Indopedia All Things Marijuana
Dan Quigley, the deputy coordinator of the National Marijuana Initiative (NMI), a subset of the law enforcement wing of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, sent a request to Massachusetts health officials this week, asking for bundles of information about the state’s 40,000 medical marijuana patients.
According to a report from the Boston Globe, Quigley, a former Colorado cop who has never been shy about his opposition to cannabis legalization, sent similar requests to other medical marijuana-friendly states, causing significant fear about patient privacy and potential correlations to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ threatened cannabis crackdown.
“We must protect patients’ anonymity and comfort in obtaining medical cannabis without feeling like they’re being watched,” Beth Collins, senior director of government relations and external affairs at Americans for Safe Access, told the Globe. “They’ll see this story and say, ‘oh, the feds are going to know I’m a patient,’ and stay away. It’s an access issue.”
Quigley has said that the data would not be used to identify patients, or fuel federal enforcement in states with…
