The federal government considers marijuana an illicit drug. But officials said they would back off from prosecuting medical marijuana users last year, around the time Maine expanded its medical marijuana law to authorize dispensaries. But now the gap between federal and state policies on medical marijuana is being underscored in Maine, in the area of public housing.

Charlie Wynott gets housing subsidies from the Westbrook Housing Authority. And he thinks that patients should get a rent deduction for buying marijuana to treat a medical condition -- in his case AIDS -- like they would for any other pharmaceutical.

"It helps to be able to pay your rent and buy your medicine at the same time," Wynott says. "We usually, when you're low-income, you do one or the other -- you pay your rent or buy your medication."

But to date, the Westbrook Housing Authority has not allowed medical marijuana to count toward rent deduction. The housing authority gets its funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development of the federal government which considers marijuana illegal. It's waiting to hear back from HUD about what it should do.

"We're just kind of caught in the middle with no direction from the feds and the new implementation of the program in the state of Maine," says John Gallagher, executive director of the Westbrook Housing Authority. He says the authority wants to help out tenants when it can, but not at the expense of violating federal law.

"We're trying to err on the side of caution and make sure we don't do anything to violate the federal rules, which might cause somebody to lose their voucher or their public housing at a future date," Gallagher says. "We're very interested in making sure that people have a safe affordable place to live in and we don't want to make a mistake locally that might cause them to jeopardize their housing."

Gallagher says he has not heard back yet from HUD offices in DC and Boston. But HUD was very clear in telling MPBN that local housing authorities should not allow medical marijuana to be a medical deduction.

Rhonda Siciliano is a spokeswoman from HUD. "Notwithstanding state medical marijuana laws, marijuana is still a controlled substance under federal law and its use by public housing tenants is not protected," she says.

Letting a public housing authority, or PHA, know about medical marijuana use could in fact jeopardize a person's lease.
"PHA's are required to have admission policies and eviction standards that deny admission to illegal drug users and authorize eviction of such persons."

Mark Adleson of the Portland Housing Authority says his agency had been looking into allowing medical marijuana to be a deduction, but a statement like that from HUD would be enough to end the research.