Medical marijuana: Federal pressure stirs legal confusion

Mary K. Reinhart and Craig Anderson
The Arizona Republic (US)
Thursday, April 21, 2011

Threatened medical-marijuana crackdowns by federal prosecutors in other states have stoked fears about whether state employees, dispensary owners and others could be punished for operating under Arizona's fledgling law. Although the Justice Department said in 2009 that it would not prosecute sick people using medical marijuana, U.S. attorneys in California and Washington state have told officials there that they do intend to enforce federal laws that prohibit manufacture and distribution of the drug.