Feds Raid Nevada Medical Marijuana Dispensaries

Last October Attorney General Eric Holder said that prosecuting medical marijuana patients and their caregivers would "not be a priority" for the Justice Department, an announcement that led advocates -- and the news media -- to believe the Obama administration was finally putting a stop to the controversial raids of pot dispensaries in the more than a dozen states that have approved the use of marijuana as medicine. The months since, however, have shown the announced shift in policy to be more rhetoric than reality, with federal raids on voter-approved marijuana dispensaries continuing even in cases where the facilities have enjoyed the full support of local law enforcement.

The latest such raid took place Wednesday in Las Vegas, where the Associated Press reports federal agents "served search warrants at several locations" as part of an investigation into marijuana dispensaries in the city. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office told the AP that the raids were part of an "ongoing law enforcement operation," but that no arrests were made.

Under Nevada's medical marijuana law, overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2000, patients that receive a doctor's recommendation may possess up to an ounce of marijuana and seven plants; they are also entitled to designate a caregiver to grow their medicine for them. However, unlike in California, dispensaries and medical cooperatives are not explicitly legal under the law, no doubt a factor in their being raided. But operators of the facilities insist they were doing nothing wrong.

"I'm legally allowed to produce my medicine here. What I was doing here was not illegal," James Parsons, owner of the Medical Cannabis Consultants of Nevada, told local television station KLAS. "If I'm doing something illegal, why didn't they take my equipment? All they did was purposely inconvenience me."

In a statement, Caren Woodson with the group Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group, called on the federal government to follow Attorney General Holder's stated policy and "stay out of the enforcement of local and state medical marijuana laws."

But the problem isn't just the Obama administration. To create more certainty for the state's patients and improve access to their medicine, Nevada needs to explicitly legalize methods of distributing marijuana. In the meantime, though, as Americans for Safe Access spokesman Kris Hermes tells Change.org, "the federal government should look to assist in the implementation of this law, not look to undermine it."

Photo Credit: Chuck Coker