Federal Judge George Wu: Reclassify Medical Marijuana
LOS ANGELES --- Federal District Court Judge George H. Wu issued a 41-page written sentencing order yesterday, stating that medical marijuana provider Charles C. Lynch was "caught in the middle of the shifting positions" on the issue and that, "Much of the problems could be ameliorated...by the reclassification of marijuana from Schedule I." Lynch gained notoriety as a federal medical marijuana defendant, who was prosecuted and convicted in 2008, under the Bush Administration, then sentenced after President Obama signaled a change in federal enforcement policy.
Judge Wu's call for the reclassification of marijuana comes as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is considering a petition, filed in 2002 by the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis. After a years-long review by the Department of Health and Human Services, the petition was recently sent to DEA, the final stage of the process. Acting DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart, who still must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, has the authority to grant or deny the rescheduling petition.
"Yet another federal judge has called on the government to reconsider the current status of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no medical value," said Joe Elford, Chief Counsel with Americans for Safe Access, the country's largest medical marijuana advocacy organization. "Judge Wu's sentencing order also begs the question of why the federal government is still prosecuting medical marijuana cases." Elford argued before Judge Wu last year that Lynch should be shown leniency as no state laws had been violated.
It has been more than ten months since Judge Wu sentenced Lynch to one year and a day, and four years of supervised release, despite the 5-year mandatory minimum being sought by the Justice Department. Four months after the June 11th sentencing hearing, the Justice Department issued a directive in October to U.S. Attorneys, discouraging them from arresting and prosecuting medical marijuana patients and providers. Lynch remains released on bail pending his appeal, but cannot use medical marijuana according to the terms of his release.
Before his medical marijuana dispensary was raided by Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents in March of 2007, Lynch had operated for 11 months without incident, and with the blessing of the Morro Bay City Council, the local Chamber of Commerce, and other community members. Two months after Lynch closed his dispensary, Central Coast Compassionate Caregivers, he was indicted and charged with conspiracy to possess and possession with intent to distribute marijuana and concentrated cannabis, manufacturing more than 100 plants, knowingly maintaining a drug premises, and sales of marijuana to a person under the age of 21. None of the federal charges Lynch was convicted of constituted violations of local or state law.
Currently, patients and providers are prevented from using a medical necessity or a state law defense in federal court. The Justice Department policy has failed to deter the prosecution of more than two dozen pending federal cases. In response, ASA is advocating for the passage of Congressional legislation -- HR 3939, the Truth in Trials Act -- which would give state law-compliant defendants a fighting chance in federal court.
Further information:
Federal Judge George Wu's Sentencing Order: http://AmericansForSafeAccess.org/downloads/Lynch_Sentencing_Order.pdf
Friends of Charles C. Lynch website: http://www.friendsofccl.com
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This judge needs to just do his job and shut his pie-hole on the law . It is not his job to push activism or change the law. We vote people into office that do that.
Judges interpret the laws ,he has to make decisions,based on law
every day. He just has the balls to stand up and call a pigs ear a pig's ear.
Our Judges should be our first line of defense against bad laws.
Whether it is a seat belt law or law on moral decisions.
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I get your point, and I understand why you feel that way. But I just want our judges to follow the law . If he wanted to write law he should have been a legislator. I don't want judges pushing activism from the bench.
"For the first time in our history, full faith and confidence in and respect for the hitherto sacred Constitution of the United States has been weakened and impaired because this terrifying invasion of natural rights has been engrafted upon the fundamental law of our land, and experience has shown that it is being wantonly and derisively violated in every State, city, and hamlet in the country."
"It has made potential drunkards of the youth of the land, not because intoxicating liquor appeals to their taste or disposition, but because it is a forbidden thing, and because it is forbidden makes an irresistible appeal to the unformed and immature. It has brought into our midst the intemperate woman, the most fearsome and menacing thing for the future of our national life."
"It has brought the sickening slime of corruption, dishonor, and disgrace into every group of employees and officials in city, State, and Federal departments that have been charged with the enforcement of this odious law."
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/HISTORY/e1920/senj1926/judgetalley.htm
And the following paragraphs are from WALTER E. EDGE's testimony, a Senator from New Jersey:
"Any law that brings in its wake such wide corruption in the public service, increased alcoholic insanity, and deaths, increased arrests for drunkenness, home barrooms, and development among young boys and young women of the use of the flask never heard of before prohibition can not be successfully defended."
"I unhesitatingly contend that those who recognize existing evils and sincerely endeavor to correct them are contributing more toward temperance than those who stubbornly refuse to admit the facts."
"The opposition always proceeds on the theory that give them time and they will stop the habit of indulging in intoxicating beverages. This can not be accomplished. We should recognize our problem is not to persist in the impossible, but to recognize a situation and bring about common-sense temperance through reason."
"This is not a campaign to bring back intoxicating liquor, as is so often claimed by the fanatical dry. Intoxicating liquor is with us to-day and practically as accessible as it ever was. The difference mainly because of its illegality, is its greater destructive power, as evidenced on every hand. The sincere advocates of prohibition welcome efforts for real temperance rather than a continuation of the present bluff."
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/HISTORY/e1920/senj1926/walteredge.htm
And here is Julien Codman's testimony, who was a member of the Massachusetts bar.
"we will produce additional evidence on this point, that it is not appropriate legislation to enforce the eighteenth amendment; that it has done incredible harm instead of good; that as a temperance measure it has been a pitiable failure; that it as failed to prevent drinking; that it has failed to decrease crime ; that, as a matter of fact, it has increased both; that it has promoted bootlegging and smuggling to an extent never known before"
"We believe that the time has come for definite action, but it is impossible to lay before Congress any one bill which, while clearly within the provisions of the Constitution, will be a panacea for the evils that the Volstead Act has caused. We must not be vain enough to believe, as the prohibitionists do, that the age-old question of the regulation of alcohol can be settled forever by the passage of a single law. With the experience of the Volstead law as a warning, it behooves us to proceed with caution, one step at a time, to climb out of the legislative well into which we have been pushed."
"If you gentlemen are satisfied, after hearing the evidence supplemented by the broad general knowledge which each of you already possesses, that the remedy that will tend most quickly to correct the wretched social conditions that now exist, to promote temperance, find to allay the discontent and unrest that the Volstead Act has caused, is to be found in the passage of one of the proposed bills legalizing the production of beer of an alcoholic content of 4 per cent or less, there is no doubt, in my opinion, elf your power to do so; and we believe that our evidence will show that the passage of such a bill will greatly help the situation. We do not claim that it will do away with all the evils produced by attempted prohibition, but it would be a step in the right direction."
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/HISTORY/e1920/senj1926/codman.htm
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