06-14-2012, 12:11 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/14...95849.html
Snip:
The goal of the Justice Department's effort, part of a crackdown announced last October, is to fight the medical marijuana industry, estimated at $1.7 billion annually, without confronting it head-on with costly and potentially embarrassing criminal prosecutions, industry sources and legal experts said.
"Filing asset-forfeiture lawsuits against these commercial properties is a very clever way to handle an otherwise horribly difficult and controversial situation," said Greg Baldwin, a partner at the Miami law firm Holland & Knight and a former federal prosecutor.
"If you bring criminal charges against these medical marijuana businesses, the federal government gets pilloried in the press for attacking California law and sick people."
Baldwin, who specializes in complex commercial litigation and white-collar criminal defense, added that with all four U.S. attorneys in California employing the same strategy, it is clearly official Justice Department policy rather than an anomaly involving rogue prosecutors.
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This is so screwed up, imo. The US Justice Department should respect the States' rights regarding legalization of medicinal marijuana. It's chicken-shit to use the 40 year old federal Substance Abuse Act to strong arm landlords into evicting perfectly legal distributors using threat of civil action. It seems to be working though, according to the article. It's too costly for landlords to fight the Fed in court, so they're evicting medicinal marijuana distributors, who then find another building (until its landlord receives its warning letter from the Fed).
This really rubs me the wrong way as a small business owner with a leased office, as a California resident, and as a US citizen.
If I was a regular smoker with access, I'd light up right now and it might bother me less (or not).
Snip:
The goal of the Justice Department's effort, part of a crackdown announced last October, is to fight the medical marijuana industry, estimated at $1.7 billion annually, without confronting it head-on with costly and potentially embarrassing criminal prosecutions, industry sources and legal experts said.
"Filing asset-forfeiture lawsuits against these commercial properties is a very clever way to handle an otherwise horribly difficult and controversial situation," said Greg Baldwin, a partner at the Miami law firm Holland & Knight and a former federal prosecutor.
"If you bring criminal charges against these medical marijuana businesses, the federal government gets pilloried in the press for attacking California law and sick people."
Baldwin, who specializes in complex commercial litigation and white-collar criminal defense, added that with all four U.S. attorneys in California employing the same strategy, it is clearly official Justice Department policy rather than an anomaly involving rogue prosecutors.
===================================
This is so screwed up, imo. The US Justice Department should respect the States' rights regarding legalization of medicinal marijuana. It's chicken-shit to use the 40 year old federal Substance Abuse Act to strong arm landlords into evicting perfectly legal distributors using threat of civil action. It seems to be working though, according to the article. It's too costly for landlords to fight the Fed in court, so they're evicting medicinal marijuana distributors, who then find another building (until its landlord receives its warning letter from the Fed).
This really rubs me the wrong way as a small business owner with a leased office, as a California resident, and as a US citizen.
If I was a regular smoker with access, I'd light up right now and it might bother me less (or not).