“Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana group, filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the U.S. Department of Justice for its crackdown on the use of pot in California.
The lawsuit aims at settling one of the key legal issues about marijuana use that remains unsettled. Voters have approved the use of pot in 1996 under Proposition 215 which exempts doctors and seriously ill patients from marijuana laws and allows them to grow cannabis and use it for treatment, but federal laws maintain that marijuana use is still illegal.”
The group charged that DOJ officials have used SWAT-style raids, prosecuted medical marijuana patients and their providers and threatened local officials for implementing California’s medical marijuana laws.
The federal government breached the Constitution’s 10th Amendment by using coercive methods to interfere with state power, ASA charges. They filed the lawsuit before the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
While the four U.S. attorneys in California have advised cities and counties that they cannot adopt laws that authorize the distribution of a federally controlled substance, the chief counsel for the marijuana medical group insist that the government is not just enforcing marijuana laws but quashing medical marijuana programs in different states.
The lawsuit aims to settle one of the major legal issues about marijuana use. Voters approved the use of pot in 1996, exempting doctors and seriously ill patients from marijuana laws and allowing them to grow cannabis and use it for treatment. However, federal laws maintain that marijuana use is still illegal.
The latest DOJ raid was made this month at a cooperative in Mendocino Country that had a program to regulate growers.
The state’s U.S. attorneys said that it was profiteers who were motivated by greed and not compassion who raised the plants and sold them even to relatively healthy people, not to sick residents who were the intended beneficiaries of the proposition.
The group charged that DOJ officials have used SWAT-style raids, prosecuted medical marijuana patients and their providers and threatened local officials for implementing California’s medical marijuana laws.
The federal government breached the Constitution’s 10th Amendment by using coercive methods to interfere with state power, ASA charges. They filed the lawsuit before the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
While the four U.S. attorneys in California have advised cities and counties that they cannot adopt laws that authorize the distribution of a federally controlled substance, the chief counsel for the marijuana medical group insist that the government is not just enforcing marijuana laws but quashing medical marijuana programs in different states.
The lawsuit aims to settle one of the major legal issues about marijuana use. Voters approved the use of pot in 1996, exempting doctors and seriously ill patients from marijuana laws and allowing them to grow cannabis and use it for treatment. However, federal laws maintain that marijuana use is still illegal.
The latest DOJ raid was made this month at a cooperative in Mendocino Country that had a program to regulate growers.
The state’s U.S. attorneys said that it was profiteers who were motivated by greed and not compassion who raised the plants and sold them even to relatively healthy people, not to sick residents who were the intended beneficiaries of the proposition.
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~ by Ganja Farmer's Emerald Triangle News on October 28, 2011.
Posted in Emerald Triangle
This pdf explains the core issues of states rights and the commerce
clause being used ineffectively.
ASA is planning on filing suit against the city of Chico,Ca as well.
http://americansforsafeaccess.org/downloads/ASA_v_Holder.pdf
*ASA has filed a Federal lawsuit on behalf of Ms. Carmel Mireles a
local Chico woman and cancer survivor.
LOL, Marijuana is LEGAL