Attorney General Holder Suspending Raids On Dispensers of Medical
Marijuana By: Tommy Elder, Jr.
In a break
with the Bush
administration policy- United States` Attorney General Eric Holder announced the suspension of the Bush administration`s policy of raiding Medical
Marijuana dispensers. David Johnston and Neil A. Lewis of the New York Times report that the United States Department of Justice`s enforcement of the Medical Marijuana law would only apply to traffickers who lie or represent themselves as medical distributors and `use medical marijuana laws as a shield.`
During the Bush administration Medical Marijuana distributors who broke federal laws regardless of wheter they complied with state laws would suffer through raids from Federal law enforcement personnel.
As he analyzed the change in policy- Graham Boyd, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union`s Drug Law Project stated that Attorney General Holder`s approach ``created a reasonable balance between conflicting state and federal laws and `seem to finally end the policy war over medical marijuana.`
Commenting on the policy shift- Ethan Nadelman, the founder of the Drug Policy Alliance said that the U.S. Attorney General ordered Drug Enforcement Administration officials to stop raiding ``legitimate growers of Medical Marijuana untouched.``