Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for Thomas P. O'Brien, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said the office already focused on egregious offenders such as those who sell drugs to minors and people with bogus prescriptions or those who operate away from their approved location.
"In every single case we have prosecuted, the defendants violated state as well as federal law," Mrozek said.
Despite the abundance of medical marijuana dispensaries in Southern California, Mrozek said prosecutors have charged only four operators and their associates in the last seven years.
Obama suggested during the presidential campaign that medical marijuana dispensaries operating within state law would not be subject to prosecution if he were elected.
But soon after his inauguration, the Drug Enforcement Administration raided several dispensaries in the Los Angeles area and near Tahoe, in what appeared to be a continuation of policies enforced under previous administrations. At Wednesday's briefing, his first major sit-down with reporters, Holder was asked if the Justice Department planned to raid any more clinics.
"The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law, to the extent that people do that and try to use medical marijuana laws as a shield for activity that is not designed to comport with what the intention was of the state law," Holder said. "Those are the organizations, the people, that we will target. And that is consistent with what the president said during the campaign."
A Justice Department official confirmed that Holder's comments effectively articulated a formal Obama administration policy of not going after such clinics.
"Before, he didn't really lay out the policy. Today, he stated the policy," said the Justice Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
"If you are operating a medical marijuana clinic that is actually a front, we'll come after you," the official said. "But if you are operating within the law, we are not going to prioritize our resources to go after them."
Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project said he still has some concerns: What happens to dispensary operators caught up in raids during the last days of the Bush policy, and would federal drug agents resist "trumping up" violations to circumvent the Obama administration's edict.
"The devil is going to be in the details of implementation," Mirken said. "I think you have to assume that there are people within the DEA and some in local law enforcement who still don't like medical marijuana and would like to find an excuse to continue making arrests of law-abiding dispensary operators."
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josh.meyer@latimes.com
scott.glover@latimes.com
Times staff writer Eric Bailey contributed to this report.
