Medical Marijuana Muddle Grows for State Law Enforcement, Pot Farms and Patients
As more states enact marijuana control laws that conflict with federal legislation, state law enforcement officials, lawyers and doctors are left in a quandary when it comes to regulating and advising clients, patients and dispensaries looking to cash in on a lucrative market for medicinal marijuana.
While U.S. Supreme Court decisions have left no question as to whether federal prohibition laws pre-empt state regulations of marijuana, the government’s hands-off approach toward medical marijuana farmers and ineffective mechanisms of enforcement for state law enforcement officials have only bolstered the illegal cultivation and use of marijuana, two prosecutors said at a program on the clash between state and federal marijuana regulations Saturday at the ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco.
“There are no systems for inspection and no formal record-keeping,” said Mark McDonnell, a senior deputy district attorney for Multnomah County in Portland, Ore. “It’s a big problem for law enforcement.” McDonnell said that Oregon’s easily acquired permits for medicinal marijuana have fostered a new class of drug traffickers that cross the U.S. border to buy homes there to grow pot. “If this continues, we will see a lot of marijuana grown in Oregon under guise of medical marijuana and transported to other jurisdictions to be sold on the black market,” McDonnell said.
Hundreds of marijuana farms and dispensaries have popped up in California in the wake of Proposition 19, a November ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana for adult recreational use in California, and most do not adhere to state codes, added U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello. Some cities, such as Oakland, Calif., have even proposed ordinances to create large-scale marijuana factories, although the proposed measures aren’t legal under state or federal law.
The conflict between state and federal law may also cause attorneys advising clients to violate rules of professional conduct, which leaves the open-ended question posed by Allen Hopper, litigation director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Drug Law Reform Project, “What’s a lawyer to do?”
