Global Ganja Report

Deputy Attorney General James Cole, the same who authored a notorious 2011 memo asserting that federal cannabis enforcement remains a "core priority" even in states that have passed medical marijuana laws, has just issued a new memorandum seeming to clarify Justice Department reaction to the legalization measures in Colorado and Washington state. While it is written in the usual dense bureaucratese that often hides as much as it reveals, on balance it appears to represent a retreat from the hardline posture the Obama administration has assumed regarding medicinal cannabis over the past two years. The text of the Aug. 29 memo is provided by our comrades at CelebStoner:

US Attorney General Eric Holder delivered a speech Aug. 12 to the annual meeting of the American Bar Association in which he outlined a new sentencing and enforcement strategy. Holder said that the Department of Justice is "considering compassionate release for inmates facing extraordinary or compelling circumstances." Holder also spoke out against the indiscriminate use of mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent offenders. There are currently more than two dozen federal medical marijuana patients and providers who are serving sentences for violating federal marijuana laws, despite being in compliance with the laws of their respective states.

Gov. Pat Quinn signed HB1 into law Aug. 1, making Illinois the 20th state to legalize medical marijuana. Nearly 40% of people in the US now live in states that have adopted such laws. The Illinois Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot Program Act creates a framework to protect physicians and certain qualified medical marijuana patients from arrest and prosecution. HB1 was passed 35-21 by the Illinois House in April, and 61-57 by the Senate in May. HB1, which is scheduled to sunset in four years, was called one of the most restrictive laws in the country by its Senate sponsor Bill Haine (D-Alton). The new law is set to take effect on January 1, 2014.

Former Mexican president Vicente Fox last week presided over an international conference in his home state of Guanajuato, hosted by his private think-tank Centro Fox and dubbed the US-Mexico Symposium on Legalization and Medical Use of Cannabis. Joining Fox at the confab were ex-Microsoft executive James Shively, who plans to create the first US national marijuana brand, as well as a wide range of activists and academics that included former Mexican health minister Julio Frenk. Asked by Reuters whether Mexico could legalize cannabis by the time current president Enrique Peña Nieto's term ends in 2018, Fox said: "I think it's going to happen much sooner. Once California gets into this, Mexico is going to be obligated to speed up its decision process." (Reuters, July 24; Correo, Guanajuato, Latino Daily News, July 21; Reuters, El Universal, July 20)

Over the past generation, an informal alliance of activists, cultivators, entrepreneurs and medical professionals has struggled to redefine how the United States views the cannabis plant. Victories at state and municipal levels have created a new field of medicinal treatment for a wide variety of ailments in California and other mostly western states. Medical marijuana marks the starkest point in the divide between an industrial model of healthcare and a millennia-long tradition of herbal self-treatment—because nowhere else has the federal government been so intransigent.

Last week, both houses of the New Hampshire legislature voted overwhelmingly to approve a bill permitting doctors to prescribe medical marijuana to many patients with chronic or terminal illnesses. Gov. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) said she would sign the bill. The New Hampshire bill is somewhat less permissive than medical marijuana laws in many other states, with compromise language that denies patients the right to grow cannabis at home, or to use it for post-traumatic stress disorder. The bill also includes restrictions aimed at ensuring that patients do not engage in "doctor shopping" in order to obtain a cannabis prescription. Doctors may only prescribe to those who have been their patients for at least 90 days, and who have already tried other treatments. (Think Progress, June 28)

Police on May 23 arrested four in raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in Southern Oregon. Medford Police Chief Tim George said the arrests followed a two-year investigation in which undercover police purchased cannabis outside the law governing medical marijuana. The Oregon medical marijuana allows growers to recover only their expenses, and nothing to cover their labor or a profit. Oregon's Mail Tribune reports that among the four was Lori Duckworth, executive director of Southern Oregon NORML.

An overwhelming 63% of Los Angeles voters passed Measure D on May 21, bringing long-awaited regulations to the city's medical marijuana dispensaries. Measure D, which was placed on the ballot earlier this year by the Los Angeles City Council, will provide "limited immunity" to more than a hundred dispensaries currently operating in the city. Voters approved a set of regulations yesterday that would permit the operation of certain dispensaries registered with the city since September 2007, as long as they comply with certain city-imposed requirements.