Why is the Obama Administration Suddenly Fixated on Stomping out Medical Pot?

At the same time public support for marijuana legalization reached record highs, Obama shifted from one time medicinal cannabis sympathizer to White House weed-whacker.
By Paul Armentano, AlterNet
Posted on February 8, 2012

Broken promises are nothing new in Washington, DC. Yet even by the Beltway’s jaded standards, President Obama’s role reversal from one time medicinal cannabis sympathizer to White House weed-whacker is remarkable.

Indeed, the man who once pledged on the campaign trail that he was “not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue,” has – since taking the Presidential oaths of office – done virtually everything in his administration’s power to do precisely that. Yet he's taken these steps at the very time that a record number of Americans, including 57 percent of democrats and a whopping 69 percent of self-described liberals, endorse doing just the opposite.

Nonetheless, in recent months, the Obama administration – via a virtual alphabet soup of federal agencies – has launched an unprecedented series of attacks against medical cannabis patients, providers, and in some cases even their advocates.

To review:

-- Deputy Attorney General James Cole, along with the four US Attorneys from California, has ramped up federal efforts to close or displace several hundreds of medical cannabis providers in California. Their tactics have included: raiding specific dispensaries and prosecuting their owners; filing civil forfeiture proceedings against landlords who rent their property to medical marijuana providers; threatening to federally prosecute newspapers and radio stations who accept ad revenue from medical cannabis operations; and, most recently, intimidating local lawmakers who have either enacted or are publicly supportive of cannabis oversight regulations. Speaking with radio station KQED San Francisco last month, Tommy LaNier – Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's National Marijuana Initiative – boasted about the administration’s efforts to strong-arm local officials, stating "[We] have ... advised those places where they're trying to regulate marijuana -- which is illegal under the Control Substances Act -- (that) they cannot do that.” 

-- In Colorado, United States Attorney John Walsh has sent letters to owners of dozens of the Centennial State’s medical cannabis facilities stating, "Action will be taken to seize and forfeit their property" if they do not cease their operations. Unlike similarly targeted dispensaries in California, the operations on Walsh’s hit list are explicitly licensed by the state and thus fully compliant with state law – a fact that Walsh’s letters readily acknowledge but appear content to ignore. "This ... constitutes formal notice that action will be taken to seize and forfeit (your) property if you do not cause the sale and/or distribution of marijuana and marijuana-infused substances at (this) location to be discontinued,” they state. “[T]he Department of Justice has the authority to enforce federal law even when such activities may be permitted under state law.” Ironically, the Justice Department’s letters arrived just weeks after US Attorney General Eric Holder publicly told (read: lied to) Colorado Congressman Jared Polis, an ardent supporter of the medicinal cannabis industry, that that the federal government would only target medical cannabis operators that "use marijuana in a way that's not consistent with the state statute."

-- But the Obama Justice Department isn’t only sending letters to cannabis dispensaries owners and their landlords. Last year, the DOJ also mailed letters to numerous state lawmakers, including the Governors of Delaware, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, as they were debating legislation to allow for the licensed distribution of medical cannabis. The letters threatened federal prosecution for those involved with said efforts – including, in some cases, state civil servants – if the measures went forward. As a result, most didn’t.

The Justice Department isn’t the only agency directly involved in the administration’s medical pot crackdown. Also over the past six months:

-- The IRS has assessed crippling penalties on tax-paying medical cannabis facilities in California by denying these operations from filing standard expense deductions;

-- The Department of Treasury has strong-armed local banks and other financial institutions into closing their accounts with medicinal marijuana operators. In Colorado, where the state’s estimated 700 licensed cannabis dispensaries are routinely subjected to state audits, there no longer remains even a single bank willing to openly do business with med-pot operators.

-- The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms has sternly warned firearms dealers not to sell guns to medical cannabis consumers, and stated that patients who otherwise legally possess firearms are in violation of federal law and may face criminal prosecution; 

-- In July, the Drug Enforcement Administration rejected a nine-year-old administrative petition that called for hearings regarding the federal rescheduling of marijuana for medical use, ignoring extensive scientific evidence of its medical efficacy. “[T]here are no adequate and well-controlled studies proving (marijuana's) efficacy; the drug is not accepted by qualified experts,” the agency alleged. “At this time, the known risks of marijuana use have not been shown to be outweighed by specific benefits in well-controlled clinical trials that scientifically evaluate safety and efficacy.” 

-- This fall, the National Institute on Drug Abuse rejected an FDA-approved protocol to allow for clinical research assessing the use of cannabis to treat post-traumatic stress disorder; a spokesperson for the agency conceded, “We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana.” 

-- The DEA has reduced the total number of federally qualified investigators licensed to study plant marijuana in humans to 14 nationwide.

Most recently, and perhaps most egregiously, the DEA acknowledged that it was investigating a Montana state lawmaker for potentially conspiring to violate federal anti-marijuana laws. The lawmaker, Rep. Diane Sands – a Democrat from Billings, Montana – served as the chairwoman of a 2011 interim legislative committee that sought to enact statewide regulations governing the production and distribution of medical pot, which has been legal in the state since 2004. "Can you say McCarthy?” she told The Missoulian newspaper. “This sounds like stuff from the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joe McCarthy. So once you talk about medical marijuana in reasonable terms, you're on some sort of list of possible conspirators. … It's ridiculous, of course, but it's also threatening to think that the federal government is willing to use its influence and try to chill discussion about this subject."

* * *

So has the Obama administration collectively lost its mind when it comes to the subject of medical cannabis? That certainly seems to be the case. But the bigger question still remains: Why now?

Speculation among reformers and the general public is widespread. Many activists contend that the administration's about face is due to pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, which they surmise may be hoping to eliminate competition in the marketplace for their own forthcoming, soon-to-be FDA-approved cannabis-based drug.

Others believe that Obama’s crackdown is a Machiavellian attempt on the part of the President and his advisors to appeal to independent, conservative-leaning swing voters during an election year.

Still others argue that the recent attacks have little to do with President Obama at all. Instead, they believe the efforts of the DEA, DOJ, and other federal agencies are being coordinated primarily by drug war hawks within the administration, many of whom are holdovers from the George W. Bush regime, such as DEA administrator Michele Leonhart. Adding weight to this claim are recent statements from US Attorney Andre Birotte, who acknowledged that the DOJ’s recent activities were led by the federal prosecutors themselves and were not instigated by either President Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder – both of which are engaged in their own personal battles for political survival and, as a result, are unlikely to expend even a shred of political capital to halt the efforts of the administration’s more ardent drug warriors.

There may be a grain of truth in all of the above theories. But perhaps the greatest underlying motivator for the administration’s sudden and severe crackdown on medical marijuana providers and patients is its desire to preserve America’s longstanding criminalization of cannabis for everyone else. There is little doubt that the rapid rise of the medical marijuana industry and the legal commerce inherent to it is arguably the single biggest threat to federal cannabis prohibition. Just look at the poll numbers. According to Gallup, in 1996 – when California became the first state to allow for the legally sanctioned use of cannabis therapy – only 25 percent of Americans backed legalizing marijuana for all adults. (Seventy-three percent of respondents at that time said they opposed the idea.) Fast forward to 2011. Today, a record high 50 percent of Americans support legalizing the plant outright and only 46 percent of respondents oppose doing so. It’s this rapid rise in the public’s support for overall legalization that no doubt has the Obama administration, and the majority of America’s elected officials, running scared.

While the passage and enactment of statewide medical marijuana laws – 16 states and the District of Columbia now have laws recognizing marijuana’s therapeutic use on the books – is not solely driving the public’s shift in support for broader legalization, it is arguably a major factor. Why? The answer is simple. Tens of millions of Americans residing in these states are learning, first hand, that they can coexist with marijuana being legal! And that is the lesson the federal government fears most.

In states like California and Colorado, voters have largely become accustomed to the reality that there can be safe, secure, well-run businesses that deliver consistent, reliable, tested cannabis products. They have come to understand that well-regulated cannabis dispensaries can revitalize sagging economies, provide jobs, and contribute taxes to budget-starved localities. Most importantly, the public in these states and others are finally realizing that all the years of scaremongering by the government about what would happen if marijuana were legal, even for sick people, was nothing but hysterical propaganda. As a result, a majority of American voters are now for the first time asking their federal officials: ‘Why we don’t just legalize marijuana for everyone in a similarly responsible manner?’

That is a question the President remains unable and unwilling to answer. And the administration appears willing to go to any lengths to avoid it.

Obama’s War on Medical Marijuana

January 20-22, 2012

A Civil Liberty is a Civil Liberty

by NORM KENT

In the past few months, the Obama Administration has defrauded medical cannabis advocates by launching a full scale, ‘shock and awe’ attack against dispensaries in California. The legal actions constitute a complete reversal of the position Attorney General Holder had stated he would follow. The operation has been shameful and disgraceful, warranting censure, but it is not the focus of this article.

There are many responsible persons in the anti-prohibition movement who have suggested ‘regulation by medicalization’ was a false panacea from its inception. Flaws in the California system have allowed critics to expose that access to marijuana has not been legitimately reserved for those who are ill, but transparently available to anyone who wanted to get high, but that too, is not the focus of this article.

The reality is that the California system may not be a sham, but it is shamelessly flawed. Reformers need to own up to it. We can’t further a blatant lie and be true to ourselves.

I am entirely grateful that California has paved the way in leading the country to a path of legalization. I proudly hold a dual residency between California and Florida, and show my medical card from Cali to envious compatriots in Fort Lauderdale all the time. But I acquired my last card for fifty bucks by walking into a mobile RV that was parked at a metered spot adjacent to a medical marijuana festival, without ever documenting my medical history to a physician.

If you go to the doctor for an exam, you should at least have to pull your pants down, get your genitalia squeezed, and be asked to cough. I earned my card with a year of chemotherapy and cancer, but my partner got one too, and he is a fit 25-year-old college graduate, whose worst ailment in life has been an extended case of athlete’s foot.

I believe that the medical cannabis card is a ticket to freedom I should already have had. That is why I have fought in this movement for forty years, from the days Stuart Mott held parties for us in Washington, D.C., when Ramsey Clark was Attorney General. That was a time, I think, when some of us thought marijuana would be legal by 1980. We know in our hearts that the hand was never theirs to give and the arm is rightfully ours. I should not have to tell my government in 2012 that I want a license to use a medicine that kept me alive when I had cancer in 1999; that I used comfortably as a college student in 1969.

I am supportive of each and every person who wants to use marijuana medicinally or recreationally. The point I raise for your consideration is that many honorable reformers who wholeheartedly believed in unfettered legalization may have unintentionally compromised their principles when they enthusiastically endorsed medical marijuana initiatives.

By submitting to a regulatory authority supervising the dispensation of marijuana in a controlled environment, we did not stand our ground and insist that responsible adults be allowed to freely acquire cannabis without restrictions, regardless of whether they were ill or not. We instead accepted what the government gave us, because decent and honorable reformers saw the medical programs achieving two goals.

First, they were fulfilling a legitimate need while being responsive to a demanding public. We wanted cannabis accessible medically, and we grasped for it, at any price or cost.

Second, these noble experiments were excellent stepping-stones that we all hoped would logistically facilitate knocking the government out of the marijuana regulation business entirely. We chose medical because it was expedient and would push the needle our way.

Now we can all have our medical cards, but look at the hand we have dealt ourselves. Instead of using marijuana privately in our homes, we have told the government where they can find us. That is pretty ironic in and of itself, isn’t it?

Sadly, the reality now is that the process of medical regulation by state agencies is threatened by increased federal law enforcement. Worse, everyone is blaming the permissive flaws in the California system for creating stringent controls in their own.

This does not mean the cause was a mistake or the goals were not honorable. It means we may have to explore alternative avenues and new roads. California dispensaries were raided last month, Colorado ones this week. What does this tell you?

As I write this morning, there are proposals before the Los Angeles City Council to authorize a ban on medical dispensaries. Have we all sold our clients a bill of goods? Have we encouraged them to open up clinics and comply with state licensing laws only to see the cities shut them down while the federal government seizes their properties corporately and prosecutes them individually? What did Edison say: “Is this what God hath wrought?” Is this what we intended when we began the fight to allow patients to acquire marijuana medicinally?

Many in our movement saw this day coming years ago. Articles in the NY Times dating back to 2004 warned about the abuses inherent in California’s pioneering medical marijuana program. Shrewd reformers at the local and national level knew that these defects would eventually lead to a law enforcement backlash, which could potentially undermine the ability of patients to get their medicine. Sadly, we face that today from a hypocritical Obama administration. We can say we are surprised this particular president reversed his course. We cannot say we are surprised that this day has come.

Whether it is the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the Drug Policy Alliance, or the Marijuana Policy Project, or Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, we have all had in common the goal of ending prohibition. None of us have ever named our group ‘The National Organization for the Administration of Sensible State Regulated Medical Marijuana.’

Last month’s ABA Health Lawyer Newsletter, published a marvelous article entitled ‘The Cannabis Conundrum: Medication vs. Regulation.”  Basically, it said we are dealing with an ideological dance between adversaries seeking to expand access to marijuana versus those seeking to control it. The article by Moira Gibbons reached a conclusion that:

“the ability to satisfy all stakeholders in the medical marijuana juggernaut seems largely illusory… but as traditional medications fail patients who have serious or debilitating illnesses, and no other viable treatment options are available, providing access to marijuana for medical purposes is humane and arguably a form of public health protection.”

In March of 1997, Thomas Szasz, the noted civil libertarian, writing in Liberty Magazine, warned us about the dangers of creating a therapeutic state. Here are his exact words:

“Drug prohibitionists were alarmed last November, when voters in Arizona and California endorsed the referendums permitting the use of marijuana for “medical purposes.” Opponents of drug prohibition ought to be even more alarmed: The advocates of medical marijuana have embraced a tactic that retards the repeal of drug prohibition and reinforces the moral legitimacy of prevailing drug policies.”

Medical marijuana does not now, nor ever has, equaled freedom. “Anyone committed to individual liberty must reject medical marijuana as counterfeit compassion,” wrote Sheldon Richman, a former senior editor at the Cato Institute two years ago.

Why should we require any free citizen, patients included, to have to explain to a doctor why they are responsibly consuming a natural herb they should otherwise be free to use as they wish anyway?

Why should we embrace a system, where we know in advance, some people are going to use a ruse to get their medicine? It has contributed to the very consequences we are dealing with today.

With the federal government targeting dispensaries, seizing properties, arresting the sick and innocent, we need to be legally on the offensive, nationally unified, and morally outraged.

Americans need to author their own drug policy, and not abdicate that right to physicians, the pharmaceutical lobby, or the government. Thomas Szasz was prophetic when he warned we were blinding ourselves by asking the government to adopt a “more rational policy.”

When we debate methods of regulation, supervision, or control of cannabis, we can easily become divided. When we advocate for responsible adult access and a corollary end to prohibition, we are united. There is a rational solution. All free Americans should be brothers and sisters in arms in a global struggle against prohibition.

Nearly one million Americans a year are still arrested and prosecuted for the use and possession of cannabis, whether it is medicinally or recreationally. If we end the injustices of prosecution for the possession of marijuana for any reason, we will not need to debate- for any reason- whether it should be medicalized and regulated; it will be free and unfettered. A civil liberty is a civil liberty regardless of why you exercise that right.

Feds crack down on Colorado medical pot dispensaries

(Ah, a multiple state broken campaign promise from Obama.--jef)

By Reuters - Friday, January 13, 2012

DENVER (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors in Colorado launched a crackdown on Thursday against nearly two dozen medical marijuana dispensaries located within 1,000 feet of schools, giving the proprietors 45 days to cease operations or face civil and criminal penalties.

U.S. Attorney John Walsh issued the ultimatum in letters to 23 dispensaries and landlords he said were in violation of federal and state law, a statement from the U.S. Justice Department said.

The move makes Colorado the latest battleground pitting federal prosecutors against storefront distributors of pot in states that have decriminalized marijuana for medical purposes.

“When the voters of Colorado passed the limited medical marijuana amendment in 2000, they could not have anticipated that their vote would be used to justify large marijuana stores located within blocks of our schools,” Walsh said.

He cited a 2011 memo from U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Cole that allows individual federal prosecutors to “exercise their discretion to handle marijuana trafficking matters.”

The Colorado move followed an announcement in October by federal prosecutors in California that they were mounting a crackdown against medical pot dispensaries they said were fronts for large-scale, for-profit drug trafficking.

Last March, federal agents also raided greenhouses and dispensaries in 13 cities in Montana cited by authorities as operating illegally under the guise of that state’s medical marijuana law.

A month later, U.S. attorneys in Washington state issued a legal opinion threatening to prosecute not only dispensary owners and growers but state officials who would have enforced a proposed state licensing system for medical marijuana.

Washington Governor Christine Gregoire cited that warning in her decision to veto a bill to establish a new regulatory system for state-sanctioned suppliers of medicinal cannabis.

A total of 16 states and the District of Columbia have enacted some sort of legalized medical-marijuana statutes, according to the National Drug Policy Alliance. But cannabis remains classified as an illegal narcotic under federal law, a point Walsh underscored in his letter to Colorado dispensary operators.

“The dispensary is operating in violation of federal law, and the Department of Justice has the authority to enforce the federal law … even when such activities may be permitted under state law,” the letter said.

Walsh did not identify any of the letter’s recipients, except to say the businesses were located throughout the state.

Denver lawyer Robert Corry, who represents clients charged with marijuana offenses, said in recent testimony before the Denver City Council that “there should be no arbitrary distance limits” for legal marijuana businesses.

“There is no documented case of any child ever purchasing or obtaining medical marijuana from a dispensary,” he said.

Nevertheless, Walsh said law enforcement will be on the lookout for other violators, and offenders could be subject to asset seizure and property forfeitures.

“Those who do not comply will be subject to potential criminal prosecution and civil enforcement actions,” Walsh said. “Because the stores are operating within 1,000 feet of a school, enhanced penalties apply under federal law.”

Obama Is Attacking the Perfectly Legal Medical Marijuana Industry

With storefront dispensaries popping up across the country, the Obama Administration is fighting the burgeoning industry. 

By Ted Cox, AlterNet
Posted on October 27, 2011

At the moment 16 states and Washington DC have legalized medical cannabis, providing safe access to patients, creating thousands of jobs and pumping millions of dollars in tax revenue into struggling state and local economies. Some of those state and local governments are working with their medical cannabis providers to adopt common-sense regulations and to cut down the potential for abuse -- with varying degrees of success.

But under the federal Controlled Substance Act, cannabis is a Schedule I substance -- right along with heroin, ecstasy and LSD -- and still illegal. The feds are concerned that medical cannabis is making its way onto the black market, that dispensaries are generating obscene profits and that cannabis providers are targeting children in ads.

Deputy U.S. Attorney General David Ogden issued a memorandum in October 2009 saying the Justice Department was unlikely to go after cannabis patients, but that "prosecution of commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continues to be an enforcement priority of the department." But recent months have seen a strong push-back by the federal government. With storefront dispensaries popping up across the country, and medical cannabis expected to grow to a $1.7 billion industry, here are four ways the federal government is fighting the burgeoning industry.

1) Land seizure
The big announcement that has everyone hunkered down is that U.S. attorneys in California have threatened to seize land that is rented or leased to dispensaries.

Four U.S. attorneys have already sent letters threatening to seize land leased to cannabis clubs. Letters have so far gone out to landlords in Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego and Marin, giving them 45 days to kick out any medical marijuana operations. The feds seem to be targeting larger clubs and those operating within 1,000 feet of schools.

"Marijuana stores operating in proximity to schools, parks and other areas where children are present send the wrong message to those in our society who are the most impressionable," said Melinda Haag, attorney general for the Northern District of California. "In addition, the huge profits generated by these stores, and the value of their inventory, present a danger that the stores will become a magnet for crime, which jeopardizes the safety of nearby children."

The crackdown was the result of local officials asking the feds to step in after pot clubs fought back against attempts to shut them down. Eviction notices were sent to eight Lake Forest dispensaries and feds froze $130,000 in assets of the landlord who leased to them.

The tactic has had a chilling effect on the industry, even in jurisdictions where no eviction notices have been reported. In San Jose, some dispensaries have seen up to half of their business drop in the two weeks since the announcement.

2) Ads
Just days after feds announced the crackdown on California landowners, Laura Duffy, one of the four California U.S. attorneys, said she would next go after radio stations and newspapers that run ads for cannabis dispensaries "as part of the enforcement efforts in Southern California." Federal law prohibits advertising illegal substances.

"I'm not just seeing print advertising," Duffy is quoted as saying in California Watch. "I'm actually hearing radio and seeing TV advertising. It's gone mainstream. Not only is it inappropriate – one has to wonder what kind of message we're sending to our children – it's against the law."

Newspaper ad revenue has crashed with the tanking economy, forcing papers to lay off reporters. Cannabis ads have proved a lifeline for struggling newspapers, especially alternative newsweeklies. But even some mainstream dailies like the Sacramento Bee have started running cannabis ads.

So far, alt weeklies in the San Diego area that run cannabis ads for years have not received any warnings from the U.S. attorney office. Other California U.S. attorneys didn't say whether they would follow Duffy's lead.

3) Bank services
Cannabis dispensary owners say they're having trouble obtaining bank and credit card services and federal authorities in Northern California have ordered banks to spy on transactions of cannabis club accounts.

When it came to finding a bank, Denver-area Alpine Herbal Wellness owner Sue Harank told news service Thomson Reuters, "It was a nightmare."

Big banks like Bank of America were initially eager to provide services for cannabis dispensaries, but a warning from the DEA said banks could be open to legal liability for those services.

Under pressure from the DEA, banks are shutting down any accounts associated with medical cannabis dispensaries, making difficult for dispensaries to pay employees and payroll taxes, or to provide credit card processing equipment for transactions.

Earlier this year, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported that federal banking regulators would require banks on the Northern California coast to monitor accounts for medical cannabis because the area had been designated a "high-risk area" for money laundering, especially from those in the medical marijuana business.

4) IRS
In October, the IRS told Oakland, Calif.-based dispensary Harborside Health Center it owed $2.5 million in back taxes for 2007 and 2008 -- $2 million more than the dispensary had paid. The tax bill could shut down Harborside.

Because federal law prohibits cannabis dispensaries, the IRS said Harborside couldn't take standard deductions for payroll, workers' comp, rent and other business expenses. Federal tax code 280-E keeps "drug trafficking organizations" from deducting those expenses.

The IRS will also audit Harborside's 2009 and 2010 tax returns. At least a dozen California dispensaries are also being audited, according to a California attorney representing them.

A similar decision was handed to Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Fairfax in March, with owner Lynette Shaw saying they now owed "millions and millions."

"This is not an effort to tax us. We're happy to pay our taxes," Harborside executive director Steve DeAngelo told the San Francisco Chronicle. "This is an effort to shut us down."

US Attorney Eyes Going After Media Running Pot Ads

By JULIE WATSON Associated Press

SAN DIEGO October 14, 2011 (AP)

The chief federal prosecutor in San Diego is contemplating expanding a federal crackdown on the medical marijuana industry by going after newspapers, radio stations and other outlets that run advertisements for California's pot dispensaries, her office told The Associated Press on Thursday.

U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy made the comments initially to California Watch, a project of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Journalism. They come a week after she and three other U.S. attorneys in California vowed to close medical marijuana businesses they deem questionable and single out people who rent buildings or land to the industry.

"I'm not just seeing print advertising," Duffy told California Watch. "I'm actually hearing radio and seeing TV advertising. It's gone mainstream. Not only is it inappropriate — one has to wonder what kind of message we're sending to our children — it's against the law."

Duffy wasn't available Thursday to speak to the AP but her office confirmed the comments published by California Watch.

The federal government will determine whether the media crackdown is necessary as the results of last week's actions unfold, Duffy's spokeswoman Debra Hartman said. She cited a federal law that prohibits people from placing ads that have the purpose of buying or selling a controlled substance.

"If I own a newspaper ... or I own a TV station, and I'm going to take in your money to place these ads, I'm the person who is placing these ads," Duffy said, according to California Watch. "I am willing to read (the law) expansively and if a court wants to more narrowly define it, that would be up to the court."

Duffy declined to give further details on the plan under consideration or say whether a media crackdown would involve the state's other U.S. attorneys. But a spokesman for the Sacramento U.S. attorney told the Bakersfield Californian that there were no plans to go after advertising.

Duffy's comments are creating a buzz in the media industry, California Newspaper Publishers Association executive director Tom Newton said. As it stands now, advertisers are responsible for the contents of their ads in newspapers, he said.

"If they are false, misleading or fall below the line in other legal ways, advertisers are responsible," he said. "Newspapers don't have the staff or time to vet every claim in every ad that they run."

Duffy, whose district encompasses San Diego and Imperial counties, and the U.S. attorneys in three other California districts sent written warnings last week to landlords leasing property to dozens of warehouses and agricultural parcels where marijuana is being grown and for retail spaces where it is sold, telling them to evict their tenants or face criminal charges or seizure of their assets.

The attorneys say the state's law legalizing medical marijuana was intended to allow it to be supplied to seriously ill people on a nonprofit basis. But the law has been abused by people who are just looking to get rich, they say.

The action comes only months after the Obama administration tightened its stance on the issue.

Media owners were waiting to see what happens before reacting publicly, Newton said.
"I think everybody needs to take a breath here and really think about the implications of this issue and whether or not this is a reasonable effort and use of the limited resources of the U.S. attorney's office," Newton said.

California’s largest doctor group calls for marijuana legalization

By Eric W. Dolan - RAW Story
Sunday, October 16, 2011

 

 

The California Medical Association, the state’s largest doctor group, on Friday adopted a resolution to support the legalization of marijuana for medical uses, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The group’s support of medical marijuana comes after U.S. prosecutors in California threatened to seize the properties of licensed California marijuana dispensaries if they don’t close up shop within 45 days. U.S. attorneys in California have also threatened to target newspapers, radio stations and other media outlets that advertise for dispensaries.

The California Medical Association said the discrepancy between state and federal law created an untenable situation for physicians. The use of marijuana for medical purposes is legal under California law, but the drug is still classified as a Schedule I substance under federal law, a classification reserved for dangerous drugs with no real medicinal value.

“It’s an uncomfortable position for doctors,” said Dr. Donald Lyman, the physician who wrote the new policy. “It is an open question whether cannabis is useful or not. That question can only be answered once it is legalized and more research is done. Then, and only then, can we know what it is useful for.”

In August, the California Medical Association issued recommendations for physicians on medical marijuana, saying that the drug “may be effective for treatment of nausea, anorexia, pain and other conditions (i.e., spasticity), but that more clinical research is needed regarding specific indications, dosing, and the management of side effects.”

The group is skeptical of marijuana’s medical value, but believes the drug’s criminalization has “proven to be a failed public health policy.” They would like to see marijuana regulated in a manner similar to tobacco and alcohol, and no longer classified as a Schedule I substance.

But the Drug Enforcement Administration denied a nine-year-old petition to initiate proceedings to reschedule marijuana in late June, claiming that, “marijuana has a high potential for abuse, has no accepted medical use in the United States, and lacks an acceptable level of safety for use even under medical supervision.” The medical marijuana advocacy groups Americans for Safe Access (ASA) and the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC) have filed a lawsuit against federal agency over the issue.

The use of medical marijuana has been legalized in 16 states and the District of Columbia. But, according to the DEA, marijuana cannot be considered to have medicinal value because there is a lack of scientific studies assessing its safety and efficacy as a medicine.
The American Medical Association, the largest physician’s organization in the U.S., adopted a resolution in 2009 calling on the DEA to reclassify marijuana to facilitate research on marijuana-based medicines.

“Results of short term controlled trials indicate that smoked cannabis reduces neuropathic pain, improves appetite and caloric intake especially in patients with reduced muscle mass, and may relieve spasticity and pain in patients with multiple sclerosis,” the AMA’s resolution (PDF) reads.

Obama Drug Policy Worse Than Bush's--War on Medical Marijuana Escalates

U.S. Attorneys in California have announced a campaign to target medical marijuana, suggesting the beginning of the end for the medical marijuana industry. 

By Phillip Smith, Drug War Chronicle
Posted on October 8, 2011

 Signaling an intensification of federal government targeting of medical marijuana providers, the four US Attorneys in California Friday announced a campaign of "coordinated enforcement actions targeting the illegal operations of the commercial marijuana industry in California." The announcement came at a Sacramento news conference.

The federal prosecutors said their enforcement actions would rely on pursuing civil forfeiture lawsuits against properties where dispensaries are located, threatening letters to dispensary landlords, and criminal prosecutions. The prosecutors said recent dispensary busts in Fresno, Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego were part of the enforcement campaign.

The feds said that enforcement actions would vary across regions of the state and that they would be working with federal law enforcement and local officials to crack down. The Department of Justice in Washington made clear that this was not an instance of prosecutors going off the reservation.

"The actions taken today in California by our US Attorneys and their law enforcement partners are consistent with the Department's commitment to enforcing existing federal laws, including the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), in all states," said Deputy Attorney General James Cole. "The department has maintained that we will not focus our investigative and prosecutorial resources on individual patients with serious illnesses like cancer or their immediate caregivers. However, US Attorneys continue to have the authority to prosecute significant violations of the CSA, and related federal laws."

Medical marijuana supporters were quick to charge the Obama administration with waging a renewed war on them and reneging on its promises to not interfere in states where medical marijuana is legal.

"Aggressive tactics like these are a completely inappropriate use of prosecutorial discretion by the Obama administration," said Joe Elford, chief counsel with Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the country's largest medical marijuana advocacy group. "President Obama must answer for his contradictory policy on medical marijuana."

On the campaign trail and in the White House, President Obama pledged that he was "not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state [medical marijuana] laws."

"It is unconscionable that the federal government would override local and state laws to enforce its will over the will of the people," said ASA spokesperson Kris Hermes. "States must be allowed to enforce their own laws without harmful interference from the Obama administration."

"The Obama administration's latest moves strongly suggest that their medical marijuana policies are now being driven by overzealous prosecutors and the anti-marijuana ideologues who dominated policymaking in past administrations," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "Barack Obama is betraying promises made when he ran for president and turning his back on the sensible policies announced during his first year in office. Instead of encouraging state and local authorities to regulate medical marijuana distribution in the interests of public safety and health, his administration seems determined to recriminalize as much as possible. It all adds up to bad policy, bad politics and bad faith."

Large medical marijuana dispensary operations are not health care providers but criminal organizations hiding behind patients, the prosecutors claimed Friday.

"Large commercial operations cloak their moneymaking activities in the guise of helping sick people when in fact they are helping themselves," said Benjamin Wagner, US Attorney for the Eastern District of California. "Our interest is in enforcing federal criminal law, not prosecuting seriously sick people and those who are caring for them. We are making these announcements together today so that the message is absolutely clear that commercial marijuana operations are illegal under federal law, and that we will enforce federal law."

"The California marijuana industry is not about providing medicine to the sick," claimed Laura Duffy, US Attorney for the Southern District of California. "It's a pervasive for-profit industry that violates federal law. In addition to damaging our environment, this industry is creating significant negative consequences, in California and throughout the nation. As the number one marijuana producing state in the country, California is exporting not just marijuana but all the serious repercussions that come with it, including significant public safety issues and perhaps irreparable harm to our youth."

The prosecutors said they had sent out "dozens" of threat letters to dispensary and grow-op landlords in the past few days. In the Southern and Eastern districts, they targeted building owners, while in the Central district they sent letters to landlords "in selected cities where officials have requested federal assistance." In the Northern district, they targeted their threat letters to landlords of dispensaries within 1,000 feet of schools or parks, but warned "we will almost certainly be taking action against others."

The prosecutors also said they had already filed seven civil forfeiture complaints against properties where landlords allow dispensaries to operate. One complaint alleged that an Orange County strip mall had eight dispensaries and that recalcitrant city officials had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to shut them down.

One letter targeted the landlord for the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana (MAMM) in Fairfax, which has been operating with the support of the city and without complaint since 1996. In a letter to MAMM's landlord, the US Attorney for Northern California warned that the dispensary was operating within a "prohibited distance of a park." The letter threatened MAMM's landlord with up to 40 years in federal prison, seizure of his property, and forfeiture of all rental proceeds for the last 15 years if he doesn't evict MAMM.

Similar letters have gone out to other dispensary landlords warning them of pending federal action because their tenants are too close to schools. The dispensaries are operating in accord with California law, which treats them like liquor stores and bars them from operating within 600 feet of a school, but federal law imposes additional penalties for the distribution of controlled substances with 1,000 feet of schools, playgrounds, and public parks. MAMM is situated more than 600 feet but less than 1,000 feet from Bolinas Park in Fairfax.

"This is nuts," said Greg Anton, attorney for the Marin Alliance and its director, Lynnette Shaw. "There's a dispensary near where I live that sells guns, narcotics, alcohol and tobacco and it's full of children.  It's called Walmart, and it's safe. So is Lynnette's place. She's proven that over 15 years."

"This is an outrageous abuse of law enforcement resources for the DOJ to use property forfeiture to enforce meddlesome, nanny-state regulations," said California NORML director Dale Gieringer. "The federal government has no business dictating local zoning decisions. No one has any problems with the Marin Alliance except the bureaucrats in Washington."

The DEA is also along for the ride. "The DEA and our partners are committed to attacking large-scale drug trafficking organizations, including those that attempt to use state or local law to shield their illicit activities from federal law enforcement and prosecution," said DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart. "Congress has determined that marijuana is a dangerous drug and that its distribution and sale is a serious crime. It also provides a significant source of revenue for violent gangs and drug organizations. The DEA will not look the other way while these criminal organizations conduct their illicit schemes under the false pretense of legitimate business."

And so is the IRS. "IRS Criminal Investigation is proud to work with our law enforcement partners and lend its financial expertise to this effort," said IRS chief of criminal enforcement Victor Song. "We will continue to use the federal asset forfeiture laws to take the profits from criminal enterprises."

Friday's announcement of a federal crackdown is just the latest in a series of moves against medical marijuana providers by the Obama administration. The Department of the Treasury has been busily scaring banks into shutting down the accounts of providers in California and Colorado, the Department of Justice is aggressively prosecuting dispensary operators in Montana and elsewhere, and the IRS is attempting to drive dispensaries out of business by denying them standard business expense deductions -- Oakland's Harborside Health center was just this week hit with a $2.5 million tax bill after the IRS disallowed its standard business deductions.

Meanwhile, the administration has continued to block federal approval of medical marijuana, with the DEA recently rejecting a nine-year-old petition to reschedule pot, saying it would only accept large-scale, controlled FDA trials. But at the same time, the DEA has acted to block such trials by refusing to allow a private production facility to supply marijuana for medical research. The only existing source for marijuana for research purposes is the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, but it recently blocked a request for marijuana to study its effects on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, saying it has no intention of allowing studies that would develop marijuana for medicinal purposes.

"How can the Obama administration say that it's fine for sick people to use this proven medicine, and yet tell them they can't have any legal place to get it?" asked Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. "Medical marijuana isn't going away. Over 70% of Americans support making medical marijuana legal, and 16 states allow it."

But not the federal government. Not under George Bush and, it is increasingly clear, not under Barack Obama. With Obama facing no challengers in the Democratic primary and with reform-friendly Republicans unlikely to win the Republican nomination, it appears that medical marijuana is going to be condemned to wander through the political wilderness for the foreseeable future.

The question now becomes whether any sort of response can stem the federal onslaught, and just what that response might be. Or does the dispensary scene just wither away and die?

California pot shops ordered to shut down within 45 days

(Ah ha, see? Obama has destroyed the medicinal pot industry. The biggest fucking hypocrite ever elected president has broken yet another campaign promise. We knew this was going to happen and saw it coming. They used the Capone law--an ancient prohibition tax law that hasn't been used in ages. They get you on tax evasion because you can't make a single tax deduction when you deal with controlled substances, so you owe years of back taxes totaling huge sums of money. But the pharmaceutical companies sell amphetamines--a schedule 1 controlled substance--they get to take tax deductions. So, how does that work?--jef)

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By Stephen C. Webster - RAW Story

Friday, October 7, 2011

The Obama administration is finally cracking down on the medical marijuana industry, in a big way.

In letters received by 16 licensed California dispensaries and their landlords this week, U.S. Attorneys threatened to swoop in and seize the properties if they don’t close up shop within 45 days.

The Associated Press said that a coordinated crackdown on the medical marijuana industry would be announced at a press conference on Friday.

The move comes in the same week that the Internal Revenue Service took steps that may force Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, the nation’s largest medical marijuana dispensary, to shut down.

The same enforcement tactic that’s being used against Harborside — a very old law that prohibits groups that traffic in controlled substances from taking tax deductions — could also be used against pot shops in all of the 16 states that have legalized the drug’s use for medical purposes.

The U.S. medical marijuana market has grown into a $1.7 billion industry, and experts say it could potentially double that figure within just five years.

+++++

Here is what the hypocrite Obama said on the campaign trail:

“My attitude is if the science and the doctors suggest that the best palliative care and the way to relieve pain and suffering is medical marijuana then that’s something I’m open to because there’s no difference between that and morphine when it comes to just giving people relief from pain. But I want to do it under strict guidelines. I want it prescribed in the same way that other painkillers or palliative drugs are prescribed.” — November 24, 2007 town hall meeting in Iowa

“I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It’s not a good use of our resources.” — August 21, 2007, event in Nashua, New Hampshire

“I don’t think that should be a top priority of us, raiding people who are using ... medical marijuana. With all the things we’ve got to worry about, and our Justice Department should be doing, that probably shouldn’t be a high priority.” — June 2, 2007, town hall meeting in Laconia, New Hampshire

“You know, it’s really not a good use of Justice Department resources.” — responding to whether the federal government should stop medical marijuana raids, August 13, 2007, town hall meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire

“The Justice Department going after sick individuals using [marijuana] as a palliative instead of going after serious criminals makes no sense.” — July 21, 2007, town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire

With latest ruling, IRS threatens to crush the whole medical marijuana industry

(So, "campaign Obama" promises to allow medical marijuana to proceed without legal interference, but president Obama--so far breaking all but one or two of his obviously empty campaign promises, uses the IRS to effectively end the entire legal medical marijuana industry. Obama apologists will spin this one way and blame it on everyone but Obama, like they do all of his failures and capitulations, and the Republicans will still call Obama the most liberal person who ever lived. How can two so totally out of touch groups co-exist without exploding? Oh yeah, and marijuana CURES cancer, so why would anyone want a legal cancer cure available to cancer patients?--jef)

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By Stephen C. Webster - RAW Story
Wednesday, October 5, 2011

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is on the verge of shutting down California’s largest medical marijuana dispensary, and with it potentially the entire semi-legal pot industry.

The Harborside Health Center in Oakland — which was going to be the subject of a Discovery Channel reality show called “Weed Wars” — now owes the IRS $2.5 million in back taxes, thanks to the recent enforcement of a federal law that prohibits organizations that traffic in “controlled substances” from taking tax deductions.

Those deductions, for things like payroll, workers’ compensation insurance and the like, were taken by Harborside in 2007 and 2008, meaning they owe significantly over the roughly $500,000 Harborside paid in federal taxes both years. Harborside also paid the city of Oakland about $1.1 million and the state of California another $2 million. Just last week owner Steve DeAngelo presented the city with another $360,483 tax payment, and even sent out a press release about it.

DeAngelo was quick to tell reporters that he will likely appeal the ruling, although his tax bill could grow exponentially once the IRS completes audits of his 2009 and 2010 filings.

If DeAngelo’s appeal fails, it’s over: Harborside will close up shop. So too will most of the other medical marijuana dispensaries in California, if the IRS pursues the same tax tactic state-wide.

It was not immediately clear whether this would affect the Discovery Channel’s plans for “Weed Wars.”

Harborside posted over $22 million in revenue in 2010 and boasts that it serves over 94,000 customers as the nation’s largest marijuana dispensary.

Just 16 states have legalized medical marijuana, but already it has grown into a $1.7 billion industry, and experts expect it will double those revenues within just five years.
A Discovery Channel spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

Scenes From the War on Marijuana

Some Idiotic Shit
By JOHN SINCLAIR

Joe Cain of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association, another valuable informant for this column, has sent an alert detailing the several bills scheduled for votes in the Michigan Legislature this fall and says, "All of them are civil rights violations that in fact enforce the concept [that] if you are a medical marijuana patient, you are a criminal and must be monitored closely."

The Senate bills are SB 0377, to make medical marihuana patients' registry information available to law enforcement officers upon issuance of a medical marihuana card; SB 0504, prohibiting the dispensing of medical marihuana within 1,000 feet of a church or school; SB 0505, to establish qualification for designation as a primary medical marihuana caregiver; and SB 0506, to clarify what is a "bona fide physician-patient relationship" for purposes of enforcing the medical marihuana law.

In the state House of Representatives the pending bills are HB 4850, to restrict and limit defenses in legal cases arising from arrest for transfers of medical marihuana; HB 4851, the lower chamber's attempt to clarify the definition of "bona fide physician-patient relationship"; and HB 4852, to allow for local zoning ordinances to regulate the location of medical marihuana facilities.

"These bills are going to be voted on in September or October," Cain points out, "and there is lobbying money coming in from all over the U.S. to force medical marijuana patients into a dispensary model by stripping them of their protection to grow their own. Just from reading these bills, you would never guess we're in America."

It is some idiotic shit.

Speaking of idiocy, Holland continues its belated march along the trail blazed by the storm troops of the War on Drugs, refining its doomed efforts to ban non-Dutch nationals from entering, copping and getting high in the country's 750 coffeeshops.

In a plan ironically being advanced by the Maastricht cannabis café owners association, the coffeeshops in the Dutch border town are prepared to ban all but Dutch, German and Belgian nationals from their premises in order to "reduce the nuisance caused by marijuana smokers" by a projected 500,000 coffeeshop customers a year — or 20 percent of the total. Some 70 percent of the city's cannabis consumers come from abroad.

Visitors from Germany and Belgium would still be allowed in the cafés because the two countries border the Netherlands, the association explains, but the Maastricht city council — which has been trying to reduce "drugs tourism" for several years — rejects the plan because it can be considered discriminatory in that not all foreigners are being banned.

My informants assure me that the Dutch government will never succeed in banning tourists from the coffeeshops, but the futility of its cause seems to act as no deterrent in its effort to turn back the hands of time.

Across the English Channel from Amsterdam, the Liberal Democratic Party, half of the right-wing coalition government that rules Britannia at present, is expected to call at the party convention later this month for the creation of a regulated marijuana marketplace and the appointment of an independent panel of experts to study the question of decriminalizing all illegal drugs in Britain.

One of our most reliable informants, Philip S. Smith of the Drug War Chronicle, reports that the move was confirmed when aides to party chairman Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, told the Daily Mail they anticipated that party members would approve the motion and adopt it as official policy. They pointed out that Tory Prime Minister David Cameron had advocated drug legalization at an earlier point in his political career and "can be persuaded to allow an open-minded inquiry into the controversial topic."

The Liberal Democratic Party motion introduces some serious language into the debate on legalization of drugs: "There is increasing evidence," the motion states, "that the UK's drugs policy is not only ineffective and not cost effective, but actually harmful, impacting particularly severely on the poor and marginalized."

"The motion also calls for the inquiry to review the impact of the Misuse of Drugs Act," Smith adds, "and whether the government [should] seriously consider heroin maintenance programs. It cites the success of the Portuguese decriminalization model as well as the call for reform from the Global Commission on Drug Policy and the findings of Britain's own Advisory Commission on the Misuse of Drugs, which called for the decriminalization of drug possession during the national review of drug strategy last year."

"Even if the motion is passed," Smith concludes, "it is unlikely to become law.... But passage of the motion would mean that one of Britain's major political parties is now lining up behind serious drug reform efforts."

Meanwhile, back in the U.S.A., Kristen Gwynne reports in AlterNet that a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll reveals that about 55 percent of Americans "consider the War on Drugs a failure and support the legalization of marijuana, though the majority does not support the legalization of other drugs like cocaine or heroin."

Further, Gwynne says, "in a move towards removing the stigma of drug users and addicts, 64 percent of respondents believe our country has a serious drug problem that affects the [entire] United States, and only 20 percent consider drugs a problem that affects only certain people or areas.

"Only 5 percent of respondents said America does not have a drug problem, and 67 percent call the War on Drugs a failure, [while] only 9 percent of respondents consider the war on drugs a success."

Pollster Angus Reid concludes: "The survey shows a country that is concerned about the effects of drugs, and at the same time deeply disappointed with the efforts of the U.S. government to deal with the drug trade."

There's no indication as yet that the present administration has its finger out in this particular wind of change, and the casualties of the inhuman War on Drugs continue to mount, federally and locally. This gruesome story by Adriane Quinlan just came in from Allen St. Pierre at NORML:

"Her decision to smoke a marijuana cigarette outside a Manhattan bar where she was attending a bachelorette party landed Jaime Rutkowski in jail, threatened her life and led to a lawsuit that has now yielded $125,000 from the City of New York.

"Ms. Rutkowski, who has diabetes, said she was thrown to the ground and arrested on charges of possession of marijuana outside a club on the Lower East Side.

"Stress elevates her blood sugar levels and at the nearby police station house, the blood sugar meter she uses was confiscated. The police eventually called for an ambulance more than three hours after Ms. Rutkowski had been taken into custody.

"Emergency medical technicians found that her sugar level was almost four times the normal level, dangerous enough to take her to Bellevue Hospital Center."

Ouch! As a diabetic myself, now I'm even happier than usual to be a medical marijuana patient in the State of Michigan.

Trapped in Own Propaganda/Hippie Sacrament/Obama Pot Garden?(3 articles)

Hillary Clinton Needs a Mirror
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

One of the wishes that readers often express to me came true today (May 11). I was on the mainstream media. It was a program with a worldwide reach--the BBC World Service. There were others on the program as well, and the topic was Hillary Clinton’s remarks (May 10) about the lack of democracy and human rights in China.

I startled the program’s host when I compared Hillary’s remarks to the pot calling the kettle black. I was somewhat taken aback myself by the British BBC program host’s rush to America’s defense and wondered about it as the program continued. Surely, he had heard about Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo detainees, CIA secret torture prisons sprinkled around the world, invasion and destruction of Iraq on the basis of lies and deceptions, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya. Surely, he was aware of Hillary’s hypocrisy as she demonized China but turned a blind eye to Israel, Mubarak, Bahrain and the Saudis. China’s record is not perfect, but is it this bad? Why wasn’t the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs criticizing America’s human rights abuses and rigged elections? How come China minds its own business and we don’t?

These questions didn’t go down well. None of the other interviewees or guests thought that Hilary had made a good decision, but even the Chinese guests were not free of the common mindset that frames every issue from the standpoint that the West is the standard by which the rest of the world is judged. By pointing out our own shortcomings, I was challenging that standard. The host and other guests could not escape from the restraints imposed on thought by the role of the West as world standard.

What has happened to the West is that it can see itself and others only through the eyes of its own propaganda. There was a great deal of talk about China’s lack of democracy. As the BBC program was being broadcast, the news intruded that Greeks had again taken to the streets to protest the costs of the bailout of the banks and Wall Street--the rich--being imposed on ordinary people at the expense of their lives and aspirations. The Irish government announced that it was going to confiscate with a tax part of the Irish people’s pension accumulations. It simply did not occur to the host and other guests that these are not democratic outcomes.

It is a strange form of democracy that produces political outcomes that reward the few and punish the many, despite the energetic protests of the many.

Political scientists understand that US electoral outcomes are determined by powerful moneyed interests that finance the political campaigns and that the bills Congress passes and the President signs are written by these interest groups to serve their narrow interests. Such conclusions are dismissed as cynicism and do not alter the mindset.

While the program’s host and guests were indulging in the West’s democratic and human rights superiority, the American Civil Liberties Union was sending out a bulletin urging its members to oppose legislation now before Congress that would give the current and future Presidents of the United States expanded war authority to use, on their own initiative, military force anywhere in the world independently of the restraints imposed by the US Constitution and international law.

In other words, in the great American “democracy,” the president is to become a Caesar.

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Living Free, Outside the Mainstream
By JOHN SINCLAIR
The legalization of medical marijuana by means of a ballot initiative approved by 62 percent of Michigan voters in the 2008 election signaled the end of the drug war that's raged unchecked for almost a half-century without appreciable positive effect. Any fool can see that the use of recreational drugs by our citizens has not been diminished or in any way abated by the efforts of the legions of police, prosecutors, judges and jailers sworn to stop us from getting high.

In my last column I surmised that perhaps the War on Drugs wasn't really about drug use per se but was launched as an attack on certain sectors of our citizenry whose commitment to social change was seen as presenting a threat to the dominant order and the political, economic and cultural imperatives established as the foundation of corporate consumer society.

During the decade from 1965 to 1975, hippies turned their backs en masse on mainstream America and its perverse value system, refused to fight its wars, and attempted to create an alternative way of life based in sharing, tolerance and self-realization through collective effort and creative production. Their withdrawal from the reigning social contract presented a real challenge to the consumerist system and its operators: Until defecting to the hippie ideal, these young Americans had been expected to inherit and manipulate the machinery of exploitation and control devised by generations of rich white people to maintain their privileged existence at the top of the social order.

It's hard for people today to picture the world the hippies populated as our numbers grew from a few isolated pockets of bohemianism and weirdness in disparate parts of the country into a movement of millions of determined young white people demanding a new and better world for all Americans and a swift end to the militarism, racism, sexism, economic exploitation and banal popular culture at the core of the established order.

Hippies were united by their belief in personal freedom and its manifestation in the way they looked and acted and conducted their daily lives outside the social mainstream. As a general rule, hippies had long hair, wore funky clothes expressing their disdain for the consumer ideal, opposed the war in Vietnam and increasingly refused to join the armed forces, didn't have a real job and didn't want one, often embraced collective work for the common good and lived as equals in communes and creative groupings, actively appreciated diverse forms of artistic expression and lived with music at the exact heart of their lives.

Hippies loved to gather in the thousands at concerts in the parks where the bands played for free and the people danced and laughed and had a ball together over and over again. They also turned out in ever-increasing numbers for rallies and demonstrations in opposition to the war in Vietnam and in support of racial equality and social justice.

Hippie musicians created startling new forms and imaginative extensions of the African-American musical idioms introduced into their lives through the magic of repeated radio airplay of 45 rpm records by innovative artists such as Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Bo Diddley, Ray Charles, James Brown, Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye. But what bound hippies together above all else was marijuana as a component of everyday life. A hippie smoked weed, everybody knew that, and hippies smoked weed together, in every possible circumstance.

Despite the positive and progressive aspects of the hippie philosophy and the hippies' committed social practice in pursuit of its principles, despite the brilliance of their music and art forms, despite their heartfelt visions of a better world based in peace and love and social equality for all, hippies were demonized as criminal narcotics users to be apprehended, brought before the bar of justice, convicted and sent to prison or scrutinized by the narcotics police and courts for years as felonious probationers.

Nothing else the hippies did was against the law. Even our protests and demonstrations were protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Our lifestyle, our living and working arrangements, our music and cultural practices, our gatherings and public celebrations, however unusual or offensive to mainstream values, were well within the strictures of the law. Only our mass recreational, medicinal or spiritual smoking of marijuana — which we well knew was at the very least not a narcotic, and very possibly a beneficial natural healing resource with no discernible negative social effects — brought trouble with law enforcement and provided the police with a socially acceptable way to punish these renegades from the American Way whose very presence seemed to violate every established standard of normal behavior.

My own case exemplifies this. I was a socially active poet, performer, underground journalist, cultural organizer and community broadcaster who also spoke out for the legalization of marijuana starting in 1964 and actually smoked marijuana on a daily basis. I was arrested by the Detroit Narcotics Squad three times for possession and sales of narcotics — very small amounts of marijuana in fact — and served a total of five years probation, six months in the Detroit House of Correction, and 2-1/2 years of a 9-1/2- to 10-year prison sentence before my legal challenge to the constitutionality of Michigan's narcotics statutes eventually resulted, in 1972, with the existing law declared unconstitutional; marijuana was then removed from the narcotics category and possession of small amounts of marijuana reduced to a misdemeanor with a one-year maximum sentence.

My writings and public activities, however offensive or disturbing to guardians of the social order, were constitutionally protected. But my use of marijuana as a righteous component of daily life branded me as a criminal — a felon — subject to the brutal invasion of my life itself by the criminal justice system and its enforcers in uniform or plainclothes.

I'm out of space for this installment, but with your permission I'll continue to pursue this line of thought here in seeking a full understanding of the destructive impact of the War on Drugs on harmless marijuana smokers and on the fabric of our social order itself. Our lives — and our national life as well — have suffered immeasurably from the imposition and unbridled growth of the police-state mechanism that's been built up on our backs.

Me, I've been sick of this shit for all of my adult life, and I just hope I'll live long enough to see the War on Drugs dead and buried and the full range of its punitive apparatus dismantled and finally discredited once and for all.

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Obama Never Promised You a Pot Garden
By FRED GARDNER

Drug-policy-reform advocates are complaining bitterly that they have been double-crossed by Barack Obama. "What's Behind the Obama Administration's About Face Regarding Medical Marijuana?" asked Paul Armentano of NORML in the Huffington Post May 5. 

"Obama's Sudden, Senseless Assault on Medical Marijuana," was the headline on a piece by Scott Morgan, associate editor of Stopthedrugwar.org. According to Morgan, "Recent months have brought about what can only be described as the rapid collapse of the Obama Administration's support for medical marijuana." 

This is way wrong. There is nothing "sudden" or unprecedented about the DEA raids and other oppressive measures emanating from the Department of Justice. And neither Obama nor the DOJ ever expressed unambiguous support for medical marijuana. It was the reform honchos themselves who misread and misrepresented Administration policy. How could they? And why did they?

On Counterpunch we characterized Obama's approach as "fakes left, goes right" from the start. We provided a chronology of Administration actions and statements regarding marijuana, that is worth reading in its entirety if you promise to come back. 

Two days after Obama's inauguration, DEA agents raided a South Lake Tahoe cannabis dispensary run by a wheelchair-bound activist named Ken Estes. They took five pounds of herb and a few thousand dollars. "A typical rip-and-run," is how Estes described it. 

There was a certain poetic injustice to Ken Estes being the feds' first target of the Obama era. A working-class dude with courage enhanced by his disability, Estes used to run a dispensary in Berkeley. When the city gave him the boot for being located too near a school, the three other dispensary owners did not come to his defense. They tsk-tsked about Estes' operation being "too loose," in contrast to their own fine, upstanding establishments. To paraphrase Pastor Niemoller, "When they came for Ken Estes..." 

On Feb. 3, 2009, DEA squads raided four dispensaries in the Los Angeles area. On Feb. 11 DEA agents participated in a raid on the MendoHealing Co-op's grow in Fort Bragg. 

JeanMarie Todd, who was detained, reported: "I saw two DEA agents amongst the sheriff's deputies, so I said, 'I thought Obama had called off these raids.' A deputy replied, 'We haven't gotten the message.'"

Like Ken Estes, MendoHealing's David Moore got zero support from the leaders of the medical cannabis industry in Northern California. He had once offended them by lowering prices at the MendoHealing dispensary in San Francisco. So, "When they came for David Moore..." 

On Feb. 25 Attorney General Attorney Eric Holder and Acting DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart held a press conference to bemoan drug-related violence in Mexico. The presence of Leonhart indicated that the new Administration was going to continue fighting the War on Drugs in the same old ways. (Holder had the perfect pretext for replacing her that week. Rachel Maddow had revealed that Leonhart spent $123,000 of public funds on a charter flight to Colombia instead of using a plane from DEA's huge fleet.)

Ignoring the significance of the Administration keeping Leonhart at DEA, the reform honchos seized on Holder's vague, meaningless response to an unexpected question about the raids on medical marijuana providers, to claim that he opposed them! The Marijuana Policy Project posted a video clip headlined "Holder Says 'No More DEA Raids' in Press Conference." But Holder never spoke those words! The phonies at MPP just made it up! 

At another press conference March 18 Holder told reporters that Justice Department "policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law. To the extent that people do that and try to use medical marijuana laws as a shield for activity that is not designed to comport with what the intention was of the state law, those are the organizations, the people, that we will target. And that is consistent with what the president said during the campaign."

Reform leaders again claimed a big win and some reporters fell for it. "Today's comments clearly represent a change in policy out of Washington," Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance told the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times ran a piece headlined "Dispensers of Marijuana Find Relief in Policy Shift" that quoted Nadelmann (son of a rabbi) saying that the feds now recognize state medical marijuana laws as "kosher."

On March 23, US District Court Judge in California, George Wu, postponed the sentencing of Charles Lynch —a Morro Bay dispensary operator who by all accounts had sought to comply with state law— and asked the US Attorney to provide a written statement elucidating Administration policy. A definitive response came from H. Marshall Jarrrett, director of the office that oversees all U.S. Attorneys:

"In response to your request, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General reviewed the facts of this case to determine whether the prosecution of Mr. Lynch comports with the Department of Justice's policies with respect to marijuana prosecutions. Based on the facts of this case, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General concurs with your office that the investigation, prosecution, and conviction of Mr. Lynch are entirely consistent with Department policies as well as public statements made by the Attorney General. Accordingly, you should seek to proceed with the sentencing recommendations which your office has filed with the court."

Our piece about the Jarrett letter in Counterpunch April 21 was headlined "No More Ambiguity: Obama's DOJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers."  It began: "It's official —under Barack Obama, the Department of Justice will not restrain federal prosecutors targeting medical marijuana providers. Any lingering hopes that the new Administration would implement change in this area were blasted April 17 when U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien forwarded to District Judge George Wu a letter from DOJ clarifying ObamAdmin policy..." 

The Administration gave drug-policy reformers another occasion to cheer (but not a real reason to cheer) in October '09 when David Ogden, the second-highest official at DOJ, issued a formal "Memorandum for Selected United States Attorneys on Investigations and Prosecutions in States Authorizing the Medical Use of Marijuana." 

We reported at the time that the Ogden memo "restated the mixed messages Attorney General Eric Holder had sent out verbally."  But to this day —at least through May 5, when Paul Armentano cited it— reformers contend that the toothless memo was meant to restrain U.S. attorneys like Joe Russoniello (who had been advising his counterparts that all dispensaries are illegal under state law because profits are being made). 

The Ogden memo made it clear than any dispensary was, as Russoniello put it, "fair game" for the DEA. "Prosecution of commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continues to be an enforcement priority of the Department," wrote Ogden. How can law enforcement determine if a given business is making a profit without raiding the premises, seizing their books and computers, their cash on hand, and their herb?   We slugged our report, "With wins like this…"

Why did the pro-cannabis reformers misinterpret and misrepresent Obama Administration policy so consistently and for so long? Why did Ethan Nadelmann afix his "kosher" seal to Obama's baloney?  Wishful thinking is not a good enough excuse. Political leaders owe the rank-and-file accurate information and analysis. Obviously it is advantageous for fund-raising purposes to report success, and this was certainly a factor.  But it wasn't just their own interests that the reform honchos were advancing with false claims of Administration support.

Above all, the honchos were serving the interests of Cannabis-industry entrepreneurs eager to attract customers and investors. Starting in the fall of 2008, the line "Obama is going to let it happen," induced countless thousands of people to visit pro-cannabis doctors and then their local dispensaries.  The most successful California dispensary operators developed franchising ventures and pitched investors, using Obama's alleged hands-off approach as part of their pitch.  "Money that was sitting on the sidelines came in after the election," is how one of them summarized the boom that continued through 2009 and well into 2010,

It peaked that fall when Eric Holder warned that if California voters passed a legalization initiative, the feds would "vigorously enforce" federal law to block its implementation. Holder's threat turned the tide against Prop 19, making it seem like a futile and costly gesture of defiance instead of a practical source of revenue for the insolvent state. In the same period, federal threats forced Oakland to back away from (ecologically disasterous) plans for four big industrial grow ops. 

What's happening in recent months —the threatening letters from US attorneys to state officials, the tax audits of dispensaries, banks refusing to handle dispensary accounts, etc.— is an escalation, not a change of policy.  It's a surge, to use the term the Drug Warriors undoubtedly used when they planned it.  And you can bet they did plan it  —that there were meetings involving DEA, and Joe Califano's Prohibitionist think tank at Columbia University, and strategists from Johnson & Johnson, just as there had been after Prop 215 passed in '96... It's got all the earmarks of an orchestrated campaign.

Obama's Cynical Approach to Medical Marijuana

The previous ten presidents were staunch prohibitionists. Meanwhile, Obama has taken the federal hand off the scale quite a bit.
By Steven Wishnia, AlterNet
Posted on May 8, 2011

In October 2009, the Justice Department declared that prosecuting medical-marijuana users and caregivers who clearly comply with state laws was not a wise use of its resources. That declaration has dominated public perception of President Barack Obama's policy on the issue-minimal progress, but is a welcome improvement on his predecessors.

In reality, however, the Obama administration has attacked medical-marijuana providers on several fronts. Since January 2010, it has staged more than 90 raids on dispensaries and growers, according to figures collected by the patient-advocacy group Americans for Safe Access. That represents a pace double the Bush administration's, says ASA spokesperson Kris Hermes. The administration has also threatened state officials with prosecution if they participate in licensing or regulating medical marijuana. The Internal Revenue Service has expanded auditing dispensaries for tax evasion, on the grounds that drug-trafficking enterprises cannot legally claim business-expense deductions.

In April, ASA gave Obama an F for his policy on medical marijuana. He's "no better than Bush," says Hermes.

Allen St. Pierre of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws calls that stance "hyperbolic." "The previous ten presidents did nothing," he says. Obama has "taken the federal hand off the scale a wee bit."'

Most notably, the Veterans Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have revised regulations to acknowledge the use of medical marijuana.

For example, although federal zero-tolerance laws prohibit illegal-drug users from living in public housing or receiving rent subsidies such as Section 8, HUD has given local housing authorities in states that allow medical marijuana the discretion to not evict users.

Still, St. Pierre worries that the combination of raids and IRS harassment is seriously endangering medical marijuana. An unfavorable court decision regarding the IRS audits "could end medical cannabis," he warns. "They're going the Al Capone route."

The VA is the bright spot, says Michael Krawitz of Veterans for Medical Cannabis Access. Although it still forbids its doctors from recommending marijuana, and possession is illegal on VA property, last year it changed its regulations so that medical-marijuana use is no longer an automatic violation of "pain contracts"-agreements patients sign in which they state that they're not going to abuse their prescription painkillers.

In practice, Krawitz says, some VA doctors still refuse to accept medical-cannabis use, but "the feedback I've gotten from veterans, especially Vietnam-era veterans, is that it's the first time the VA did something because it's the right thing to do. Vets really appreciate that."

Overall, he says, "I'm just completely baffled by what the administration is doing. They're using the DEA and the IRS, but they're trying to look like they're not going after medical marijuana."

Raids Keep Coming

Meanwhile, federal raids on dispensaries continue. On March 14, on the eve of the Montana Senate's vote to repeal the state's medical-marijuana law, federal agencies raided 26 growers and dispensaries there. Hermes calls that "intimidation, with specific intent to undermine a state law." On April 28, DEA agents raided more than five dispensaries in Spokane, Washington.

The Spokane raids came three weeks after Michael C. Ormsby, federal prosecutor for eastern Washington, had sent letters to the landlords of more than 40 dispensaries in the area, warning them that their property could be forfeited if they continued to rent to drug traffickers.

"Nearly half have reported that they have evicted their tenants to comply with federal law," says Ormsby spokesperson Tom Rice.

The touchstone here is a memorandum that Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden sent to federal prosecutors in October 2009. In it, he told them that they "should not focus federal resources in your states on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana." Prosecuting cancer patients and their caregivers, he added, "is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources."

However, a February 2011 letter from U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, federal prosecutor for the Bay Area and Northern California, to Oakland City Attorney John Russo significantly narrowed that policy. While the Ogden Memorandum says the federal government will not prosecute individual patients, she wrote, "we will enforce the [law] vigorously against individuals and organizations that participate in unlawful manufacturing and distribution activity regarding marijuana, even if such activity is permitted under state law."

The Ogden memo does not grant dispensaries anything remotely resembling immunity, Rice emphasizes. He points to clauses that state that "prosecution of commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana for profit continues to be an enforcement priority of the department" and "claims of compliance with state or local law may mask operations inconsistent with the terms, purposes, and conditions of those laws."

Did the department consider whether Spokane dispensaries were in compliance with state law before authorizing the raids? "No," Rice replies. One dispensary, he says, "was across the street from a grade school."

St. Pierre is not shocked by the raids. Many growers push the limits, he explains. "The regrettable thing about the medical-cannabis industry is that it's often acting in violation of state law," he says. "50,000 plants is crossing that Rubicon."

One thing that provoked the backlash in Montana, he adds, is that some dispensary owners were "charismatic." "Charismatic" in this context sounds like a euphemism for the kind of evangelistic stoner who believes that because they're doing Jah's work, providing the herb for the healing of the nations, they don't have to worry about following the finicky feinschmeckery of bureaucratic details-and that making money is doing well by doing good.

Bill Panzer, a veteran Oakland defense lawyer, voices similar sentiments. Twenty-five years ago, he says, his clients were mostly pot smugglers "who knew they were taking a risk. Now, I'm representing people who think everything they're doing is completely legal. They're in for a rude awakening."

California law is so murky, he says, that 98 percent of the state's thousand-odd dispensaries might be illegal. The only form that would be definitely legal, he adds, would be "a true socialist collective" in which all cultivated herb was divided equally among the members. Instead, he says, lots of people are setting up co-ops and "acting like sellers." The Obama administration has also continued Bush-era prosecutions of medical-marijuana providers. On May 2, Californians Dr. Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer turned themselves in to begin serving five-year federal mandatory-minimum sentences. Fry, a breast-cancer survivor, and Schafer, a hemophiliac, were raided in 2001. In 2007, they were convicted of manufacturing and conspiracy charges for growing more than 100 plants over several years. "The Obama administration vigorously fought an appeal of their sentence," says ASA.

In any case, the federal Controlled Substances Act maintains that marijuana has no valid medical use, and thus any distribution of it in the guise of "medicine" constitutes criminal sale of a controlled substance. In the last few months, federal prosecutors have sent letters reiterating that to governors and other officials in several states, including California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Rhode Island, and Washington. The letters threatened that any official involvement in licensing or regulating medical marijuana would expose state employees to prosecution.

"We maintain the authority to enforce the CSA against individuals and organizations that participate in unlawful manufacturing and distribution activity involving marijuana, even if such activity is permitted under state law," the Colorado letter, dated April 26, stated. "It is well settled that a State cannot authorize violations of federal law."

On April 14, the two federal prosecutors in Washington state warned Gov. Christine Gregoire that if the state licensed medical-marijuana cultivation and distribution, government employees who worked with such a system could be prosecuted, and state property forfeited.

On April 29, Gregoire vetoed most of a bill to regulate medical-cannabis sales and production. The provisions she rejected included state licensing of dispensaries and a state register of patients. She said she feared state workers would be subject to arrest, and she urged the federal government to move marijuana to Schedule II under the Controlled Substances Act.

IRS

The IRS first went after dispensaries during the Bush administration, but it has greatly expanded such efforts under Obama.

More than two dozen dispensaries are now being audited, according to Henry Wykowski, a former Justice Department tax prosecutor now in private practice in San Francisco. Most are in California, he says, including the massive Harborside facility in Oakland and a smaller one in Marin County; at least one is in Colorado. Allen St. Pierre says he expects the probes to expand to Rhode Island, Maine, Montana, and New Mexico.

The law involved is Section 280E of the federal tax code, which prohibits drug-trafficking enterprises from claiming business expenses as deductions. "The government has brought 280E cases for years," says Panzer, but "as far as saying, 'hey, we can use this to go after dispensaries,' it started with Obama."

"I think the IRS didn't know what to do, because of the conflict between federal law and state law," says Wykowski. "When it became clear that there weren't going to be wholesale prosecutions, they decided it was OK to audit."

However, the one case to reach the courts so far yielded highly favorable results for medical marijuana. In 2007, the IRS assessed a defunct San Francisco dispensary called CHAMP--Californians Helping Alleviate Medical Problems--for $426,000 in back taxes and penalties on $2 million in sales. A three-lawyer team that included Panzer and Wykowski got the bill reduced to less than $5,000. The IRS refused to negotiate-which is highly unusual in tax cases, says Wykowski-and lost in court.

The IRS argued that because CHAMP sold marijuana illegally, those sales should count as "an expanding drop of ink in a glass of water" to disqualify deductions, Panzer explains. But because the dispensary also provided social services, including counseling, nursing, housing assistance, and massage; hosted support groups for AIDS patients and others; and put on social events, the judge agreed that 90 percent of its rent was deductible.

Paradoxically, the judge also let CHAMP deduct the wholesale cost of the medical pot it sold. This is a principle called "cost of goods" that dates back to Prohibition, Wykowski explains. The issue is complex, but basically, he says, there is legal authority that people cannot be forced to incriminate themselves in order to pay taxes. The '70s Harlem heroin dealer Nicky Barnes used to file tax returns anonymously, and "the right to selectively assert Fifth Amendment privilege has been recognized by the courts."

It would be self-incriminatory for a taxpayer to report their occupation as "marijuana grower," Wykowski adds. Disallowing the cost-of-goods deduction "would have made it impossible for any dispensary to remain in business." Still, with the IRS continuing to audit dispensaries under Section 280E, that makes lawyers in the field fear a bad precedent. Other dispensaries may not have as strong a case, keep good records, or have the financial and legal resources to defend themselves.

"We are concerned that someone who doesn't know what they're doing will take a bad case to court and lose, and jeopardize everyone else in the industry," Wykowski says." The conflicts between federal and state law and between tax and criminal law also create a massive record-keeping dilemma for dispensaries. If they keep accurate and complete records, they can prove that they're acting like a legitimate business, a legitimate medical-services provider-but they're potentially handing the federal government a cut-and-paste indictment.

"The same records that can help you in state court can screw you over in federal court," says Panzer. If the amount of cannabis a dispensary grows, buys, or distributes is tallied cumulatively over several years, it can be large enough to trigger a five- or ten-year mandatory-minimum sentence.

Rescheduling

The overriding fact is that the Controlled Substances Act, enacted in 1970, puts marijuana in Schedule I, saying it has "a high potential for abuse, has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and has a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision." Thus, the law does not recognize "medical use" as a valid defense to charges of possession, sale, or cultivation. As far as federal law is concerned, medical-marijuana users are the equivalent of junkies, no matter how sick they are, and the dispensaries and growers that supply them are little different from crack dealers and meth-lab operators.

This rule is tied into a host of other laws intended to prohibit money-laundering and the like. Medical-marijuana users in public housing and landlords who rent to dispensaries run afoul of laws intended to close crackhouses.

The obvious solution, at least to those in the medical-marijuana movement, would be for the federal government to move marijuana out of Schedule I and into the realm of legitimate prescription drugs. Even moving it to Schedule II would gain it that status, although under controls as strict as those for OxyContin or medical cocaine. Marinol, the synthetic THC that is the prime legal cannabinoid drug, is in Schedule III, along with codeine.

That is not likely to happen soon. The Drug Enforcement Administration has jurisdiction over scheduling. In 2002, a coalition including NORML, ASA, and Virginia cannabis-policy expert Jon Gettman filed a petition to reschedule marijuana for medical use. It "has been languishing without a response from the DEA for nearly nine years," says an angry Dale Gieringer of California NORML. "They're sitting on our petition."

The DEA, he says, has also "blocked efforts to establish a legal medical marijuana research garden," which would provide the scientific background needed to obtain Food and Drug Administration approval.

"If the federal government would stop fighting the rescheduling process, we could have a resolution," says St. Pierre. "They're not choosing to lead."

The DEA, headed by Bush holdover Michelle Leonhart, remains resistant. Its official stance, the lead item in "DEA Position on Marijuana," a 54-page booklet issued in July 2010, is that medical marijuana is a "fallacy," that "smoked marijuana is not medicine," and there is "no sound scientific evidence that smoked marijuana can be used safely and effectively as medicine."

It blames "organizers of the 'medical' marijuana movement" for failing to ensure that "the product meets the standards of modern medicine?. [There is] no safety regulation, no way to measure its effectiveness (beyond anecdotal stories), and no insurance coverage." It calls the entire idea that marijuana has medical use "false-trickery [sic] used by those promoting wholesale legalization."

"I don't think that's happening any time soon," a DEA spokesperson who refused to give his name said of rescheduling. "I don't see any movement on that. The science hasn't borne it out."