California’s Fourth District Court of Appeals this week ruled that portions of the state’s medical marijuana law requiring counties to issue identification cards for qualified medi-pot patients does not conflict with federal pot prohibition, codified in the Controlled Substances Act.
Local officials from San Diego and San Bernardino Counties filed suit in 2006, arguing, in part, that the state’s Medical Marijuana Program Act was inconsistent with federal law – and thus should be preempted – because it required them to provide and review applications, issue ID cards, and maintain records for patients qualified as medi-pot users under the groundbreaking 1996 California Compassionate Use Act. Requiring the counties to issue the cards “imposes an obstacle to the Congressional intent” embodied in the CSA, they argued.
The MMP was passed in 2003, in relevant part, to “facilitate the prompt identification of qualified patients and their designated primary caregivers in order to avoid unnecessary arrest and prosecution of these individuals and provided needed guidance to law enforcement officers.” A caveat on the ID cards notes that it does not insulate a patient from federal prosecution – or, as it often shakes out, even from harassment, which the subjects of Drug Enforcement Administration raids in the state know all too well.
Still, county officials balked at having to issue the cards, instead choosing to file suit, arguing that the state’s statutory scheme legalizing medi-pot undermines the federal CSA. Not so, says the Forth District COA, upholding a lower court ruling. “Congress has the power to permit state laws that, although posing some obstacle to Congressional goals, may be adhered to without requiring a person affirmatively to violate federal laws,” Justice Alex McDonald wrote for the three-judge panel. In order for the federal law to preempt the state statute there must be a “positive conflict” between the two laws – and in the case of California medi-pot there is no such conflict. “The CSA is entirely silent on the ability of states to provide ID cards to their citizenry, and an entity that issues identification cards does not engage in conduct banned by the CSA,” McDonald wrote. “The purpose of the CSA is to combat recreational drug use, not to regulate a state’s medical practice.”
This article appears in August 8 • 2008.