102_7529Medical marijuana patients and producers in New Mexico can breathe a sigh of relief this week, after the Obama administration told U.S. Attorneys on Monday to not waste resources prosecuting them, so long as they obey state laws.

The next day, seven complete applications for non-profit medical marijuana suppliers were presented to Department of Health Secretary Alfredo Vigil, who will now make a final decision on whether to allow the non-profits to begin operating.

Patients hope that having more producers will prevent situations like the one that occurred this summer when the state’s only supplier was forced to admit it could not meet demand from patients.

As the Independent has reported, New Mexico has so far only licensed one non-profit producer, the Santa Fe Institute of Natural Medicine, which is limited to growing 95 plants at any given time. The only other legal way to produce the drug under New Mexico’s law is for patients to produce it themselves, in which case they have to obtain a producer’s license from the state.

Although the state says it’s legal for patients with certain conditions to buy or grow their own supply of the drug, and for specially licensed non-profits to grow and distribute marijuana, those actions are still against federal law. The feds have busted producers and patients in other states, and New Mexico’s hundreds of patients and one non-profit producer have had no guarantee that federal authorities won’t bust them too.

But they got more assurance on Monday that it won’t happen.

The new federal guidelines were issued to federal prosecutors in states that have enacted medical marijuana laws, which include New Mexico. The guidelines discourage federal prosecutors from devoting resources to prosecuting cases involving legitimate, state-licensed medical marijuana. The memo also makes clear that the federal government will continue to pursue the prosecution of commercial marijuana operations, also known as drug trafficking:

…pursuit of these priorities should not focus federal resources in your States on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana. …

On the other hand, prosecution of commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continues to be an enforcement priority of the Department. …

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson issued a statement that afternoon applauding the announcement by the Department of Justice that the feds consider pursuing medical marijuana an “inefficient” use of resources.

“Our medical cannabis program in New Mexico is helping a select group of patients who cannot get relief from their pain and suffering from any other kind of treatment,” he said. “I am pleased that President Obama has taken these steps to ensure patients will be protected while getting the medical relief they desperately need.”

The new guidelines from the Department of Justice, however, don’t solve the problems patients may face in traveling through the six border checkpoints in southern New Mexico’s highways.

Border checkpoints pose risk

Even though DOJ has said it won’t prosecute, federal border protection agents or Drug Enforcement Agents can still make arrests when they find someone in possession of marijuana.

Public affairs officer Steve Cribby of U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that no new procedures have been given instructing its officers to treat medical marijuana differently. But the new policy may make a difference when it comes to whether or not a person is prosecuted.

“If someone comes to a checkpoint and is found with marijuana, the amount doesn’t matter to us–the person is going to be arrested,” he said.  “We’ll then notify the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency] and ask them what they want to do. They may decline to do anything about it. Our next step would be to contact state and local authorities. If they decline to take enforcement action, the drugs would still be seized but the person would be released.”

Cribby said the DEA is normally looking for large quantities of drugs, not small personal amounts like medical marijuana patients may have at any given time.

But the New Mexico non-profits that grow and deliver the drug to patients may be a different matter, depending on the quantity of marijuana they are traveling with.

Richardson signed New Mexico’s medical marijuana statute into law in 2007. The Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act spurred the state to develop a production and distribution system for medical marijuana, making New Mexico the first state to proactively regulate a system of small non-profits to produce the drug.

There are 15 qualifying conditions for medical marijuana in New Mexico: severe chronic pain, painful peripheral neuropathy, intractable nausea/vomiting, severe anorexia/cachexia, hepatitis C infection currently receiving antiviral treatment, Crohn’s disease, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease), cancer, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, damage to the nervous tissue of the spinal cord with intractable spasticity, epilepsy, HIV/AIDS and hospice patients.

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