WASHINGTON- Standing at an Occupy movement site at Freedom Plaza, longtime activist Kevin Zeese, talked about an issue beyond the protestors’ desire to end war and corporate greed — the difficulty of opening medical marijuana clinics in the nation’s capital.
“How many people will suffer needless pain, even unable to take their chemotherapy and die because the government is so heartless?” he said.
The city of Washington tried to legalize medical marijuana 13 years ago and failed. It tried again last year and the bill passed. Even with the new law nothing has seemed to happen.
The District of Columbia City Council approved the Legalization of Marijuana for Medical Treatment Act of 2010. And the law cleared a mandatory 30-day Congressional review period.
But efforts to legalize medical marijuana date back to 1998 when 69 percent of District voters approved the plan in a referendum. Congress, which has final say on many public policy issues in the city of Washington, blocked the legalization.
There are conflicting ideas about why the program has taken so long to get off the ground.
Brendan Williams-Kief, an aide to D.C. Councilmember David Catania, said, “It’s mostly reflective of the different political climates in Congress itself, at the two different points in time.”
Both the Senate and House were under Republican control when Congress stopped Washington’s medical marijuana law in its tracks 13 years ago. But Democrats, who can be more sympathetic to the actions of Washington’s liberal council, were in the majority in 2010 when the new law sailed through.
Councilman Phil Mendelson isn’t sure why it took so long for the medical marijuana program to become law in the District. But he’s glad that Congress dropped its opposition.
Zeese, who is president of Common Sense for Drug Policy, pointed out that Washington’s budget is always subject to congressional scrutiny. “They get their budget approved by Congress, and if D.C. is doing something that Congress doesn’t like, they can stop funding,” he said.
The D.C. Department of Health has accepted paperwork from approved applicants wanting to open cultivation centers through Sept. 30. Applications for dispensary operators were accepted through Nov. 15. Eventually, there should be up to 10 cultivation centers and five dispensaries approved for openings.
A memo from David W. Ogden, deputy U.S. attorney general, on Oct. 19, 2009, took some pressure off of federal law enforcement to crack down on dispensaries in places where they are legal under state law.
Under the federal Controlled Substances Act, Congress ensures the enforcement and regulation of the manufacture, possession, importation and distribution of certain substances, ranging from pot to heroin and cocaine. Many of the decisions on enforcement relate to potential abuse of substances, including medical marijuana.
In his memo, Ogden wrote that prosecution of people with cancer or other serious illnesses that use medical marijuana or caregivers who are compliant with state law “is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources.”
But in June 2011, James Cole, Deputy Attorney General, sent a memo that conflicted with Ogden’s.
“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,” the memo reads.
California, where dispensary sites have grown rapidly and there is nearly a $1.3 billion industry, is a big target in the crackdown. There were about two-thirds of 220 dispensaries that shut down because of federal threats of property seizure in San Diego alone.
“There didn’t seem to be a good relation between medical need and these clinics,” Mendelson said. “And that would be fine for some folks but those folks wouldn’t be interested on the medical side of medical marijuana.”
The councilman said the District is making strict rules so that the same problems do not arise in the capital.
Mendelson said he expects cultivation centers and dispensaries to open sometime next year, about three years after the action by the City Council.
Zeese, however, said he does not see clinics opening anytime soon because he predicted the Securities and Exchange Commission, Department of Justice or other federal bodies will do whatever they can to “stop the dispensaries from moving forward”.