It seems like every time you turn on the TV lately, there’s another debate among the GOP Presidential Candidate hopefuls where they end up discussing important issues from foreign policy to the economy to immigration. One issue, however, that appears to have gottten lost in the shuffle is that of medical marijuana. In fact, the only time the subject seems to have been addressed during a debate was the most recent GOP debate on November 22 when Congressman Ron Paul showed his support for medical marijuana, arguing that medical marijuana laws should not be set by the federal government:

“You can at least let sick people have marijuana because it’s helpful. But the compassionate conservatives say, well we can’t do this, we’re going to put people who are sick and dying with cancer and are being helped with marijuana if they have multiple sclerosis — the federal government is going in there and overriding state laws and putting people like that in prison.”

However, Congressman Paul has been the only candidate so far to address the topic of medical marijuana during one of the many debates. So the question remains – where do the rest of the candidates stand on the issue?

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Drug Enforcement Agents executed warrants on fifteen medical cannabis access points across the state of Washington last week.  US Attorney Jenny Durkan alleges that the access points were using the state law to conceal criminal activity and money laundering; however, this is only true so long as medical cannabis is illegal on a federal level.  Because of this there will always be room to charge those participating in civil disobedience with illegal activity.  During an interview, Durkan joked, “There’s always more crime than time.”  This statement is indicative of the Department’s mis-prioritized agenda because they chose to pursue the easiest target: a legal state sanctioned medical cannabis dispensary operating above ground to provide for patients in need.

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Last month, the California Medical Association (CMA) adopted an official position calling for the legalization and regulation of cannabis. According to an editorial in the Sacramento Bee by CMA president-elect Dr. Paul Phinney and CMA speaker of the house Dr. Luther Cobb, the adoption of this policy by the largest statewide physician organization in America is primarily a result of concern for patient safety as the present system of medical cannabis is “flawed, contradictory, and dangerously detached from scientific evidence…Until [it] is legalized, we cannot regulate it in a way that’s safe for patient use.”

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Notwithstanding the fact that the California Legislature expressly enacted the Medical Marijuana Program Act (“the MMPA” or “SB420″) to “[e]nhance the access of patients and caregivers to medical marijuana through collective, cooperative cultivation projects,” some localities are seeking to eradicate them through the use of their zoning laws. The most recent example of this, City of Riverside v. Inland Empire Patient’s Health and Wellness Center, Inc., involves Riverside’s ban on medical marijuana dispensaries (“MMDs”) through its Zoning Code.  In a published decision released on Wednesday, the Court of Appeal held this was a valid exercise of the City’s zoning authority that does not conflict with, or is “inimical to,” the MMPA.  While ASA believes this holding is incorrect, as is more fully explained in ASA’s amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in Qualified Patients Association v. City of Anaheim, the Riverside case does not forbid localities from regulating dispensaries, as some have said.

First, the Riverside decision expressly rejects the proposition that federal law preempts local regulation of medical marijuana dispensaries:

[T]he city cannot rely on the proposition that federal law, which criminalizes the possession of marijuana, preempts state law allowing limiting the medical use of marijuana and MMD’s.

Although the court held that the City may use its zoning authority to ban MMDs, it also allows localities to regulate them in a responsible manner, as many localities have, and will continue to do.

On November 1, federal agents raided G3 Holistic, Inc.’s three locations in Colton, Upland, and Moreno Valley, CA as well as the Ontario warehouse where the medical cannabis was grown. That same day, the homes of G3′s president, Aaron Sandusky, and its chief financial officer, John Nuckolls, were also raided on the claim that Sandusky has been illegally selling cannabis to the general public.

Sandusky said officials confiscated up to $30,000 from his stores and detained him for more than seven hours in handcuffs at the warehouse, where they took all of the equipment and destroyed his plants. G3 reportedly serves more than 17,000 patients in Colton and Upland combined.

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Today at the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C., Esther Choo, M.D., M.P.H. of Rhode Island Hospital will present findings from a study exploring whether legalizing cannabis for medical use in Rhode  Island increases its recreational use among Rhode Island’s youth. While many opponents of medical cannabis claim that medical cannabis programs “send the wrong message to those in our society who are the most impressionable“ or increase cannabis’s appeal and accessibility for teenagers, the study’s findings show that this is in fact not the case. Comparing the self-reporting results of 32,570 students in Rhode Island and Massachusetts between 1997 and 2009, Dr. Choo and her fellow researchers found no significant difference between youth use in the two states and concluded that there have been no “increases in adolescent marijuana use related to Rhode Island’s 2006 legalization of medical marijuana.”

Last week, Americans for Safe Access (ASA) filed a lawsuit challenging the Obama Administration’s attempt to subvert local and state medical cannabis laws. Our lawsuit argues that the Tenth Amendment forbids the federal government from using coercive tactics to commandeer the law-making functions of the states. The public and media response has been impressive. We have received hundreds of messages of support, new members have joined ASA, and the national media coverage has been positive. Thank you to everyone who already spoke up and helped out!

But we can’t stop there! ASA still needs your support to keep the momentum going in the right direction. Can you make a one-time or recurring donation to help us keep pushing back?

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