Los Angeles, CA: A federal judge this week sentenced the three founders of the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center (LACRC) to probation and community service for their roles as officers of the club, which distributed marijuana to some 960 patients at the time of its closure in 2001. The sentence was a dramatic downward departure from the federal sentencing guidelines that called for the defendants to each face up to 30 months in prison.
United States District Judge A. Howard Matz said that the standard federal sentence did not apply in this case because the defendants – Scott Imler, Jeff Yablan and Jeffrey Farrington – were distributing marijuana solely for medicinal purposes, and had adhered to statewide parameters established under Proposition 215. “To allocate the resources of the Drug Enforcement Agency and the US attorney’s office in this case baffles [and] disturbs me,” the judge said.
During its five years of operation, the LACRC was regarded as one of the state’s most strictly regulated medical marijuana dispensaries.
“This sentence, coupled with a similar outcome just six months ago in the Ed Rosenthal trial, is a strong rebuttal to the government’s claim that there’s no such thing as medicinal marijuana,” said NORML Foundation Executive Director Allen St. Pierre. “If a federal judge can readily distinguish between medical cannabis and the use of marijuana for other purposes, then so should our federal lawmakers and the law.”
Rather than face a jury trial, all three defendants had each previously accepted a “pre-indictment” plea agreement with the US Department of Justice in March to one federal count of maintaining a drug establishment.
For more information, please contact either Allen St. Pierre of The NORML Foundation at (202) 483-8751 or California NORML Coordinator Dale Gieringer at (415) 563-5858.