Pubdate: Fri, 11 Apr 2014
Source: New Mexican, The (Santa Fe, NM)
Copyright: 2014 The Santa Fe New Mexican
Contact: http://www.santafenewmexican.com/SendLetter/
Website: http://www.santafenewmexican.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/695
Author: Phaedra Haywood, The New Mexican

STATE LAWMAKER WANTS FEDS TO CHANGE BORDER CHECKPOINT POLICIES ON MEDICAL POT

State Rep. Bill McCamley, D-Las Cruces, has written a letter to two
U.S. lawmakers asking them to consider changing the way marijuana laws
are enforced at Border Patrol checkpoints in New Mexico and other
border states.

In the letter, which he sent to U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas and
U.S. Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico, McCamley argues that conflicts
between federal and state laws regarding marijuana use unfairly punish
medical marijuana patients. While law enforcement agents in most areas
of the state make allowances for medical marijuana patients, those who
must go through border checkpoints are still routinely detained and
have their marijuana confiscated.

A recreational user can go to one of more than 200 stores in Colorado
on a Friday night and "go home, smoke out and be happy," McCamley
said. "But a cancer patient who is going up to from Las Cruces to
Albuquerque for treatments or a veteran with [post-traumatic stress
disorder] who is going to Albuquerque for their counseling meetings
can be stopped, can be detained [at a Border Patrol checkpoint] and
have their stuff taken from them. That makes no sense. It's completely
inconsistent and in my opinion it's horrible public policy and I
really want to know why they're doing this."

McCamley's letter says he would like the Homeland Security Department
to change that policy to make it consistent with a memo issued last
August by Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole, which directed
other U.S. attorneys to only prosecute marijuana users who fell under
nine guidelines, such as people who were selling to children, people
who were growing marijuana on public lands, or those who were members
of gangs or cartels.

If that can't be done, McCamley's letter says, he "would like to know
the specific reasoning why public resources are being used to detain
legal medical marijuana patients and seize their medicine when they
will not ever be prosecuted."

In the last session of the Legislature, McCamley sponsored a memorial
asking the Legislative Finance Committee to study the effects of
marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington.
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