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Senior administration officials acknowledged Friday that they are wrestling with how to respond to the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington, which directly violates federal drug law and is sparking a broad debate about the direction of U.S. drug policy.
The most likely outcome will be that the Justice Department will prevent the laws from going into effect by announcing that federal law preempts the state initiatives, which would make marijuana legal for recreational use, law enforcement sources said. But the White House and the Justice Department have not made a decision yet, senior officials said.
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Voters are set to cast their ballots in three Western states next month on whether to legalize the sale of marijuana for recreational use, initiatives that would directly violate federal law but that have drawn only silence from the Justice Department.
Despite the urging of drug enforcement experts, officials in Washington have not said how the federal government would deal with possible state laws in Colorado, Washington and Oregon that would conflict with the federal Controlled Substances Act. Federal law prohibits the production, possession and sale of marijuana and classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, putting it in the same category as LSD and heroin.
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California's San Joaquin Valley is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the country. It is also where, among the fresh fruits and vegetables, an estimated half-a-million plants of marijuana are growing openly, some allegedly being sold for non-medicinal purposes.
"In the last two years, we've seen large-scale commercial farming operations of marijuana and explosions of backyard marijuana grows," said Lieutenant Rick Ko of the Fresno County Sheriff's Office. Ko says the spike in cannabis cultivation is a result of California's booming medical marijuana trade.
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