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Justice Department will no longer pursue criminal charges against lawful medical marijuana clinics
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Harborside Health Center in Oakland, Calif. has 75 full-time employees.
According to Businessweek, The U.S. Justice Dept., at the direction of the Obama Administration, last month announced that it would no longer direct federal investigative resources to pursue criminal charges against medical marijuana clinics, providing they are operating lawfully.
This policy shift is a major change in practices compared to the approach of the Bush Administration, which had federal agents raiding medical marijuana distributors on the basis of violating federal statutes (federal law outlaws marijuana possession under the Controlled Substances Act)—even if the operators were in compliance with state laws.
There are currently 13 states where medical cannabis is legal. The states are Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. Experts say that this may soon be an area where new entrepreneurship develops as legal medical marijuana dispensaries are franchised. There are still, however, significant hurdles to clear for marketers because of legal ambiguities and political sensitivities.
Currently, most of the 13 states do not allow storefront dispensaries; they permit medical patients to grow their own marijuana or purchase it directly from a registered grower certified by the state. In the rare places that do allow dispensaries, they must be structured as nonprofit cooperatives rather than for-profit entities, with marijuana provided by state-certified patients or their caregivers.
In California, the first state to legalize medical marijuana sales and use in 1996, this nonprofit requirement came in mid-2008, when State Attorney General Jerry Brown issued guidelines for medical marijuana operations to try to rein in the hundreds—if not thousands—of for-profit dispensaries that had cropped up, many turning into neighborhood nuisances, with doctors on staff who would write prescriptions for anyone who walked through the doors. (California's guidelines stating they should be nonprofit aren't law; they're in an opinion issued by Brown.)
Currently there are movements in most of the remaining 37 states to legalize marijuana for medical practices.
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