Pubdate: Thu, 23 Jan 2014
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2014 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/IuiAC7IZ
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: Jonathan Kaminsky, Reuters
Page: 17

FORMER DEA AGENTS MAKE SWITCH TO UNLIKELY ROLES

They Now Work in Legalized Pot Trade

SEATTLE - In a decade with the Drug Enforcement Administration,
Patrick Moen rose to supervise a team of agents busting
methamphetamine and heroin rings in Oregon - before giving it all up
to join the nascent legal marijuana industry in Washington state.

In November, the former federal drug agent quit his post to work for a
marijuana industry investment firm and says he relishes getting in on
the ground floor of a burgeoning industry he was once sworn to annihilate.

As managing director of compliance and senior counsel for
Seattle-based Privateer Holdings, Moen has added his name to a small
but growing list of individuals with unlikely backgrounds who have
joined or thrown their support behind state-sanctioned marijuana
enterprises.

In Oregon, another former DEA agent, Paul Schmidt, who retired from
the agency in 2010, recently set up shop as a consultant to medical
cannabis businesses after working as a state inspector of medical pot
dispensaries in Colorado.

Last year, former Mexican President Vicente Fox visited Seattle to
trumpet support for a pot firm fronted by former Microsoft executive
Jamen Shively. The Seattle Police Department is weighing whether to
allow officers to moonlight as security guards at pot shops slated to
open later this year.

Moen, whose jump has been criticized by his former boss at the DEA,
said that even as his profile within the agency rose, he nursed a
growing sense that the marijuana cases he worked were
wrongheaded.

Moen says he is working to foster a reputable pot industry that will
hasten an end to the drug's prohibition and allow the DEA to sharpen
its focus on drugs that are truly harmful.

"I saw this as an amazing opportunity to be a part of the team that's
helping to create this industry, " Moen, 36, said. "I don't really
feel like it's the other side."

While marijuana remains illegal under federal law, 20 states and
Washington, D.C., allow for its medical use. In 2012, voters in
Washington state and Colorado became the first to legalize adult
recreational use of the drug.

Colorado and Washington have fed the momentum for pot liberalization
efforts elsewhere, with a legalization measure likely to go before
Alaska voters in August and activists in Oregon collecting signatures
to get a similar initiative on the state's November ballot.

The Department of Justice announced in August it wouldn't interfere
with state efforts to regulate and tax marijuana provided states can
meet a set of requirements that include keeping it away from children
and restricting its flow across borders.

Over the summer, Moen arranged to meet Privateer Holdings Chief
Executive Brendan Kennedy in a Portland coffee shop, where he gave
Kennedy his DEA business card before passing him an envelope. Kennedy
said he feared it contained a subpoena but was relieved to find a copy
of Moen's resume.

Colorado this month allowed stores to begin selling marijuana, a step
that is months away in Washington state. These developments, coupled
with Moen's own evolving views, made a once unfathomable career shift
a possibility, he said.

Among his current assignments, Moen is helping Privateer Holdings
avoid legal pitfalls as it pushes into the cultivation of medical
marijuana in Canada - a significant leap for a firm that has until
recently invested solely in enterprises on the fringes of the
marijuana trade.

The pay and benefits of his new job are "close to a wash" with his
previous position, Moen said, but include stock options in a company
aiming to become an industry cornerstone.

Moen's value to Privateer Holdings likely will come in guiding the
company on how to steer clear of activities that raise red flags with
federal authorities, said Hilary Bricken, a Seattle-based marijuana
business lawyer.

"It's extremely ironic," she said. "You go from cracking skulls to
supporting the very effort that you once vowed to entirely destroy."

Seattle-based DEA Special Agent in Charge Matthew Barnes called Moen's
career change an act of abandonment.

"It is disappointing when law enforcement officers, sworn to uphold
the laws of the United States with honor, courage and integrity,
abandon their commitment to work in an industry involved in
trafficking marijuana," Barnes said in a statement.

Underscoring the divide between the DEA and an emerging pot industry
sanctioned by states, the agency's chief of operations, James Capra,
last week denounced the movement toward ending pot prohibition at a
U.S. Senate hearing as "reckless and irresponsible."

But Moen said not all his former colleagues have reacted negatively to
his move.

"I've gotten a lot of support from former colleagues," Moen
said.

"I wasn't sure how guys were going to react, and it's been really
great."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt