Jeebus, aNOTHer pot thread?

[yondermtn]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/colu ... 230.column
chicagotribune.com
On weed: Dazed and confused no more
The public turns against the war on pot

Steve Chapman

October 20, 2011

Candidates running for president can easily wreck their campaigns with one serious misstep. Back in 1976, one Democrat said he favored getting rid of criminal penalties for marijuana use. Can you imagine how Americans of that primitive era reacted to his blunder? They elected him.

Once in office, Jimmy Carter didn't abandon his temperate approach to cannabis. He proposed that the federal government stop treating possession of small amounts as a crime, making a sensible but novel argument: "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself."

Nothing came of it, of course. Carter's logic was unassailable even 35 years ago, but it has yet to be translated into federal policy. The American experience with prohibition of alcohol proved that we are capable of learning from our mistakes. The experience with prohibition of marijuana proves that we are also capable of doing just the opposite.

The stupidity and futility of the federal war on weed, however, has slowly permeated the mass consciousness. This week, the Gallup organization reported that fully 50 percent of Americans now think marijuana should be made legal. This is the first time since Gallup began asking in 1969 that more Americans support legalization than oppose it.

The shift has shaped drug policy at the state level. Seventeen states have approved medical use of pot, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), and 14 have decriminalized possession of small amounts for personal use — including such staunchly conservative places as Mississippi and Nebraska.

Changes in a permissive direction may bring casual use out of the closet, but they don't elicit the disasters that anti-drug zealots fear. In fact, research indicates that decriminalizing cannabis has only a tiny effect on consumption, if any.

For that matter, hardly anything has an effect. Over the last 30 years, federal spending to fight drugs has risen seven times over, after inflation. Since 1991, arrests for possession of pot have nearly tripled. But all for naught.

As a report last year by the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy noted, more high school students and young adults get high today than 20 years ago. More than 16 million Americans smoke dope at least once a month. Pot is just as available to kids as it ever was, and cheaper than before.

If we had gotten results like this after reducing enforcement, the new policy would be blamed. But politicians who support the drug war never consider that their remedies may be aggravating the disease. They follow the customary formula for government programs: If it works, spend more on it, and if it fails, spend more on it.

During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama criticized the Bush administration for overriding states on medical marijuana."What I'm not going to be doing," he vowed, "is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue."

For a while it seemed like he meant it. Early on, the Justice Department said it would not waste resources going after sick people who were using cannabis as allowed by states. But recently, federal prosecutors in California have been mobilizing to shut down the state-approved dispensaries that supply those patients.

It's like George W. Bush never left. William Panzer, co-author of the medical marijuana initiative approved by California voters, told The Los Angeles Times, "The Obama administration has been incredibly disappointing on this issue."

The effort to combat marijuana has served to punish Americans for using a substance that is far less harmful than legal ones. It has enriched organized crime, while fueling endless slaughter by drug cartels in Mexico. It has prevented clinical research on the therapeutic use of cannabis. Its results run the gamut from pathetic ineffectuality to outright harm.

Those facts account for the growing support for legalization, despite ceaseless government propaganda against marijuana. It may seem impossible that cannabis will ever be permitted, regulated and taxed like beer or cigarettes. But when public opinion moves, public policy is bound to follow.

In 1930, the author of the constitutional amendment establishing Prohibition said, "There is as much chance of repealing the 18th Amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail." Three years later, it was gone.

[RussellK]

I'm thoroughly disenchanted with the Obama administration.

[Velokid1]

I'm thoroughly disenchanted with the Obama administration.

I am, as well. But I also see people very quick to politicize this most recent DEA and IRS crackdown on marijuana.

This is what they do, folks. They cannot stop people from using marijuana and they know that. They don't have nearly the budget and even if they had the money, there is no method for getting people to stop using a plant that people know to be great medicine and great recreationally with very few side effects. But they stumbled a couple decades ago on a very inexpensive tactic that capitalizes on the paranoid, distrustful state of mind that the prohibition of marijuana has fostered in the population of Americans who use the drug. Every five years or so they issue a few letters or circulate a new memo from the DEA or the DOJ, then make a few high profile busts so that the media will broadcast their "crackdown"... and it never fails, all the marijuana folks scatter and run for the hills. Naturally, none of us want to go to jail or lose our kids, so we all retreat a little bit, use is less open, growers go back underground, clubs and dispensaries close their doors. Everything is forced back underground, back into the "black market." Which by the way, so many marijuana people are familiar with that it doesn't really impact anyone that much. The black market for marijuana runs very efficiently. Prices go up a little, which attracts a darker criminal element once again, but other than that, it's business as usual.

That's all that's happened here. Again. They come rushing in every few years and yell "Boo!" at all the stoners and that makes things calm down for a while. Well, it makes the easily observed, easily regulated activities calm down, and forces all that money back into the pockets of true criminals, into a black market that can be neither controlled, nor regulated, measured or taxed.

This isn't new. And anyone who thinks that Obama is to blame is mistaken. The President has very little ability to curtail the actions of the DEA, ATF, IRS or the FDA. Those agencies have such inertia that no one administration can change their trajectory by himself. What a President CAN do is to accelerate their movement in the direction they're already going... like Bush did. The marijuana prohibitionists love when there's a President who stays out of their way; they just aren't all that troubled by one who would stand IN their way. The President's just a speed bump for them.

(The same is true of banks and corporations. No President will fix the way they operate... all a President can do is grant them carte blanche or have no effect at all.)

Obama hasn't ordered this latest crackdown. These agencies make their own decisions and IF Obama tries to redirect their efforts, it will happen during his second term... and it will probably by yet another speed bump for them rather than being any kind of game-changer.

Anyone catch what happened with the ATF last month? They ordered all gun shops in the country to either deny gun sales to anyone they know to use marijuana, legally or illegally, OR face prosecution themselves on RICO charges.

The latest Gallup poll last week showed 50% of Americans now support full legalization of marijuana. That % was in the low 20s in 1995, so public opinion is changing FAST. That public opinion is going to come to heads with Federal law over the next decade, which will be interesting because it's another example of the American People vs. Corporations, since corporations and their financial interests are solely responsible for marijuana prohibition in the first place.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/images/Gal ... -Graph.jpg

[airkooledchris]

they have been taking a lot more action recently than they had been in some time. This is a letter sent from a local MJ dispensary to it's patients:

During the week of Oct 1st-7 th, the federal government has made several moves that threaten patient

access to necessary medicine.

These moves include:

1. IRS has disallowed regular business deductions for Dispensaries. This decision was made after an audit of Harborside, the State’s largest Dispensary, serving 90,000 patients in the Bay area. As you may know, without the ability to deduct standard operating expenses, Dispensaries cannot continue to provide medicine to their patients. This ruling will bankrupt Dispensaries.


2. Department of Justice has issued a warning to landlords of any Dispensary that is within 1000’ of a school, demanding that the landlord evict their tenant or face confiscation of the property, confiscation of any rents paid since the Dispensary occupied the property and Federal prosecution for ‘facilitating’ illegal drug trafficking’. The usual distance required in the State of CA is 600’.


3. ‘Long Beach Court Decision’ This is an appellate court decision that states that any Government body in the State of CA that puts in place a ‘regulatory scheme’ to control medical cannabis is subject to prosecution for ‘facilitating illegal drug trafficking’. This seems to mean that all Cities and Counties that have worked hard to craft Ordinances to permit Dispensaries and control indoor grows are now at risk of Federal Prosecution.


4. Department of Justice has announced that some California dispensaries are ordered to close within 45 days, or face Federal prosecution. This announcement was further clarified Friday, Oct 7th at a joint press conference held in Sacramento. Please check out MSNBC.com, as they have a video of part of the press conference.

5. IRS has started seizing bank accounts of Dispensaries. Two Sacramento Dispensaries had their accounts seized this week. Very few banks within the state are willing to accept Dispensary accounts. It is very difficult to function as a legitimate business without access to banking services.

[Velokid1]

I've been following all of that but it's ramped up compared to when? Compared to the last several years, for sure, right? But then again, the last several years have been a free-for-all in California. Making a profit off of medical marijuana has never been legal by California state law, thus clubs and dispensaries, which have been making huge profits, have been allowed to operate illegally. People in the industry have been aware the whole time that they were living on borrowed time unless the law was changed. They were all hoping the law would change before the crackdown came. A lot of these dispensaries and clubs are so under the radar and unregulated that they do things such as charge local sales tax but then not pay that money to the local governments. And failing to pay debts to other vendors/suppliers/growers/dispensaries is something that the victim has no recourse for, other than street vigilantism, since they can't go to the Attorney General or the Better Business Bureau for help.

So the Feds came in. And when the Feds come in, it invites and encourages local politicians to also crackdown, to protect themselves from the Feds or preserve relationships with people at the Federal level who would pressure them to "clean up their districts".

It's a mess right now. Dialogue is being forced at the federal level though, so we'll see how the battle against the corporatocracy unfolds. Legalization of marijuana is once again the #1 issue that Americans are asking Obama to address on the White House website polls.

It's frustrating to be on our side of the battle, but can you imagine what it must be like to have someone give you an appointment to the DEA and saying, "OK, now stop people from using marijuana so the corporations can cash in on it." Talk about being set up to fail. I'd rather be on this side.

[ruckman101]

The feds are loathe to legalize because with weed illegal, it is such an effective tool of oppression amongst a segment of the population highly (tee hee, highly) likely to oppose their broader agendas.


neal

[glasseye]

Here's what the California Medical Association says:

http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/conte ... egalize-It

[yondermtn]

Another interesting read.

http://www.gsalternative.com/2010/05/ca ... ll-cancer/

[Spezialist]

Jeebus, election seasons here, heads will roll so it's not an issue for Obama in the polls.
No brainer, take a vacation, comeback after election.

[ruckman101]

Jeebus, election seasons here, heads will roll so it's not an issue for Obama in the polls.
No brainer, take a vacation, comeback after election.

Cryptic you are, cryptic.


neal.

[Velokid1]

I'm no member of the Obama fan club but I will vote for him as long as people keep up shit like this: Politicizing issues and events that have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with corporations, profit, greed, money.

Check this article out. It's a well-written piece and probably a joy to read if it happens to be telling the untrue story that you would like to believe. Note that nowhere in this story do they ever quote Obama nor even point out anything concrete he has done to "crack down on medical marijuana." The story they're telling is that Obama is gunning down medical marijuana, but there is no quote, no memo, no directive from his office.

This crackdown is real, severe and unjust but it's the work of the DEA, the FDA and the ATF, not Obama. And the President cannot control them. NO President can. Those organizations call the shots and they are run by CORPORATIONS.

This brainless fucking litany about "the government" can't get anything right is a smokescreen, and if you're caught up in it... you deserve to be called names that might hurt your feelings.

In a Strange About-Face, the President Tries to Hack Medical Marijuana Off at the Knees
By Ray Stern
published: October 20, 2011

The new federal crackdown on medical marijuana announced on October 7 by California's four U.S. Attorneys sent chills through the industry. It was a stunning reversal by the Obama administration.

Only two years ago, Deputy U.S. Attorney General David Ogden wrote his infamous "Ogden Memo," announcing that the feds wouldn't bother businesses in compliance with their own state laws. It proved a dose of Miracle-Gro to California, where pot-selling stores had multiplied since voters approved the state's 1996 medical-marijuana law. By late last year, California reportedly had more dispensaries than Starbucks outlets.

Colorado also made it legal in 2000, seeing a similar explosion of new storefronts. The same thing was happening to varying degrees in 16 states, from Arizona to Washington, New Jersey to Delaware.

But the feds' tolerance wasn't quite what it seemed. While legal weed grew to an estimated $10 billion to $100 billion industry — no one's quite sure of the exact figure — activists noticed an alarming undercurrent to the rhetoric: Raids on growers and dispensaries actually increased under President Barack Obama.

As hundreds of thousands of state-approved, doctor-recommended patients happily bought their medicine in well-lighted stores from knowledgeable "budtenders," the ire of cops and prohibitionists rose.

The first sign of Obama's subterfuge came in late 2010, as California prepared to vote on a ballot proposition that would have legalized growing and possessing small amounts of marijuana for anyone over age 21. Under pressure from teetotalers — nine former Drug Enforcement Agency chiefs begged Obama to oppose the measure — Attorney General Eric Holder said it didn't matter what Californians thought. The feds would continue to bust people regardless of the election.

The measure got 46 percent of the vote, but not enough to pass. Yet the medical side of things kept going strong — too strong for Obama.

When the Oakland City Council prepared to authorize large-scale cultivation centers, U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag of California's Northern District issued the first in what would become a series of letters from her fellow attorneys general. She reminded residents — in no uncertain terms — that marijuana was still criminalized under federal law, considered equal to heroin or meth, irrespective of its medicinal value.

Nor did she care what the California law said. Her "core priority" would be to prosecute "business enterprises that unlawfully market and sell marijuana" under federal law.

Over the next few months, U.S. Attorneys from Maine to Washington wrote their own increasingly menacing letters. In Washington, the feds even threatened to arrest state workers who helped facilitate the industry.

Then the Obama administration released a new letter to "clarify" Ogden's memo. Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole verified the about-face: The only people safe from arrest were the "seriously ill" patients and their caregivers.

Everyone else? Be forewarned.

The letter didn't just target those directly involved in the trade. Cole also threatened supporting industries (read: banks) with money-laundering charges for dealing in the proceeds from marijuana. Obama had launched a full-on attack on the industries essential to any functioning enterprise.

Banks responded by canceling their weed-related accounts. "Perhaps there may be a few financial institutions here or there that are still accepting accounts," says Caroline Joy, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Bankers Association. "Those facilities don't want to reveal who they are."

The president's push grew louder last month. The U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms bureau warned medical-marijuana patients that they couldn't legally use pot and own or buy guns.

Then came a one-two punch.

On October 5, the IRS ruled that one of the largest California dispensaries, Harborside Health Center, owed $2.5 million in taxes because federal law precluded standard deductions for businesses engaging in illegal activity.

In other words, Obama not only was blowing off state laws. He was declaring that legal businesses were now nothing more than criminal rackets. And he was carving away every tool they needed to function.

Harborside's owner said he'd go out of business if the IRS didn't reverse course. Dispensaries nationwide saw it as a crippling decision.

Then came another blow two days later: The bombshell dropped by California's four U.S. Attorneys.

They now were going after people who leased stores and land to the pot industry. Violators were given 45 days to close doors, uproot plants, and kick out renters. The penalty for not acting: seizure of property and arrest.

U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy of California's Southern District went so far as to threaten media with prosecution for taking pot advertising. (Disclosure: This newspaper accepts such ads.)

There was no doubt about it: Obama was intent on killing an entire industry — in the middle of a depression, no less. Left unexplained was why, especially since he was giving the finger to voters in 16 states just a year before he would face them in his own election.

Democratic strategists were perplexed. Roger Salazar, a California party consultant, believes the president may be trying to reach out to a broader base. But that doesn't explain the attack on his own base; Democrats support medical marijuana at high percentages. It doesn't even make sense in luring conservatives. With the country in economic tatters, no one has weed high on their radar.

Except one group, says Salazar: "It's a mystery . . . where the pressure is coming from. My sense is it's coming from law enforcement."

Certainly, Obama's threats are real. He may be loath to jail landlords, bankers ,or even dispensary owners. Arresting non-violent, state-sanctioned businesspeople wouldn't be popular. But his quieter war of chopping merchants off at the knees through credit and leasing would ravage the trade.

Still, the president has thrown himself into an uphill fight. There is reason to believe medical marijuana will persist, despite his betrayal.

Earlier this month, in a timely coincidence, the California Medical Association's board voted to encourage the feds to legalize marijuana.

Though spokeswoman Molly Weedn emphasizes that the decision by the doctors' group hinges on a call for more research, a report studied by the CMA board before its decision makes it clear that — at the least — marijuana shows promise as a medicine.

The CMA's Council on Clinical and Scientific Affairs "has also concluded that components of medical cannabis may be effective for the treatment of pain, nausea, anorexia, and other conditions."

The report goes on to say:

"Cannabinoids are presently thought to exhibit their greatest efficacy when implemented for the management of neuropathic pain, which is a form of severe and often chronic pain resulting from nerve injury, disease, or toxicity."

The University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research reported recently to the California Legislature the results of a number of studies. Four studies involved the treatment of neuropathic pain; and all four demonstrated a significant improvement in pain after cannabis administration."

The doctors note that using marijuana may contain risks, such as addiction, but they argue that its prohibition may be more dangerous than the drug itself:

"Under the current prohibition of cannabis, public health is also affected by increased rates of crime surrounding cannabis cultivation, sale and use. The California Legislative Analyst's Office estimates that the incarceration and parole supervision of cannabis offenders costs the state tens of millions of dollars annually."

Nationally, prohibition burns through billions of dollars in lives lost to the violence inherent in the black market, the incarceration of thousands of productive, non-violent Americans, and the lack of access to a beneficial medicine.

Are lots of people using weed without suffering from a medical problem? Absolutely. But just because you've heard that half or more of patients take the drug for "severe and chronic pain" doesn't mean they're all faking it.

In June, the Institute of Medicine estimated that 116 million Americans suffer from significant, chronic pain.

As more research comes in showing that pot can be an effective treatment, and with America's elderly population exploding in the coming decades, interest in its medicinal qualities apparently will only rise.

Ignorance, false propaganda, and rank political posturing tend to be the foundation of the anti-marijuana argument. (Throw in bureaucratic turf protection, as well. The DEA, for example, would need fewer agents if pot was decriminalized nationwide.)

A new Gallup poll shows that a record 50 percent of Americans believe marijuana — and not just the medical kind — should be legalized. The poll follows a continuing trend over the past several years of increasing support for legalization.

Obama has chosen to swim against the tide. But there's reason to believe his fight is about politics, not public safety. If this were about safety, alcohol would be his primary target.

Politics cause both sides to fudge the truth. Yet prohibitionists and the government have been particularly egregious. The government is using taxpayer dollars to prop up its side, with the U.S. Justice Department's 64-page booklet, "Speaking Out About Drug Legalization," being a prime example.

Distributed in print and online, the booklet states that "smoked marijuana is not scientifically approved medicine." Forget that by labeling it a drug on par with heroin, the DEA is curtailing the proper study of marijuana, since it prevents even scientists from possessing it for research. The publicly funded propaganda also flies in the face of the opinions of doctors, who see pot's potential as medicine.

It's a strategy that's trickled to states with functionaries unhappy about executing the voters' will. Last December in Arizona, Will Humble, the state's Department of Health Services director, held a proposed-rules-on-medical-marijuana news conference about the state's new Medical Marijuana Act. He took a moment to remind reporters that more than 1,000 Arizonans died last year from accidental overdoses of prescription drugs.

But when asked how many of them died from marijuana, Humble refused to answer — to chuckles from the audience. He referred the question to his chief medical officer, Laura Nelson, who would only say she'd "have to do the research on that" before she could answer.

Then Nelson began stammering about the danger of marijuana related to "car accidents" — though she had done no research on that, either.

The CMA's new report, interestingly enough, sheds light on statements like Nelson's. It says that prohibitionists often make unsubstantiated claims about car crashes or other purported harms. Studies disagree on its risks to motorists, though there's no question that alcohol increases the chances of a crash, the report says. Moreover, simulated driving tests reveal that pot smokers overestimate their degree of impairment and "compensate effectively."

A cynic might also view U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy's threat to target advertising as a less than subtle threat to control the debate.

True: Federal law prohibits advertising illegal drugs. Google, for example, agreed to pay a $500 million fine this summer for taking online ads promoting rogue Canadian pharmacies.

But pot dispensaries are legal businesses within their states. Under Duffy's threat, the feds will have their say, while the pro-pot message would be erased from public view.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the conservative Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, tells New Times that Duffy's threat gave him the willies.

"They're on much thinner ice going after the newspaper," says Scheidegger, who otherwise believes the feds should enforce its own laws against marijuana. "Maybe there is a political strategy."

It's called the "shut them up" strategy.

Federal law is, for now, on the side of the prohibitionists.

Scheidegger downplays the state victories handed to medical marijuana. He says that if the American people want to change the law, they need to encourage Congress to do so.

Yet that ignores a basic political reality: It's extremely difficult for any politician to stand up for marijuana. He or she will be quickly painted as pro-pothead.

Like women's suffrage, the medical-marijuana movement has — in 10 states, anyway — benefited by the direct democracy of citizens initiatives. These elections have taken the pulse of voters in a way that congressional elections cannot.

In six other states and Washington, D.C., medical marijuana was legalized by local lawmakers. Other states are bound to vote in favor of decriminalizing pot in the next few years in spite of federal laws.

Phoenix attorney Ty Taber sees it as a major states' rights issue. "Basically, the citizens of these states . . . want marijuana legalized," he says. If Obama wants to play hardball, he says, "You're going to get pushback."

Taber represents Compassion First, a company that helps set up dispensaries. The firm sued Arizona after Governor Jan Brewer, in blatant defiance of voters' wishes, derailed the dispensary portion of Arizona's new law by instructing the Department of Health to reject applications. She simultaneously sued the federal government, asking a judge to rule on whether the state's new law was legal. (Ironically, the U.S. Justice Department is defending against the lawsuit — and if the feds win, Arizona might just get its first dispensaries.)

Compassion First wants the program implemented as Arizonans intended, and to remove blockades Brewer has thrown in its path. For instance, Arizona requires dispensary owners to have been residents for at least three years.

But the point isn't so much whether the company will win its lawsuit — it's that it's fighting back, and it's not alone.

Across the country, advocates are returning fire of their own in the court system. Which means Obama won't be able to do battle by the relatively cheap means of letters and threats. He'll have to burn through millions of dollars in litigation – money he doesn't have.

Taber thinks the president may have underestimated his foe. "The people behind this marijuana movement — they're committed. They are zealots. And these are smart people — not stoners saying, 'Hey, dude, pass another slice of pizza.'"

The latest crackdown will be bad for the pot business. No question. But Obama could be doing much, much more.

He could go after patients. Over the summer, a federal judge ruled that the DEA could peek at the names on Michigan's patient registry. Because marijuana is illegal under federal law, said Judge Hugh Brenneman Jr., patients can't expect privacy.

The feds could also hit pot-tolerant cities. The law doesn't allow municipal workers to be jailed in such prosecutions, but cities or counties could be heavily fined just for setting up zoning requirements for dispensaries.

There's a huge downside to that, of course. Obama only will appear mean and small for having sickly grandmas arrested. And fining cities just enrages residents picking up the tab — the very people the president will need a year from now.

All of which leaves him fighting at partial speed. That, in turn, leaves the "zealots" Taber mentions betting their money and freedom that even if the feds throw the book at some, it won't be them.

Last week, the feds raided several growing operations in California and Oregon, including one in Mendocino County that appeared to be playing by state rules. But it seems safe to assume that few of the hundreds of other growers in Mendocino County did not uproot their crops in response — just as the hundreds of dispensaries in California did not immediately close their doors after the feds' ominous warning on October 7.

The industry seems to be practicing a form of civil disobedience. And it has tens of thousands of seriously sick people behind it, who will holler loudly if they're forced back to the black market.

Indeed, there are some signs that Obama's crackdown will be what SF Weekly's Chris Roberts calls a "passive aggressive" strategy. Rather than offend Americans with news footage of police raids, Obama has launched a war of attrition.

Landlords, worried the feds will steal their property, will tell dispensaries to move out. Banks won't handle money for pot-themed businesses. Dispensaries will be taxed so heavily they won't be to cover the payroll or pay the electric bill.

Yet it remains to be seen whether federal prosecutors, who undoubtedly have even more serious criminals with which to contend, are willing and able to carry out the threat. When Jack Gillund, Melinda Haag's spokesman, was asked whether her office had the resources to go after every dispensary or grower who doesn't comply with the 45-day deadline, he responded: "No comment."

Lauren Horwood, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner in California's Eastern District, says Wagner's goal isn't to shut down everything. He's focusing on "large, professional, money-making operations — the commercial operations."

Horwood also says it's wrong to call it "Obama's crackdown." She says the California U.S. Attorneys decided to take action on their own because the situation has grown out of control among recreational users. But she acknowledges that they received Obama's blessing.

It's classic political strategy: Send the underlings out to take the heat, while the bosses hide under their skirts.

Either way, the end result casts Obama as even more zealous than George W. Bush. Bush threatened owners of dispensary properties in 2007 but never followed up. Meanwhile, Colorado and other states have seen no similar crackdowns. Only time will tell whether Obama plans to destroy the entire medical-marijuana industry or merely smack California around for a while.

"I'm willing to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt," says Blair Butterworth, a Democratic consultant in Seattle, where about 100 dispensaries operate. "In California, they may be sitting on uncontrollable drug sales. They need to slap some wrists."

It's easy to pick on California, a state known for its excesses. But "the last thing Obama needs right now is to go to war nationally with the medical-marijuana community," Butterworth says.

Leniency for marijuana users, medical or otherwise, continues to be a popular Democratic stance, he says. Butterworth is helping the campaign put outright legalization on the Washington state ballot next year. He thinks it's got a good chance.

Of course, a successful election could just tick off the feds even more.

An estimated one million people in California have obtained a doctor's recommendation to grow and use marijuana legally.

More than 150,000 medical-marijuana patients had registered in Colorado, as of July. Tens of thousands of patients are registered in the other weed-friendly states.

If the feds shut down every dispensary in the country, all these people will still be able to legally possess marijuana — no matter where they bought it — under their state laws.

The only difference is they'll be forced to go back to buying their weed from Mexican drug cartels, rather than from Americans who provide jobs and pay taxes.

It's akin to the feds saying that Anheuser-Busch can no longer sell beer; they'd prefer that people only buy from Al Capone.

Hey, wait — didn't something like that happen?

If the feds shut down every dispensary in the land, medical-marijuana patients still can possess pot legally under state laws — they'll just have to go back to buying it from Mexican drug cartels rather than from taxpaying and job-providing Americans.

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2011-10- ... the-knees/

[Sluggo]

Sounds like propaganda trying to turn MMJ activists against Obama. He's doing enough horrible crap and back pedaling on enough of his promises that I (and most others) don't need lies and propaganda to turn us against him. He'll get re-elected just because he's the better alternative. The lesser of two evils.

[Velokid1]

Sounds like propaganda trying to turn MMJ activists against Obama. He's doing enough horrible crap and back pedaling on enough of his promises that I (and most others) don't need lies and propaganda to turn us against him. He'll get re-elected just because he's the better alternative. The lesser of two evils.

Sums up how I feel, too.

No President can truly change things; only we can. They're stuck in the same system we are. If anyone has the keys to the cockpit, it's us. Not the Pres. What I really want in a President is a person who will inspire the people and then support our movement toward something better. We have more need for a non-denominational spiritual leader than we do a businessman. We have enough businessmen. We've been breeding those assholes for a long time.

[Sluggo]

What I really want in a President is a person who will inspire the people and then support our movement toward something better.

That's why I'm so pissed. He inspired big time and then let everyone down. The few things he did accomplish (Khadaffi, Bin Laden, Troops leaving Iraq) were't really him. He just took credit. He quit on health care and Gitmo. Even if he did take a pro-marijuana stance he'd back down or make some ridiculous compromise that helps no one but corporations. I don't think legalization could end our economic situation. But it would make a hell of a dent.

I wish Russ Feingold would run.

[hambone]

The power is ALWAYS in the hands of the people, it's just often dormant.
Interesting what a complacent species we are. Perhaps it's the loss of the 'thrill of the hunt'? So odd to be a create with very primitive ancestors.

If we are a species where certain members, due to their inherent personalities, crave a place of "power", which tends to corrupt (usually absolutely but not always), then we are stuck in a bottomless cycle in this closed-loop (mentally constructed) financial-legal system. We will rise and fall like drops of mercury in the sea, all one big happy family.