Two California Republicans, Dana Rohrabacher and Tom McClintock, joined up with Democrats Sam Farr of California and Maurice Hinchey of New York to create the Rohrabacher-Hinchey-Farr-McClintock Medical Marijuana Amendment. The language recognizes “the right of states to operate their own programs with respect to the issue of medical cannabis, without prohibitive interference from the U.S. Justice Department, which has been escalating its efforts to stymie these programs,” according to a fact sheet put out by the coalition.

 

The congressmen note that President Barack Obama promised after taking office to avoid using federal prosecutors to circumvent state medical marijuana laws. Since then, though, the administration ‘has done everything in its power to undermine” these laws while conducting “more than 200 paramilitary-style raids on medical cannabis producers and distributors in at least 7 states, resulting in more than 60 federal indictments.”

 

If the amendment becomes law, the Justice Department would be prohibited from using any federal funds “to prevent the states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, or the District of Columbia, from implementing programs authorized by those laws.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Rohrabacher-Hinchey-Farr-McClintock Medical Marijuana Amendment (Americans for Safe Access) (pdf)

Bipartisan Amendment Seeks To Halt Obama’s Medical Marijuana Raids (by Stephen Webster, Raw Story)

Obama Agents Raid Leading Marijuana University (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)