East Valley Tribune: “The top federal prosecutor in Arizona said Gov. Jan Brewer and Attorney General Tom Horne are distorting the facts on the issue of medical marijuana and risks of federal prosecution.” This a must read article. The following text contains only a few of the zingers U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke fired at Governor Brewer and Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne. Dennis Burke:
“said that letter never mentioned state workers. ‘It’s fair to read into my letter what I included and what I didn’t,’’ he said. ‘And if I didn’t include state employees, I think that’s telling in itself.’’ And Burke said there was a simple way of dealing with the question. ‘You would think that a letter back from Attorney General Horne, as opposed to ‘I’m going to file a lawsuit and have a press conference,’ might have been a better course of action,’’ he said.”
“Burke said there appear to be elements of political grandstanding in both the press conference by Brewer and Horne earlier this week as well as the decision to sue.”
Given that Arizona’s U.S. Attorney is on record saying that the Governor and the Arizona Attorney General can get the answer they want to whether state employees will be charged with violating federal marijuana criminal laws without suing, Jan Brewer and Tom Horne should wipe the egg off their faces, dismiss their lawsuit and write a letter to Dennis Burke. That course of action will be cheaper and quicker than a federal lawsuit that will waste precious Arizona funds, takes months or years to resolve and will almost certainly cause the State of Arizona to be sued because it fails to implement Propostion 203, a duly enacted law of Arizona.
If Governor Brewer does not take the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s advice, she will have to invent another reason to stop the implementation of Arizona’s medical marijuana industry because she won’t be able to say she is worried about state employees being prosecuted. Dennis Burke has made it clear that state employees involved in implementing and administering Arizona’s medical marijuana laws will not be prosecuted.
