ASSOCIATED PRESS
Posted: Friday, August 30, 2013, 12:17 AM WASHINGTON - Despite 75 years of federal marijuana prohibition, the Justice Department said yesterday that states can let people use the drug, license people to grow it and even allow adults to stroll into stores and buy it - as long as the weed is kept away from kids, the black market and federal property.
In a sweeping new policy statement prompted by pot legalization votes in Washington and Colorado last fall, the department gave the green light to states to adopt tight regulatory schemes to oversee the medical and recreational marijuana industries burgeoning across the country.
The action, welcomed by supporters of legalization, could set the stage for more states to legalize marijuana. Alaska could vote on the question next year, and a few other states plan similar votes in 2016.
The policy change embraces what Justice Department officials called a "trust-but-verify" approach between the federal government and states that enact recreational drug use.
In a memo to all 94 U.S. attorneys' offices around the country, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the federal government expects that states and local governments authorizing "marijuana-related conduct" will implement strong and effective regulatory and enforcement systems that address the threat those state laws could pose to public health and safety.
"If state enforcement efforts are not sufficiently robust . . . the federal government may seek to challenge the regulatory structure itself," the memo stated.
Under the new federal policy, the government's top investigative priorities range from preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors to preventing sales revenue from going to criminal enterprises, gangs and cartels and preventing the diversion of marijuana outside of states where it is legal.
Other top-priority enforcement areas include stopping state-authorized marijuana activity from being used as a cover for trafficking other illegal drugs and preventing violence and the use of firearms in the cultivation and distribution of marijuana.
The top areas also include preventing drugged driving, preventing marijuana cultivation and possession on federal property.
Following the votes in Colorado and Washington last year, Attorney General Eric Holder launched a review of marijuana enforcement policy that included an examination of the two states, specifically whether they should be blocked from operating marijuana markets on the grounds that actively regulating an illegal substance conflicts with federal drug law.
