WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder’s directive to federal prosecutors to back away from pursuing cases against medical-marijuana patients signals a broad policy shift that drug-reform advocates interpret as the first step toward legalization of the drug.
The Justice Department action came days after the Senate’s second-highest-ranking Democrat introduced a bill that would eradicate a two-decade-old sentencing disparity for people caught with cocaine in rock instead of powder form. Taken together, experts say, the moves represent an approach favored by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to put new emphasis on violent crime and the sale of illicit drugs to children. Legislation that would cover a third administration commitment, to support federal funding of needle exchanges, is moving through the House.
The turnaround could pave the way for Rhode Island, New Mexico and Michigan to put together marijuana distribution systems for residents in their states, said Graham Boyd, director of the Drug Law Reform Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Obama administration stopped far short Monday of endorsing wholesale marijuana legalization, frustrating some activists. At the libertarian Cato Institute, official Tim Lynch exhorted the White House to take “much bolder steps to stop the criminalization of drug use more generally.”
Opposing the move, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said the guidelines “fly in the face of Supreme Court precedent and undermine federal laws that prohibit the distribution and use of marijuana.”
“We cannot hope to eradicate the drug trade if we do not first address the cash cow for most drug trafficking organizations — marijuana,” Smith said. The Washington Post
