N.J. gets no medical-marijuana assurance
The Justice Department said it would not guarantee that growers for prescription use will not be prosecuted.
TRENTON - The U.S. Justice Department will not give New Jersey an explicit assurance that medical marijuana growers will avoid prosecution.
Gov. Christie has said he wants such an assurance before he agrees to implement a state law allowing the programs. The law, one of the last to be signed by Christie's predecessor, Jon S. Corzine, went into effect in October.
Attorney General Paula Dow asked the Justice Department whether those licensed to sell or grow marijuana and the state workers who will administer the program would face arrest.
In a policy memo to federal prosecutors obtained Thursday by the Associated Press, U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Cole said prosecuting patients was not an efficient use of official resources. But he said everyone from licensed growers to regulators could be subject to criminal prosecution.
Cole wrote that a 2009 memo by then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden did not give states cover from prosecution. That year, the Justice Department told prosecutors they should not focus investigative resources on patients and caregivers complying with state medical marijuana laws.
The new memo says that view has not changed.
"There has, however, been an increase in the scope of commercial cultivation, sale, distribution, and use of marijuana for purported medical purposes," Cole's memo reads.
The deputy attorney general said that within the last 12 months, several jurisdictions have considered or enacted legislation to authorize multiple large-scale, privately operated industrial marijuana-cultivation centers.
"Some of these planned facilities have revenue projections of millions of dollars based on the planned cultivation of tens of thousands of cannabis plants," Cole wrote.
Cole said that the Ogden memorandum "was never intended to shield such activities from federal enforcement action and prosecution, even where those activities purport to comply with state law."
Cole added: "Persons who are in the business of cultivating, selling, or distributing marijuana, and those who knowingly facilitate such activities, are in violation of the Controlled Substances Act, regardless of state law."
New Jersey, along with 15 other states and the District of Columbia, has legalized the medical use of marijuana. The other states are Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.
State officials say that following a two-year period in which federal prosecutors gave breathing room to state medical marijuana laws, the Justice Department is now toughening up its position as more states move toward opening facilities to dispense marijuana.
Since February, 10 U.S. Attorney's Offices have asserted they have the authority to prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries and licensed growers in states with medical marijuana laws. Prosecutors, the states complained, are not even willing to declare that state employees who implement such laws are immune from prosecution.
As a result, Arizona officials have taken the U.S. government to court, seeking a ruling on whether strict compliance with the state's medical marijuana law protects Arizona residents and state employees from federal prosecution.
Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee suspended plans to license three dispensaries after U.S Attorney Peter Neronha warned that opening such facilities could lead to prosecution.