Holder Signals Shift on Federal Drug-Enforcement Policy

[WSJ_law_blog]

Opening-day is still a month away. The Dow is nearly at a 12-year low. The snow is blowing horizontally up and down the eastern seaboard, and Giselle is officially off the market.

It’s time to talk about marijuana.

Under President Bush, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency undertook several raids on marijuana dispensaries in California. The raids cast into sharp relief the gulf between California state law, which has legalized the distribution of marijuana for medicinal purposes, and federal law and enforcement policy under the Bush administration, which was decidedly less tolerant.

But under President Obama, the scenario might well be changing. According to this recent San Francisco Chronicle article, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is sending strong signals that President Obama - who as a candidate said states should be allowed to make their own rules on medical marijuana - will end raids on pot dispensaries in California.

“What the president said during the campaign, you’ll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we’ll be doing here in law enforcement,” said Holder last week. “What he said during the campaign is now American policy.”

So what did Obama say on the campaign trail? He told one interviewer that it was “entirely appropriate” for a state to legalize the medical use of marijuana “with the same controls as other drugs prescribed by doctors.”

More recently, after the DEA raided several dispensaries earlier this year, after Obama had taken office, White House spokesman Nick Schapiro noted that Obama’s drug-policy team had yet to take office, adding that the “president believes that federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws” and expects his appointees to follow that policy.

According to the article, others think Obama may also drop the federal government’s long-standing opposition to health officials’ needle-exchange programs for drug users. Click here for a recent provocative story on needle-exchange programs, from the Journal’s Justin Scheck.