Posted on 03/14/2012 5:16:56 PM PDT by grundle
In many ways, things have been looking up for supporters of medical marijuana. Opinion polls now suggest that the American public is swinging behind the idea — and it's already legal in 16 states and the District of Columbia. But the Obama administration has been taking a very different view lately.
Marijuana has been cropping up all over the country, becoming legal for medical use in places like Montana and Colorado, where the drug's so available that it became a target on Saturday Night Live this year.
On that show's "Weekend Update," Seth Meyers drew laughs when he said, "A doctor in Colorado has converted two trailers into mobile doctors' offices to help dispense medical marijuana to patients in rural areas. Oh wait, you know, I'm sorry I read that wrong. Some guy in Colorado is selling weed out of a trailer. There you go."
But John Walters, director of the Office of Drug Control Policy during the Bush administration, told NPR the widespread use of marijuana is no laughing matter.
"It's a dangerous addictive substance and people are playing games with this and pretending because they think it's cool sometimes to not take it seriously," Walters said.
But you know who is taking it seriously these days? The Obama administration, which recently lashed out against the drug in three distinct ways.
First, on Monday, the White House released its National Drug Control Strategy, reporting that use of marijuana is the highest it's been in eight years. The policy document went out of its way to oppose marijuana legalization, arguing the drug is addictive and unsafe.
Second, late last week, the Drug Enforcement Administration concluded that marijuana has no accepted medical use. So the DEA rejected a years-long effort to reclassify marijuana from a heavily restricted drug like heroin under the Controlled Substances Act to one that can be used more widely.
Finally, the Justice Department has taken a tough line on marijuana too. Federal prosecutors say they won't go after sick people. But late last month, they warned that big medical marijuana shops aren't exempt from federal prosecution if they distribute the drug, even in states where medical marijuana is legal.
That disappoints Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which argues for rethinking the approach to drugs.
"Unfortunately what the Obama administration seems to be doing is trying to scare precisely those state and local authorities who want to design sensible regulations to make sure all of this is properly under control," Nadelmann said. "You know a lot of this I think is about the Justice Department sort of firing a shot against the bow, and saying don't go too far."
Remember that Saturday Night Live joke?
Well, newspapers in the state report that Colorado now has more than 800 medical marijuana dispensaries and more than 1,000 growers who have registered with state authorities. Medical marijuana is legal there. Lawmakers even developed a database to keep track of the businesses that grow and sell the drug.
But distributing and selling marijuana remain crimes under federal law. And U.S. prosecutors say they won't give growers and sellers a get-out-of-jail-free card.
In a June 30 memo, Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole wrote that over the past year, several states have considered legislation to "authorize multiple large scale, privately-operated industrial marijuana cultivation centers. ... Those who engage in transactions involving the proceeds of such activity may also be in violation of federal money laundering statutes and other federal financial laws."
That's fine with John Walters, who worked on the issue for President Bush.
"Many of these markets are making millions of dollars, they're not nonprofits as they've been declared in other places," Walters said. "They're getting the marijuana from some of the same criminal mafias in Mexico that are killing people daily."
That includes groups of criminals that ship tons of marijuana into the U.S., through secret tunnels like one authorities found last winter near San Diego. The passageway was almost a half-mile long, tricked out with electricity and special ventilation systems.
No one in the U.S. is surprised prosecutors are cracking down on those big networks. But Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance said he wonders about all the rest.
"The question's going to be what happens with the hundreds, and it may now even be in the thousands, of dispensaries that are not operating at that large scale," Nadelmann said.
In the past few months, the DEA has conducted smaller raids of medical marijuana shops in Seattle, West Hollywood and Helena, Montana, all places where the drug is now legal for patients.
hunh. hypocrite alert. obama’s got a pot smoker’s mug if I’ve ever seen one.
Must be an election year and he’s low in the polls.
This isn’t going to win him any votes, I don’t understand it. There must be some political reason for it.
This isn’t going to win him any votes, I don’t understand it. There must be some political reason for it.
So, who do we believe, the DEA or the HHS who has held a US patent on the use of medical marijuana since 2003?
He’s doing it for donations from drug dealers for protecting their profits.
Crony capitalism lives.
It makes him look centric which is what he needs.
There's a lot of money in pot, both to the dealers and to the law-enforcement and penal bureaucracies that live off busting pot smokers. And if it's made legal and anybody can grow pot in their back yards, lots of people's income goes away.
Very powerful drug bosses in Mexico are going to be subject to arrest without Obama. To keep the drugs flowing into the US from Mexico, he has to have the power to :
1) control the drug lords
2) control the price
He shuttled guns to Mexico via Fast and Furious. What makes you think he stopped when he got caught?
LOL Most of his support here in Oregon will boycott the election over this.
...the authority to enact laws necessary and proper for the regulation of interstate commerce is not limited to laws governing intrastate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce. Where necessary to make a regulation of interstate commerce effective, Congress may regulate even those intrastate activities that do not themselves substantially affect interstate commerce.
Scalia concurring in Raich
I will give a damn about that when they find the medicinal purpose for whiskey.
The cultivation and use of a common plant ought to be beneath the dignity of the state to address or acknowledge.
At some point in time, more important matters will demand attention. Don’t hold your breath, however.
“Congress may regulate even those intrastate activities that do not themselves substantially affect interstate commerce.”
Even Scalia has gone over to the dark side.
Will this cost Omama the stoner vote?
Ever watch the old TV show “The Untouchables” ?
Its really weird what the premise is.
They work to capture Beer Drinkers.
Follow the money.
Big Pharma. We have to keep taking their toxic drugs that cost a fortune and create other medical problems.
My daughter is on medical marijuana. She was in med school and had to drop out due to daily, debilitating migraines. She tried every medicine and combo thereof for 3 years with no relief.
Finally she got medical marijuana. It works. Can’t have that.
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