTO'S U.S. PROSECUTOR DEFENDS MEDICAL MARIJUANA CRACKDOWN

As the top federal prosecutor in Sacramento was announcing a new 
focus on huge pot farms in the Central Valley on Tuesday, a U.S. 
district judge delivered a separate blow to efforts to thwart 
crackdowns on medical marijuana.

U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. dismissed one of five 
suits that had been filed in federal courts last fall in a bid to win 
legal support for medical marijuana use in California and other states.

Burrell's order came in a suit filed in federal court in Sacramento 
last November on behalf of the El Camino Wellness Center, near Arden 
Fair mall, and Ryan Landers, a 40-year-old Sacramento man who uses 
medical marijuana to alleviate suffering from AIDS and other illnesses.

The suit targeted U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Drug Enforcement 
Administration chief Michelle Leonhart and Benjamin Wagner, the U.S. 
attorney in Sacramento.

Ironically, the decision to toss out the suit came the same day 
Landers was attending a luncheon of the Sacramento Press Club, where 
Wagner had been invited to discuss his office's policies toward 
marijuana prosecutions.

The affair attracted about 100 people, many of them advocates for 
medical marijuana, and concluded with Landers politely rising, 
introducing himself and beginning to ask Wagner a question.

"I think you're suing me, if I'm not mistaken," Wagner said before 
addressing Landers' questions.

The lawsuit dismissal came after the luncheon, and Wagner spent much 
of his presentation defending his office's recent warnings against 
marijuana operations.

Wagner and the three other U.S. attorneys in California sparked 
controversy last fall when they announced charges against marijuana 
growers and dispensaries, as well as seizures of properties involved 
in the business.

Wagner repeated his stance Tuesday that federal officials are not 
targeting sick people who use marijuana for relief, and said he 
considered his office's enforcement efforts "quite measured."

But he added that the state is in the midst of a "green rush" of 
people flocking to California to exploit the market for marijuana and 
that evidence found in recent cases showed some dispensaries 
supposedly operating as non-profits  were collecting $10,000 to 
$50,000 a day, much of it in cash.

"We have received information that some storefront marijuana stores 
here in the Sacramento area are selling marijuana at a markup of at 
least 200 percent over what they are buying it for," Wagner said. 
"That is not about treating seriously ill people. It's about profits."

Wagner noted that federal law does not allow for the sale or growing 
of marijuana, even if California does as a result of a voter-approved 
medical marijuana initiative in 1996.

And he warned that the "unregulated free-for-all" that has allowed 
marijuana growers and merchants to make fortunes must come to an end.

In coming weeks, Wagner said, federal agents plan to focus on pot 
farms in the Central Valley located on agricultural fields.

"There's been a proliferation of these large commercial grows on 
farmland, especially in the southern part of the valley from 
Stanislaus County down to Kern County," Wagner said. "And these grows 
are often tens of thousands of marijuana plants.

"They're often guarded by armed men and they are a hazard to people 
in those farming communities who live in or around them."

Wagner's message was met with mostly polite but skeptical questioning 
from some marijuana advocates in the audience.

One man questioned whether federal officials saying they were simply 
following the law was akin to Nazis using the same defense after World War II.

Another, former Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Stephen 
Downing, questioned whether there was any accurate means of measuring 
whether the government's war on drugs was working.

"Every metric I can find says it's a failure," Downing said to applause.

Wagner explained to questioners that he could not spell out to 
dispensary operators how much marijuana they could distribute without 
running afoul of prosecutors, saying that was like asking a 
California Highway Patrol officer how far over the speed limit a 
motorist can drive without risking a ticket.

His only direct effort to dodge a question came when a reporter asked 
if he had ever smoked marijuana and what he thought of it.

"Uh, I'll say that I went to college," Wagner replied.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom