RSS
Home
Obama's new marijuana policy remains vague
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
The Obama administration scaled back the drug war on Monday, though by how much is still questionable:
A Justice Department memo, sent Monday to federal prosecutors in California and 13 other states whose laws allow medical use of marijuana, provides guidelines to implement the policy Attorney General Eric Holder announced in March: that federal authorities should refrain from arresting or prosecuting people who are complying with their state's laws.
This is a welcome relief, and it is about time Obama delivered on some of his more libertarian campaign promises. However, medical marijuana activists quoted in the article offered tepid enthusiasm as to whether these new guidelines will actually have any marked effect on the bloodlust of federal prosecutors:
Prosecutors can go after those who sell marijuana for profit, a category that federal authorities have commonly invoked in charging growers and sellers of medicinal pot.
San Francisco's U.S. attorney, Joseph Russoniello, asserted in August that most of California's 300 marijuana dispensaries make profits, in violation of state guidelines, and are therefore open to federal prosecution.
First, it makes no ethical sense to mandate that a certain type of business be run exclusively on a non-profit basis. If a certain activity is morally permissible between consenting adults, whether or not one party makes a profit from that activity should be irrelevant; the profit motive helps reduce cost and keeps the marketplace dynamic and innovative.
Second, by leaving “a lot of discretion up to the U.S. attorneys” dispensaries operate in a grey-area of legality. This situation is not only legally confusing, it’s economically problematic. The disadvantage economically is that when the very existence of your business firm rests not on your ability to stay financially afloat but rather on the whims of federal attorneys, you are less likely to invest capital in long-term projects. Uncertainty shortens your time-preference.
We’ll have to wait and see if Holder’s new guidelines foster leniency toward the non-violent businessmen we’re currently locking up with taxpayer money. Hopeful news is trickling in, suggesting that the announcement is lightening sentences for offenders. For instance, even though prosecutors have insisted that the new approach applies only to new cases (and not to cases which originated during the reign of W.):
Judges have nonetheless imposed lighter sentences than the Justice Department wanted, notably a one-year term for a Central Coast pot club operator for whom prosecutors sought five years.
Perhaps that last quote is the best explanation for the skepticism I have for any kind of substantive federal drug reform. Instead of locking up a nonviolent man for five years, we settle for locking him up for just the one. Even if that is a victory, it remains a relatively shallow one.
