A Serious Thought to Prosecute Medical Marijuana Users

Los Angeles, CA- the federal government took a serious thought to prosecute medical marijuana and dispensaries in California and threatened its users and owners.

They eventually outbreathed this past week when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder ponted federal employees will now schedule marijuana distributors only when they contravene both federal and state laws, a deviation from the policy of the Bush management.

Anyway it doesn't seem to be the Obama administration program oriented toward the legalization of marijuana. Finally, it may put to the end any confusion among state and federal authorities, which can't reach a verdict about growing, using and selling pot for medical purposes. While states authorities permit it, the federal government outlawed it "This signals, in my mind, a true kind of federalism," said Jody Armour, a law professor at the University of Southern California. "The federal government is allowing states to take chances, to take experiments and see what happens."

California is among those 13 states which allowed medical use of marijuana.

About 75 dispensaries in just one of the four federal regions in California, the Central District that extends from the Central Coast to down to Orange County and includes Los Angeles were kicked over for the past 3 1/2 years by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. According to Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in the Central District of California, still criminal payments have only been fulfilled in multiple of those cases against the biggest distributors charged in violating both federal and state laws.

"What we have done in all of our narcotic cases is to focus on large-scale traffickers," Mrozek said. "In terms of what happens in the future, the federal government will continue to enforce federal narcotics law."

There were some problems in a case against Charles Lynch, who ran a marijuana dispensary in Morro Bay; because federal prosecutors revealed that his employees sold marijuana outside his store. In August, Lynch, 47 was already charged and convicted for spreading more than 100 kilograms of marijuana. Since Monday his sentencing will come into force, prescriptions allow condemn up to 85 years but state counsels proposed a five-year prison sentence. Anyway his attorneys will do their best to persuade Department of Justice officials to cancel the case. "The feds picked the wrong guy," federal public defender Reuven Cohen said. "It's pure fiction that somehow Charlie was not in compliance with state law."

Two of the jurors wrote letters to U.S. District Judge George Wu insisting for condescension, pointing they felt they were determined to find him guilty under federal guidelines.

"Because of the instructions we were given regarding that we were to disregard state law, I felt we had no other option but to convict Mr. Lynch," juror Andy Gordon wrote.

Fellow insider Reza Iranpour named the jury award a "wrongdoing of validity" and said Lynch was a ravening of "bureaucratic collision." Iranpour pointed that Lynch will probably be punished rigorously for confidence of deceptive laws and specifications. Medical marijuana advocates points that federal policy changes reflects the 1996 California determination to legalize drugs selling to people with a prescription. "I think that if nothing else it gives people a sense of optimism that the federal government is going to back off," said James Shaw, director of the Union of Medical Marijuana Patients. "But it's not entirely clear to me if they are going to do that."

Holder even does not realize who will be the next among DEA to carry raids. According to one federal prosecutor statements, those who break the law by selling marijuana for non-medicinal purposes and other actions will be taken into custody.

"From the type of dispensaries we have seen over the years, it may be anticipated this does not signal an end to federal enforcement actions but instead a refinement," said acting U.S. Attorney Lawrence Brown in Sacramento.

Elliot Katz, a senior member of Los Angeles-based marijuana collective pointed that it is important to change times, but only improving it. When he was first given a medical marijuana card in the mid-1990s and realized that everyone was apparently indisposed, he turned again to walking into a dispensary. But there is a negative point that those who have no prescription or medical reason to obtain the drug will make a good thing of new policy changes.

"It's up to the doctor or dispensary operator to weed out those people," said Katz, 46, who has AIDS. "The government can do all they want to regulate, but it's up to us to regulate ourselves."