San Diego, CA: County officials from San Diego and San Bernadino have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court alleging that California’s ten-year-old medical cannabis law should be pre-empted by the federal Controlled Substances Act. San Diego Supervisors spearheaded the suit rather than comply with a 2004 state law mandating the county to issue identification cards to authorized medical marijuana patients.
Several drug law reform organizations, including the San Diego branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), and Americans for Safe Access (ASA) are seeking permission to intervene in the suit, arguing that it lacks merit and that the Supervisors “may be acting out of political, rather than legal motivations.”
“At no time over the past decade has any government official from any ofthe ten states with medical marijuana laws, nor has any federal government official, made any claim that state [medical cannabis] laws are pre-empted by the CSA or the Single Convention [treaty,]” the ACLU stated in a letter to Supervisors. “The federal government can, within certain restrictions, enforce its own federal marijuana laws, even in states like California where state law permits medical marijuana use. But federal laws do not pre-empt California’s medical marijuana laws.”
A previous report issued by the Legislative Counsel of California found that state laws exempting authorized medical cannabis users from state arrest and prosecution are not pre-empted by federal law because such laws “only declassify [the use of medical marijuana] as a crime for purposes of state law and [do] not affirmatively sanction [it].”
“California’s Legislative Counsel examined this question and concluded that Proposition 215 was not in positive conflict with federal law,” said Keith Stroup, NORML’s legal counsel. “It’s shameful that these elected officials would seek to waste taxpayers’ dollars to engage in this baseless and mean-spirited legal battle.”
According to a recent telephone poll of San Diego County voters, 78 percent of respondents said that they opposed the lawsuit. Sixty-seven percent said that they support the state’s medical cannabis law.
For more information, please contact Keith Stroup, NORML Legal Counsel, at (202) 483-5500.