WASHINGTON (Sources: NPR, Bloomberg, Reuters, Pew Research)– In a move marijuana advocates hailed as an historic shift, the Obama administration on Thursday began giving U.S. states wide leeway to experiment with pot legalization and started by letting Colorado and Washington carry out new laws permitting recreational use.
The Justice Department said it would refocus marijuana enforcement nationwide by bringing criminal charges only in eight defined areas – such as distribution to minors – and giving breathing room to users, growers and related businesses that have feared prosecution.
The decisions end nearly a year of deliberation inside President Barack Obama’s administration about how to react to the growing movement for relaxed U.S. marijuana laws.
Advocates for legalization welcomed the announcement as a major step toward ending what they called “marijuana prohibition.”
“Today’s announcement demonstrates the sort of political vision and foresight from the White House we’ve been seeking for a long time,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group.
“I must admit, I was expecting a yellow light from the White House,” he said in a statement. “But this light looks a lot more green-ish than I had hoped. The White House is basically saying to Washington and Colorado: Proceed with caution.”
Marijuana remains illegal and tightly controlled under federal law, even as about 20 states, plus the District of Columbia, allow the use of medical marijuana. Voters in Colorado and Washington legalized recreational use in groundbreaking ballot measures in November 2012.
Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday told the governors of the two states that U.S. attorneys will concentrate on certain priority areas and work with them to set rules for the marijuana industry.
The decision marks the first time the U.S. government has condoned recreational marijuana use and opens the door for other states to consider it.
In a memo to federal prosecutors around the country, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said that, beyond the priority areas, “the federal government has traditionally relied on states and local law enforcement agencies to address marijuana activity” under their own laws.
The new guidelines are “a major and historic step toward ending marijuana prohibition,” said Dan Riffle, federal policy director for the Marijuana Policy Project.
“The next step is for Congress to act,” said Riffle, whose Washington-based group is the largest advocating legalization. “We need to fix our nation’s broken marijuana laws and not just continue to work around them.”
President Obama had signaled he did not want a new crackdown, telling ABC News in December: “It does not make sense, from a prioritization point of view, for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that’s legal.”
The leeway for the states will go only so far, though, if Colorado, Washington or other states show they are unable to control the drug, the Justice Department said in a statement.
Forty-two percent of Americans age 12 or older have used marijuana at some point, according to a 2011 survey by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Obama has said he used marijuana when he was young.
One opponent of marijuana legalization said his group would redouble efforts to spread word of the negative effects the drug can have on adolescents.
“This is going to really quicken the realization among folks that more marijuana in our communities is not a good thing,” said Kevin Sabet, a co-founder of Smart Approaches to Marijuana.
EIGHT AREAS IN FOCUS
The Justice Department could have sued to block the Colorado and Washington laws from taking effect under the theory that they conflict with the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, the primary U.S. anti-drug law.
Coupled with the decision not to sue, the Justice Department sent a four-page memorandum to federal prosecutors nationwide outlining eight priority areas for marijuana enforcement.
While department officials said they are committed to enforcing federal restrictions on marijuana, prosecutors have now been told not to expend effort on cases unless they fall in one of the eight areas.
The areas include distribution to minors, situations when marijuana revenue is going to other criminal enterprises, trafficking across state lines and growing on public land.
The criteria mean, for example, that federal prosecutors will not charge a marijuana dispensary simply because it is large or profitable, said a Justice Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
But the criteria also stop short of guaranteeing immunity for anyone, leaving business and individuals open to prosecution if the case fits one of the eight areas, the official said.
Colorado and Washington will need to have regulatory systems to protect against those types of crimes, or else risk giving up the whole experiment, the department said in a statement.
Holder had a phone call on Thursday with the governors of Colorado and Washington to inform them of the decisions and told them there would be a “trust but verify” relationship between the Justice Department and the states, said the department official.
State officials said they shared Holder’s concerns.
“This reflects a balanced approach by the federal government that respects the states’ interests in implementing these laws and recognizes the federal government’s role in fighting illegal drugs and criminal activity,” Washington Governor Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson, both of whom are Democrats, said in a statement.
AMERICAN'S FAVOR LEGALIZATION
For the first time in four decades of polling, a majority of Americans support legalizing the use of marijuana.
A Pew poll released earlier this year found that 52 percent of those polled said marijuana should be legal. Forty-five percent said it should be illegal.
Pew reports:
- "Support for legalizing marijuana has risen 11 points since 2010. The change is even more dramatic since the late 1960s. A 1969 Gallup survey found that just 12% favored legalizing marijuana use, while 84% were opposed.
- "The survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted March 13-17 among 1,501 adults, finds that young people are the most supportive of marijuana legalization. Fully 65% of Millennials –born since 1980 and now between 18 and 32 – favor legalizing the use of marijuana, up from just 36% in 2008. Yet there also has been a striking change in long-term attitudes among older generations, particularly Baby Boomers."
A MISTAKE
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, 50, a Republican who is seeking re-election in November and may run for president in 2016, called Holder’s decision not to challenge recreational marijuana laws “a mistake.”
It amounts to a “de facto” legalization, said Christie, a former U.S. attorney. New Jersey won’t move toward legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, the governor told reporters in Point Pleasant yesterday.
Washington and Colorado have been designing regulations for the cultivation and sale of recreational marijuana while the Obama administration formulated its position on the state laws.