Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/94986
Friday, November 23, 2012 – Daily News By Peter Hecht The Sacramento Bee (MCT) SACRAMENTO — In October 2010, with a quixotic marijuana initia- tive leading in California polls, U.S. Attorney Gen- eral Eric Holder answered an urgent letter from retired heads of the feder- al Drug Enforcement Administration. Feds haven't weighed in on Wash., Colo. pot legalization marijuana as a purely pleasurable pursuit for adults. "Everything is already in place with regulations we can cut and paste. And we know it works," Kamin said. 3B "Let me state clearly that the Department of Justice strongly opposes Proposition 19," Holder wrote, declaring he would "vigorously enforce" fed- eral law if California vot- ers passed the measure, which would have legal- ized recreational marijua- na use for adults over 21 and allowed retail sales of pot. MCT photo This year, Holder notably declined to respond as the retired DEA administrators sent him another anxious letter expressing opposition to marijuana legalization efforts. This time, voters in two states, Washington and Colorado, each voted by 55 to 45 percent mar- gins to legalize marijuana beyond medical use, upping the stakes in America's marijuana debate. California, which passed America's first medical marijuana initia- tive in 1996 and pushed the envelope on legaliza- tion in 2010, has become an also-ran in the discus- sion. The state also lags in regulation of medical cannabis. "It feels like you guys are still going through the awkward step of adoles- cence, and Colorado and Washington have gone on to the next step," said Sam Kamin, a professor at the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law who researches marijuana A pedestrians walks past the Little Green Pharmacy medical cannabis dispensary in Denver, Colo. policy. In California, where Holder's letter was widely publicized and flipped the polls as Proposition 19 went down to defeat, mar- ijuana advocates hope successful legalization votes elsewhere will at least persuade the Legisla- ture to regulate the state's existing medical marijua- na industry, which oper- ates in an amorphous legal haze. changer," said Ellen Komp, California deputy director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. The group backed failed legislation this year to license California med- ical marijuana dispen- saries and growers in hopes that stricter state oversight would help repel an ongoing federal crack- down. waiting to see what the federal response will be in Colorado and Washing- ton." "This is called a game- Don Duncan is Califor- nia director of Americans for Safe Access, an advo- cacy group for medical marijuana users. He said the developments in Col- orado and Washington may make it easier to per- suade California lawmak- ers — who have been wary of being seen as champions for marijuana stores — to set rules for the state's medical cannabis industry when a new bill is introduced in January. profiteering in violation of both the federal Con- trolled Substances Act and state medical mari- juana laws, which require pot operations to be non- profit. marijuana sales and use in Colorado and Washing- ton. Analysts say voter demographics also played a role. Unlike in Califor- nia, where Proposition 19 lost by a 53.5 percent to 46.5 margin in 2010, the Colorado and Washington measures played out dur- ing a presidential election year with a more diverse electorate, including a strong turnout among young voters. Colorado was a presi- dential swing state — a factor advocates suggest may have dissuaded Presi- dent Barack Obama's attorney general, Holder, from weighing in this time around. In an interview, Sacra- mento U.S. Attorney Ben- jamin Wagner said the votes in Washington and Colorado won't have any immediate impact on fed- eral enforcement efforts in California. "No one thought we were going to get a full legalization measure any- where. ... Now everyone is "I'm guardedly opti- mistic this changes the landscape in our favor," Duncan said. "We're not the most radical people at the table anymore." The four U.S. attorneys in California have been systematically cracking down on the state's med- ical marijuana businesses, contending many are cash-reaping enterprises "In the short term, I don't think it's going to have much effect on what we're doing here in Cali- fornia," Wagner said. "We're not really in the business of trying to shape state legislation or state policy. We're in the busi- ness of enforcing federal law, and so long as condi- tions in California stay the same, our enforcement efforts are going to be pretty much the same." Federal officials have said little so far about how they will respond to legal- ization of recreational Compared with Cali- fornia _ where Wagner has called the medical marijuana industry an "unregulated free-for-all" — federal crackdowns on medical marijuana outlets in Colorado have been considerably more restrained. That is credited in large part to Colorado's efforts to strictly regulate its medical marijuana market. workers in Colorado must be licensed by the state. All transactions and ship- ments are videotaped, and a state policing agency — the Colorado Medical Marijuana Enforcement Bureau — oversees the industry. of Denver professor, said the perceived success of Colorado's medical mari- juana regulatory oversight made it easier for voters there to sanction the use of Kamin, the University Medical marijuana "I think it's safe to say that there were politics involved," said Brian Vicente, co-director of the Amendment 64 campaign. "Marijuana is demonstra- bly more popular in Col- orado than President Obama." The president won Col- orado — but the pot mea- sure got a greater share of the state vote. Marijuana advocates in Washington and Colorado said they learned from the defeat of California's Proposition 19. The two victorious measures added provisions for state regu- lation of recreational sales — and the first-ever stan- dards for testing drivers for pot impairment. "This is a maturation of the discussion on marijua- na," said Allison Hol- comb, director of the New Approach Washington campaign that passed the legalization measure. "It changed the dynamic of the conversation altogeth- er."