EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Corporate Win: Supreme Court Says Monsanto Has 'Control Over Product of Life'
- Cornel West: Obama 'Is a War Criminal'
- Patent Filing Claims Solar Energy ‘Breakthrough’
- Disaster Capitalism Strikes as Hedge Funds Circle Near-Bankrupt Municipalities Like Vultures
- Ignoring Bee Crisis, EPA Greenlights New 'Highly Toxic' Pesticide
Popular content
Today's Top News
Medical Marijuana Raid Raises Question: What's Obama Policy
WASHINGTON - A recent Drug Enforcement Administration raid on a South Lake Tahoe, Calif., medical marijuana dispensary showcases one of the legal conflicts inherited by the Obama administration.
An unidentified medical marijuana patient smells the different offerings of the Love Shack medicinal cannabis shop in the Mission District of San Francisco on Monday. (Associated Press photo by Dino Vournas) The Jan. 22 raid near the California-Nevada border occurred two days after Obama took office and before the new president's own Justice Department team was in place. The raid resembled many conducted during the Bush administration, but seemingly clashed with Obama's campaign opposition to such tactics.
"I think the basic concept of using medical marijuana for the same purposes and with the same controls as other drugs prescribed by doctors (is) entirely appropriate," Obama told Oregon's Mail Tribune newspaper in March. "I'm not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue."
Now, citing the Tahoe episode, medical marijuana activists and civil libertarians are urging Obama to freeze future raids. Some hope, as well, that Obama will reverse a Bush administration decision and let additional legal marijuana production to take place.
At the very least, activists and law enforcement officials alike are awaiting clarification about what's changed in the world of medical marijuana. This could take time.
"We're sympathetic to the fact the administration is just getting its feet on the ground," Marijuana Policy Project spokesman Dan Bernath said on Thursday, "but this does show he needs to appoint folks who will respects his principles and policies."
Attorney General Nominee Eric Holder has not yet been confirmed by the Senate, and his proposed deputy hasn't yet had a confirmation hearing. The phrase "medical marijuana" never came up during Holder's extensive hearing, nor in the follow-up written questions asked by senators.
Obama has yet to nominate a permanent DEA administrator, though acting administrator Michele Leonhart is considered one potential candidate and would be the first African-American woman to run the agency. Obama, likewise, has yet to nominate a new head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
"The new drug czar could recommend policies that are more restrictive, or more lenient," noted Bill Ruzzamenti, director of the Central Valley High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area in California.
With federally funded staff in Sacramento and Fresno, the Central Valley HIDTA coordinates antidrug efforts in a 10-county area. It participated in a high-profile investigation into the California Healthcare Collective, a Modesto-based medical marijuana dispensary whose founders were sentenced last year to long prison terms on charges of running a criminal enterprise.
"The ones that are targeted are the ones making millions and millions of dollars," Ruzzamenti said.
Federal agents during the past two years similarly have raided organizations in Bakersfield, Vallejo, San Mateo and other California cities. The most recent raid, on South Lake Tahoe's Patient-to-Patient Collective, seized five to 10 pounds of marijuana and a small amount of cash, according to police reports. No arrests were made.
By one count, the DEA has raided more than 60 medical marijuana facilities nationwide during the past two years, including a July raid in Seattle in which agents seized hundreds of patient files. The ongoing raids underscore a running conflict between state and federal laws.
Through a 1996 ballot measure, approved by California voters with a 55 percent to 45 percent margin, patients can obtain medical marijuana with doctors' permission. Ten other states, including Washington and Nevada, have followed California's lead.
Several hundred marijuana dispensaries are now publicly listed by the California branch of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, with names such as High Flight Deliveries in Stockton, Mr. Purple Skunk in Modesto and Earth Meds in Tulare County.
These dispensaries, and their counterparts in other states, have been on thin ice following a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that empowered federal authorities to prosecute marijuana purveyors even in states that permit medical marijuana use. Bush's drug czar, John Walters, championed such prosecutions.
Leonhart, a week before Bush left office, likewise took a hard line in issuing a 118-page decision rejecting a DEA administrative law judge's recommendation to allow a University of Massachusetts researcher to grow higher-quality medicinal marijuana. The American Civil Liberties Union and medical marijuana proponents hope this last-minute rejection, coming two years after the judge issued a positive recommendation, is put on hold until Obama's team is fully in place.
- Posted in
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
18 Comments so far
Show AllHopefully, this type of behavior will not continue. It’s too early to tell if this is Obama policy but I sure hope he changes or relaxes federal laws and approach to the issue of medicinal marijuana. It is long overdue. The issue of decriminalized marijuana is another issue entirely and should not be confused with medical relief. But some get the issues confused and many who suffer are denied legitimate relief due to these misconceptions.
Hopefully this type of behavior will not continue, for sure. But I'm not sure confusing decriminalization and medical marijuana is a major of a mistake.
I can attest that in the Bay Area, where I lived from 2005-8, there was in lived reality little difference between decriminalization and legal medical marijuana. The law states something like if you have a diagnosed medical condition (eg. headaches, hemorrhoids, MS) which marijuana helps (eg. “it makes my injured knee feel better”), by paying a doctor about $150 you or anyone you know could get an entry pass to the cannabis clubs. I never had the $150 to pay while I lived there so I had friends buy for me or bought from one of the several legal growers that I casually knew.
Speaking of which, when the legal growers I knew talked about getting the authority to grow and sell to the shops they did not make the process of getting certified sound difficult.
So if a person had the money, it was pretty easy to get the certification. And if you have the certification to buy cannabis, you have the right to have a certain amount in your possession. Furthermore, if you have the right to grow it, you have the right to have quite a bit more in your possession. So, it seems to me that the legal medical marijuana is a sort of back door to decriminalization.
I do, however, hate to see a person who needs it either get denied, have to deal with dangerous people, or put him/herself in legal jeopardy in order to find relief.
If you live in Oregon, Washington, California, Colorado, Michigan, Hawaii, Montana or Nevada and you or someone you know wants more information on how to receive medical marijuana, see http://www.thc-foundation.org/
For medical marijuana news and information, see http://www.medicalmj.org/
Let's not forget that Obama's VP choice - Joe Biden - coined the term "drug czar" and has championed the Office for National Drug Control Policy.
About medical marijauna, VP Joe Biden said: "We have not devoted nearly enough science or time to deal with the pain management and chronic pain management that exists. There's got to be a better answer than marijuana."
VP Biden is only one - in a long list of poor choices - made by B.O.
Yeah Biden and crew are charlatans and hypocrites and represent the established order and nothing more. Stay out of peoples bodies and dont interfere with how they medicate.
Admittedly, I couldn't bring myself to vote for Obama....and while I will be the first to laugh and say 'told ya so' when it comes to most of his policies and how they'll play out, I hope he actually is an agent of change when it comes to respecting state laws regarding medical marijuana.
Every state should be set up like California where patients obtain a marijuana card from a doctor. beyond that, the Fed, the state et al should be kept out of the equation except for purposes of safety regulation and taxation.
If Obama takes on the Biden line, the traditional line, he's as full of shit as any other politcian.
.....at which time, I'll smile and say, 'shoulda voted for Ron Paul.'
'Yes I'm an extremist, thanks for noticing.'
- Ted Nugent
Sioux Rose
HANK: I think he'd have an easy 2012 win if he crossed this Rubicon (i.e. made pot legal, or decriminalized it, anyway)... but then what would all the prisons do? Who would be put into all those empty 2.2 million beds? Sometimes you have to be careful what you ask for, as "dissent" and "dissenters" could become the next "enemy" of state, especially if all those "unitary executive/signing statements" from Bush remain unchallenged and another like him seizes power up the road.
This is the 21st century and America can't even bring itself to legalize a green plant. This is beyond medieval! But then again what can I expect from a country whose ancestors tried and murdered people as witches?
IMO,there are numerous reasons not to settle for only medical marijuana legality.
The crackdown on grass usage has escalated the price by at least a factor of ten since the early 80s.the fortunes accrued by the cartels since has put tremendous power into the hands of some of the most vicious people on the planet.The turf wars on our border and elsewhere are increasingly of massacre proportions.Take the huge profits away,most if not all of the violence ends.
People who want to get intoxicated should have the right to do so if others aren't harmed.These Puritanical,punitive actions by the government need to stop.There are probably hundreds of thousands in prison just for using pot.That makes sense only to those profiting from these jailings.Oh,and of course most of the imprisoned for pot use are minorities.Our new prez could do the nation a great service by demanding legalization of pot[though fighting Big Pharma won't be easy].
From the Gipper right through George II our leaders have labored mightily to protect us from ourselves. With poverty spreading like wildfire their priorities remained with criminalizing pot, chipping away at abortion, and telling seventeen year olds what a man they could become in the military.
Sioux Rose
Where alcohol puts fire in the blood and makes many mean, verbally abusive and violent (not to mention a hazard on the road to others); pot is a pacific herb that makes people generally peaceful. PEACE is the enemy of the war state, and mellow people might get the munchies, but they're less apt to feel a need to shop till they drop. POT is probably the antithesis of the Max Weber Protestant (a/k/a work) ethic; but people I know do some of their most creative work while "high."
The real reason, apart from the infrastructure of a labyrinthian prison-industrial complex, with lots of attorneys on board (a good number no doubt using the very substance they walk into court to defend or prosecute others for using) that pot is not legal is that it is NOT resonant with MARS rules or the mindset of the make-war state.
Think of the hostility to peace marches then and now, to long-haired guys... Mars would rather burn a house down, incinerate a nation through an "air campaign," then burn one (joint) and who knows, decide Venus is not so bad to get next to (or embrace IN himself) after all!
Right on...!
The war on drugs is more than just a hoax... It is a full on racket for the privatized prison & rehab Industries...
And a cash cow for corporations like Monsanto... They manufacture both the raw chemicals necessary to make cocaine, And roundup ready that they use to spray on their competition...
Sioux,
I totally agree. The comedian Bill Hicks (who I linked below) also once said (though not in the segment I linked) that the Establishment doesn't want to allow the people to use these naturally-occurring plants or psychedelic mushrooms because they are dangerous to the war-based economy. (I can't find it anywhere on YouTube, but it's an awesome and hilarious bit.) However, he pointed out, caffeine fits quite nicely into that whole culture because it makes people faster and more obedient workers . . . gotta keep those mice runnin' on those wheels! He then points out how interesting that two drugs that do absolutely NOTHING for you (alcohol and cigarettes) are legal, but the ones that can blow open your sixth chakra and take you to higher levels of consciousness are always the ones that are illegal. "Coincidence? I think not."
He was one of the best comedians we had, second only to George Carlin.
Time for a smoke...
This should be a NON-ISSUE in my opinion, period. The fact that ANY natural plant is illegal is ridiculous and asinine. Marijuana is not a drug. it is an herb, just like sage, oregano or thyme. All those little pills we Americans like to take for all our aches and pains and mental problems? THOSE are drugs . . . and wonderful double standards too, might I add.
Marijuana has plenty of healing properties - I truly believe that is one of the reasons it is on this planet. However, I also think it is disingenuous to attempt to split this issue into the "OK" medical marijuana argument and the "not so OK" recreational use argument. That plays right into the hands of the moralistic overlords. Marijuana should be legal simply because it is a natural plant on this earth, period. One of its other properties (which can very very a healing property, for sure) is its ability to calm its user and undo that regimented, box-like matrix we always like to call "reality". And in fact, I think it could be quite easily argued that this is its most important quality. And that is ALSO one of the reasons it is on this planet.
Making nature against the law is . . . well . . . um . . . unnatural.
But ya know . . . I probably can't say it any better than the master, Bill Hicks (RIP) . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSH6ofHbeUw
Enjoy!
Blessings,
Seventhson
"You must unlearn what you have learned" - Jedi Master Yoda
Yup. That's it.
Sioux Rose
YUM!!!
And now Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps has been caught smoking marijuana and apologizes for his "regrettable" behavior and "bad judgment".
What a corporate shill he is.
Smoke it and be proud of it, dude.
Well, I can tell you that from living here in NJ it is not going to be as easy as described in San Francisco. Jersey does not play so loose and easy and loves to grandstand. We shall see but my MS would qualify me if only they would show some heart. I’m not holding my breath but there is hope in an Obama administration.