By Jonathan Kaminsky
SEATTLE, Jan 20 (Reuters) - In a decade with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Patrick Moen rose to supervise a team of agents busting methamphetamine and heroin rings in Oregon - before giving it all up to join the nascent legal marijuana industry in nearby Washington state.
In November, the former federal drug agent quit his post to work for a marijuana industry investment firm, and says he relishes getting in on the ground floor of a burgeoning industry he was once sworn to annihilate.
As managing director of compliance and senior counsel for Seattle-based Privateer Holdings, Moen has added his name to a small but growing list of individuals with unlikely backgrounds who have joined or thrown their support behind state-sanctioned marijuana enterprises.
In Oregon, another former Portland-based DEA agent, Paul Schmidt, who retired from the agency in 2010, recently set up shop as a consultant to medical cannabis businesses after working as a state inspector of medical pot dispensaries in Colorado.
Last year, former Mexican president Vicente Fox visited Seattle to trumpet support for a pot firm fronted by former Microsoft executive Jamen Shively. The Seattle police department is weighing whether to allow officers to moonlight as security guards at pot shops slated to open later this year.
Moen, whose jump has been criticized by his former boss at the DEA, said that even as his profile within the agency rose, he nursed a growing sense that the marijuana cases he worked, and the laws underpinning them, were wrongheaded.
Moen says he is working to foster a reputable pot industry that will hasten an end to the drug's prohibition and allow the DEA to sharpen its focus on drugs that are truly harmful.
"I saw this as an amazing opportunity to be a part of the team that's helping to create this industry, " Moen, 36, told Reuters. "I don't really feel like it's the other side."
While marijuana remains illegal under federal law, some 20 states and Washington, D.C., allow for its medical use. In 2012, voters in Washington state and Colorado became the first to legalize adult recreational use of the drug.
Colorado and Washington state have fed the momentum for pot liberalization efforts elsewhere, with a legalization measure likely to go before Alaska voters in August and activists in Oregon collecting signatures to get a similar initiative on that state's November ballot.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced in August it wouldn't interfere with state efforts to regulate and tax marijuana provided they're able to meet a set of requirements that include keeping it away from children and restricting its flow into other states.
EVOLVING VIEWS
Over the summer, Moen arranged to meet Privateer Chief Executive Officer Brendan Kennedy in a Portland coffee shop, where he gave Kennedy his DEA business card before passing him an envelope. Kennedy feared it contained a subpoena but was relieved to instead find enclosed a copy of Moen's resume, the CEO said.
Colorado this month allowed stores to begin selling weed, a step that is months away in Washington state. These developments, coupled with Moen's own evolving views, made a once unfathomable career shift a possibility, he said.
Among his current assignments, Moen is helping Privateer avoid legal pitfalls as it pushes into the cultivation of medical weed in Canada - a significant leap for a firm that has until recently invested solely in enterprises on the fringes of the marijuana trade.
The pay and benefits of his new job are "close to a wash" with his previous position, Moen says, but include stock options in a company aiming to become an industry cornerstone.
Moen's value to Privateer likely will come in guiding the company on how to steer clear of activities that raise red flags with federal authorities, said Hilary Bricken, a Seattle-based marijuana business lawyer.
"It's extremely ironic," she said. "You go from cracking skulls to supporting the very effort that you once vowed to entirely destroy."
Seattle-based DEA Special Agent in Charge Matthew G. Barnes, the top-ranking DEA official in the Pacific Northwest, called Moen's career change an act of abandonment.
"It is disappointing when law enforcement officers, sworn to uphold the laws of the United States with honor, courage and integrity, abandon their commitment to work in an industry involved in trafficking marijuana," Barnes told Reuters in a statement.
Underscoring the divide between the DEA and an emerging pot industry sanctioned by states, the agency's chief of operations, James Capra, on Wednesday denounced the movement toward ending pot prohibition at a U.S. Senate hearing as "reckless and irresponsible."
But Moen said not all his former colleagues have reacted negatively to his move.
"I've gotten a lot of support from former colleagues," Moen said. "I wasn't sure how guys were going to react and it's been really great." (Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis, Cynthia Johnston and Ken Wills)
Before You Go
“I think that most small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalized in some places, and should be," he said back in 2000 in an interview with Rolling Stone. "We really need a re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment.”
He's since spoken about the issue of marijuana and drug prohibition a number of times. Last year, he appeared in the documentary, "Breaking the Taboo," where he argued that the war on drugs has been a failure.
“I don't want to promote that but I also don't want to put people in jail who make a mistake," Paul said. "There are a lot of young people who do this and then later on in their twenties they grow up and get married and they quit doing things like this. I don't want to put them in jail and ruin their lives."
"I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol," Robertson said in an interview with The New York Times in 2012. "I've never used marijuana and I don't intend to, but it's just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn't succeeded."
Robertson has made similar remarks on his "700 Club" show before, but the Times, like many others, perhaps felt they must have misheard him.
“[T]o me, marijuana is no different than wine," he said in an interview with High Times. "It's a drug of choice. It's meant to alter your current state -- and that's not a bad thing. It's ridiculous that marijuana is still illegal. We're still fighting for it ... It comes down to individual decision-making. There are millions of people who smoke pot on a social basis and don't become criminals. So stop with that argument -- it doesn't work.”
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
From his campaign platform:
"By managing marijuana like alcohol and tobacco - regulating, taxing and enforcing its lawful use - America will be better off. The billions saved on marijuana interdiction, along with the billions captured as legal revenue, can be redirected against the individuals committing real crimes against society."
“Marijuana should not only be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry," he said in an interview with High Times. "My wife says, and I agree with her, that what would be really great for Maine would be to legalize dope completely and set up dope stores the way that there are state-run liquor stores.”
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
While marijuana has been made legal for various uses in a number of states, the Obama administration continues to enforce federal laws across the nation. This has led to numerous raids of marijuana-based businesses, as well as prosecutions of growers and other people involved in pot.
"I think it's about time we legalize marijuana," he said. "We have to make a choice in this country. We either put people who are smoking marijuana behind bars or we legalize it, but this little game we're playing in the middle is not helping us, it is not helping Mexico and it is causing massive violence on our southern border."
"Decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Portugal's 10 year experiment shows clearly that enough is enough. It is time to end the war on drugs worldwide. We must stop criminalising drug users. Health and treatment should be offered to drug users - not prison. Bad drugs policies affect literally hundreds of thousands of individuals and communities across the world. We need to provide medical help to those that have problematic use - not criminal retribution."
"I don't tend to say this publicly, but we can see it's a curative thing. The narcotics industry is also enormous. It funds terrorism and - this is a huge problem in America - fuels the foreign gangs," he said. "More than 85 percent of men incarcerated in America are on drug-related offences. It costs $40,000 a year for every prisoner. If they were really serious about the economy there would be a sensible discussion about legalization."
While Obama and his administration have responded to state marijuana reforms by saying they must enforce federal laws against marijuana, the president has the power to reschedule the drug, which would allow federal authorities to shift resources away from a prohibitive approach.
"However, I think we need to prioritize our law enforcement efforts," Palin said. "If somebody's gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody any harm, then perhaps there are other things our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems we have in society."While Obama has spoken repeatedly about not being interested in prosecuting small-time marijuana users, he hasn't done anything to prevent them from being busted by law enforcement in states where the drug is still illegal.
In 2012, the former president said he was fine with state legalization efforts, though he himself doesn't necessary support legalizing the drug.
“As president 35 years ago I called for decriminalizing -- but not legalizing -- the possession of marijuana,” Carter said. “Since then, U.S. drug policies have been very horrible to our own country because of an explosion in prison populations.”
"I don't have a problem with states experimenting with this sort of thing I think that's the role of states," Cuccinelli said, according to Ryan Nobles of WWBT.
“The proof will be in the policy. The war on drugs has gotten a really bad rap, when you ask people if they support the war on drugs they say no ... [Obama's] budget once again has the same old drug warrior policy ... I reject the assumption that everybody who is using drugs needs treatment or is an addict and needs to get arrested ... Not all drug use is abuse.”
He's kept up the fight for drug policy reform since.
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
“We've been fighting the war on drugs since the '60s. And guess what? Trillions of dollars later, we are losing," Sharpton said during a segment on MSNBC. "When you look at the disparities in sentencing drug offenders, hasn't this kind of injustice undermined the legitimacy of our criminal justice system?”
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
Tancredo continued, “The arguments against marijuana today are the same as the arguments against liquor years ago.”
Years later, the former congressman agreed to smoke pot on camera with a documentary filmmaker, a deal that he later backed out of.