Opinion

Oakland's pot plan goes up in smoke On Oakland's Conflict With Federal Law

For months, Oakland has struggled with a perplexing dilemma: how can the city regulate marijuana sales and production - forbidden by federal law - while providing medical cannabis, as state voters decreed in a 1996 measure?

Now the hammer has come down. A plainly worded message from the local U.S. attorney, Melinda Haag, makes it clear that the city's latest scheme won't fly legally and leaves Oakland open to civil and criminal lawsuits. What part of "no" don't you understand, Haag is suggesting.

Oakland's nonstop probing for a solution is understandable, even praiseworthy. Patients want weed, and social norms support the idea. Some 15 states, including California, have medical marijuana laws.

But next comes the mechanics of growing and supplying, which face an insuperable challenge. Marijuana is a federally controlled drug, and until Washington changes the rules, production and sales can't be taken over at the state or local level, as Oakland has firmly found out.

The best that users can hope for - and it's not much - is Washington's fitful attention to the contradictions of medical pot laws. The Obama administration said two years ago that it would go easy and not raid pot clubs, as the prior Bush administration had done. But last year Attorney General Eric Holder opposed Prop. 19, which largely legalized pot and small-scale cultivation, and said passage would bring a crackdown on growers and sellers. The measure lost in November.

Oakland's City Council isn't getting the message. Before Prop. 19's defeat, it spelled out a plan for licensed dispensaries designed to earn the city millions. Then the plan was recast into its latest form: just five outlets with linked pot farms. Each grow operation could be up to 50,000 square feet, the size of a big-box outlet.

The plan came with advantages. The five-outlet limit gave the city firm control and revenues. The problem of indoor pot farms scattered across the city, which would pose fire risks and security problems, would be minimized.

But it's not to be, and Oakland can't say it wasn't warned. Both Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley and City Attorney John Russo cast doubt on the council's efforts over the past two months.

If there's a villain here, it's the inconclusive nature of the law. Pot is only semi-forbidden. It's encouraged as medicine and tolerated in small storefront operations. But it's barred as an industry, largely unregulated and avoided in Washington as a hot-button issue. Until a serious overhaul is mapped out at the national level, it won't help any city such as Oakland to go its own way.