New Mexico's Pot Connection

July 5, 2007— -- New Mexico is set to become the first U.S. state to set up a cultivation and distribution system for medical marijuana, sewing the seeds of a possible showdown with federal drug enforcement authorities.

Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democratic presidential candidate, signed the "pot bill" into law this year and tasked the state's Department of Health with establishing a way to grow and distribute the crop to patients by Oct. 1. The new law may be at odds with federal law, which supersedes state laws, and tightly controls who can grow marijuana and for what purposes.

Even New Mexico's Attorney General Gary King doesn't endorse the plan. "We are not behind this. This is not part of what we were asked to look at, and it is not the position of the attorney general," said Phil Sisneros, the attorney general's director of communications.

The state can't guarantee that marijuana users and distributors won't be prosecuted under federal law, he said. That's a situation that has become all too common in California, where the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has raided dozens of medical marijuana "pot clubs," claiming they are simply distributing weed to anyone who drops in.

"It comes down to politics and the degree to which the federal government wants to employ law enforcement resources to try to stop a state from providing medicine to sick people," said Daniel Abrahamson, director of legal affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that lobbies for relaxation of drug laws.

The state is immune from federal prosecution if it simply allows patients and caregivers to cultivate the medicine themselves, Abrahamson said. But when the state itself is the grower and provider, there might be conflict with federal law, he admitted.

Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, said exceptions to U.S. marijuana law have been made for university-sponsored research programs. But he doubts they will apply to the New Mexico plan.