Legal Conflicts on Medical Marijuana Ensnare Hundreds as Courts Debate a New Provision

NY Times ^ | 4-8-2015 | ERIK ECKHOLM

[Citizen Zed]

Charles C. Lynch seemed to be doing everything right when he opened a medical marijuana dispensary in the tidy coastal town of Morro Bay, Calif.

The mayor, the city attorney and leaders of the local Chamber of Commerce all came for the ribbon-cutting in 2006. The conditions for his business license, including a ban on customers younger than 18 and compliance with California’s medical marijuana laws, were posted on the wall.

But two years later, Mr. Lynch was convicted of multiple felonies under federal law for selling marijuana. He is one of hundreds of defendants and prisoners caught in the stark conflict between federal law — which puts marijuana in the same class as heroin, with no exception for medical sales — and many states’ decisions to allow medical uses.

“I feel so left out of society,” Mr. Lynch, 52, who is out on bond and appealing his conviction, said from a battered trailer behind his mother’s house here in northwestern New Mexico. He is waiting to see if he must go to prison.

Now, though, a legal wild card has been injected into his case and those of several other defendants in California and Washington State.

In December, in a little-publicized amendment to the 2015 appropriations bill that one legal scholar called a “buried land mine,” Congress barred the Justice Department from spending any money to prevent states from “implementing their own state laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana.”

In the most advanced test of the law yet, Mr. Lynch’s lawyers have asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to “direct the D.O.J. to cease spending funds on the case.” In a filing last month, they argued that by continuing to work on his prosecution, federal prosecutors “would be committing criminal acts.”

[Citizen Zed]

Wouldn't it be funny if the Supreme court steps in here and gives the states more power to enforce their own laws, including immigration and healthcare?

[ifinnegan]

This excerpt explains nothing.

It obfuscates more than anything.

These pot dispensaries have been and are big ruses.

Yet most continue with their easy “prescriptions” and indiscriminate dissemination. Any one in California can get legal dope any time in all sorts of forms. Chocolate is quite popular.

Why was he busted?

[ConservingFreedom]

Any one in California can get legal dope any time in all sorts of forms.

I call BS - fewer than 80,000 medical marijuana cards have been issued, according to the state.

And even if this were true, why is it the feds' business?

[ifinnegan]

You can call BS all you want, they have the Doctor right there in an adjacent office who will give the prescription for anything anytime.

Insomnia and headaches are popular maladies.

[ConservingFreedom]

I thought this was urban legend - but it looks like you’re right: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/Medical-Marijuana-is-Already-Recreational-Say-Insiders-291993051.html

Why was he busted?

‘at his sentencing, Judge George H. Wu of Federal District Court in Los Angeles recounted Mr. Lynch’s efforts to obey local law and said there was no evidence he had known of infractions federal agents described: that a worker had made secret sales on the side and that some of his more than 2,000 enrolled customers had received prescriptions on fraudulent pretexts.

‘“Individuals such as Lynch are caught in the middle of the shifting positions of government authorities,” Judge Wu said as he disregarded the federal request for a mandatory five-year term but said he felt legally compelled to sentence Mr. Lynch to a year and a day.’