Pubdate: Sun, 25 Aug 2013
Source: News Tribune, The (Tacoma, WA)
Copyright: 2013 Tacoma News, Inc.
Contact: http://blog.thenewstribune.com/letters/submit/
Website: http://www.thenewstribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/442

A POT PROPOSAL FOR A CLUELESS JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

Mark Kleiman, the drug policy expert who's been advising the Liquor
Control Board on marijuana legalization, has now tackled an even
knottier problem: how to mesh state legalization with federal
criminalization.

One of the bigger problems with Washington's attempt to legalize
cannabis in a responsible way is the fact that growing, selling and
possessing the drug remain serious crimes under the U.S. Controlled
Substance Act. Last year's Initiative 502 legalized all of the above,
authorizing pot farming and commerce under tight regulations enforced
by the liquor board.

So far, the Obama administration has shown either shameless cowardice
or clueless passivity, or both, in its failure to respond to I-502 and
a similar initiative enacted in Colorado.

Does the U.S. Justice Department plan to ignore the federal law and
let the state experiments proceed? Is it going to taking a wrecking
ball to the regulations after the states adopt them? Should would-be
pot entrepreneurs be lining up good defense lawyers?

No clue. It's been almost 10 months since the initiatives passed, and
Eric Holder seems to be doing nothing but watch in befuddlement. The
attorney general did go out on a limb a while back, venturing that the
Controlled Substance Act remains on the books.

Kleiman, in contrast, appears to be doing more thinking than the
entire Justice Department put together.

In an article published Thursday in the Journal of Drug Policy
Analysis, he noted the problems of Holder's pretend-the-issue-doesn't-exist
policy.

For one thing, the next president could decide to take the CSA
seriously. In that case, even licensed growers and sellers would be
exposed to federal prosecution and property confiscation.

Kleiman suggests a real alternative: formal cooperative agreements
that would stay federal enforcement - but only on condition that
states come through on key black market controls. He cites a provision
in the CSA that might authorize such deals. Ideally, the agreements
would be blessed by Congress.

The U.S. government has every right to demand that a state like
Washington or Colorado doesn't let itself become an exporter of cheap
weed to states that want no part of loose marijuana laws. The feds can
- - and should - also demand that legalization not be allowed to drive
up cannabis consumption among adolescents.

Washington appears headed in the opposite direction. There are few
signs that our elected officials are willing to step up enforcement of
state laws against growing, dealing and selling at storefront
"medical" dispensaries.

If local governments let the black market thrive while licensed farms
and stores are created under I-502, the licensed enterprises might
simply expand the net supply of marijuana - perhaps resulting in more
interstate trafficking.

As for teenagers, I-502 may already be lifting some of marijuana's
remaining stigma among teenagers. Pot sold in illegal-but-tolerated
dispensaries has also been reaching kids, for whom the drug easily
leads to addiction and failure in school.

So there's good reason to consider federal-state bargains that let
states keep licensed marijuana enterprises while insisting that they
simultaneously battle both traffickers and teenage perceptions that
marijuana is harmless. Federal and state law might thus peacefully
coexist. Eric Holder, let us introduce Mark Kleiman.
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