Fulfilling a campaign promise, the Obama Administration moved away from DEA raids and crackdowns on legal medical marijuana dispensaries in 14 states. The Administration had previously been criticized for allowing raids to go forward despite rhetoric claiming that they would focus on higher-level drug trafficking than the dispensaries where sick Americans can seek relief. Now they’ve codified the language into new guidelines.
“It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana, but we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal,” Holder said. “This balanced policy formalizes a sensible approach that the Department has been following since January: effectively focus our resources on serious drug traffickers while taking into account state and local laws.”
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald called it “one of those rare instances of unadulterated good news from Washington,” and he’s right. The Bush Administration was pre-empting state laws legalizing marijuana for medicinal use and preventing sick patients from care. This will now end.
This comes at a time when the proliferation of dispensaries in California (they now outnumber public schools in Los Angeles) has led local officials to seek a crackdown. A lot of these dispensaries, which are not supposed to be allowed to turn a profit, are taking advantage of lax enforcement and loopholes in the law to sprout up over the past year. Californians may go to the polls next year to allow dispensaries to operate for profit and to tax the sales, but that’s a ways off, so in Los Angeles at least, customers may still face hardships in trying to get their medicine.
Whatever the case, it is far preferable for decisions like this to be made locally than from a federal government simply bulldozing the will of the people in particular states.
UPDATE: A temporary ban on medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles has been ruled invalid by a Superior Court judge, suggesting that the city will be unable to stop the proliferation of dispensaries in the future.
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About Time why not just make patients buy their drugs at a Pharmacy where there is security and it can be taxed easy?
It would be nice if Obama said past pot felonies can no longer be used as a reason to not hire people. Rush was maybe still is a Hillbilly heroin addict but he shows up for work and is a productive if insane citizen.
Why he had a ton of cash to make sure he never went to jail. Given a choice between and Oxy freak and a pot head I think most employers would hire the pot head.
Lots of dark folks with felonies would be helped by this.
Because people will grow their own.
Would taxing pot be a popular issue for Dems to run on to solve the budget crisis?
Sounds pretty weasily to me.
Some will those who have the time, space etc and don’t kill house plants like a Texas Governor.
Does this announcement by Obama suggest if a state makes it legal for all adults (without prescription) that the Feds will not interfere?
Marijuana prohibition is a failed and destructive policy. The time to enact sane drug laws is long overdue.
I believe the appropriate maxim here is: ‘Elections have consequences.’ The only people who are offended weren’t voting Democrat anyway. They can stick it where the sun don’t shine.
Why don’t the Dems call for an emergency session and demand California tax pot now! Then they can get credit win or lose for trying to do something while Arnold and the GOP keep looking like morons.
In times of Crisis bold action is needed. Right action is needed. A plan and or budget is needed.
Bush was bold but his actions were not Right impure motives war for oil and he had no plan.
Taxing Pot now bold, Right action the state is broke and taxing pot would be the plan to help fix the budget.
True I want all the states with budget problems to say we can tax pot or we can raise taxes. I want the Tea baggers who are a Republican front group torn between supporting higher taxes, cutting school teacher, police etc jobs or taxing pot.
I want the Tea Baggers torn between Dem ideas on a way out of the budget problems and the GOP’s just say no stance.
After the GOP says No again we ask ok whats your ideas.
What’s this about a TX gov killing house plants?
Our local newscast had a story last week about the TSA screeners at Oakland and SFO airports no longer stopping people with pot if they had appropriate medical marijuana documentation. This was done “within the last year” the newscaster said, and was local airport policy directing the TSA not to stop people from boarding planes.
The TSA spokesperson confirmed the story, and also said that TSA wouldn’t notify law enforcement at the plane’s destination that potheads were aboard the plane, although they said passengers might be taking a risk if pot was illegal at their destination.
Still, for instate flights, or for flights to other medical pot locales, it seems very rational.
There’s still lots of vested interests in pot being demonized 4-evah for any reason – alcohol purveyors, piss test industrial complex, tv fear industrial complex, big pharma .. none of em have wanted to see the camel’s nose of med-mj under the tent, well too bad it’s like gay marriage, the people have taken it in their own hands, assholes.
Have they altered the no smoking announcements on the airplane to include pot?
Have always missed those wonderful AirCal safety announcements that they made in the good old days. They were the only ones I listened to.
Sorry some people kill house plants like Texas Governors kill people:) I was just trying to point out to ES there will always be a market for pot that can be taxed. After all Saffron is legal and isn’t that plant as valuable as gold?
so long as warnings are issued to potcarrying passengers flying to countries like Singapore and Texas. Isn’t TX trying to pass a draconian mandatory sentencing law specfically for minute quantities of medical marijuana? I vaguely recall something about a year an ounce being proposed.
Heh. Missed the analogy entirely. :-)
You left out politicians who whip out the war on drugs strawman at election time. They love issues where the people most likely to feel alienated by their stance (recreational drug users) have not traditionally represented a significant voting bloc.
How did you do a smiley face!
Gov Goodhair trying to out Conservative all the other GOP Presidential nominees?
It just happened. What I typed was colon dash close-paren. Then the puter translated it into a smiley face. Wonder if it works for a :-(
:)
Must be part of the backstage work they’ve been doing. A real upgrade!
What are you grinning about? The change in the pot prosecution policy?
You get another variation with colon dash P. :-P
:) :-)
:Z
The LA county DA and the LA city attorney were trying to shut down the dispensaries by claiming that the law requires that users do their own growing and harvesting. (Apparently the law is a bit ambiguous on that point.) I hope this puts a spoke in that wheel, although I suspect that there are too many dispensaries; the unlicensed ones really do need to be shut down or forced to get licenses.
Had to try Still way Cool!
:-P
On a marijuana thread no less.
I think that brillliant idea came from rethugs in their legislature, but same idea… Gov. Goodhair and his two hundred best pals…
So any ideas for special brownie recipes for an FDL cook book:P
The Gods do have a sense of Timing and Irony :)
:-p
I ate some of those once. Didn’t know they were spiked. All 6 of us became very goofy.
Upper case P
A good step.
They can’t legalize it because that would take the money out of it hurting the business. Just like we don’t believe Wall Street is crooked, we won’t believe that our war on drugs is crooked, and helps keep the profits up, while making it look like they are doing the opposit.
I wonder if front pagers can get Doctors notes to get pot cause Jane makes them watch Fox News as part of their job? Pot is good for nausea I think.
;-P
The best time for irony is before you put your clothes on. Trying to flatten those wrinkles after you put them on can be a real pain.
I like those old fashioned ones best
;-P. :-P. ;-). :-).
colon, not semicolon
Geez, I thought I was the only one who still did irony on my clothes.
Yep, too many powerful entities profiting from the status quo. Same reason it’s damn near impossible to pass good (serving the best interests of the American people) legislation relating to almost any subject.
Here’s an on-topic link. Support for legalizing pot (can’t spell marijuana) is rising, almost half.
i like pot. Haven’t smoked it for a long time. Used to grow it in my back yard.
Had a shitload of problems on this site today.
Not my fault. I’m making chicken soup.
Whatever.
My sister irons everything she wears, I think it is an obsessive compulsive disorder. I only iron an occasional shirt.
Better on the lungs to eat than smoke just think how legal pot munchies could stimulate the restaurant and grocery store industry. 3 free brownies to any customer who walks in the door and buys $50 worth of food.
Customer goes in eats the brownies and then buys way more than $50 worth of food.
Of course all food would have to be organic then otherwise obesity would really rise. :-P
I iron several types of items, like T-shirts. They fold up so much better. And with today’s fabrics, a quick swish with the iron is enough.
Only if you think it will solve it. In reality, it would maybe generate $1bn of revenue annually if you legalized and taxed all pot. Considering that we just got through what amounted to a $60bn deficit over the last 18 months, that’s not going to cut it. And, totally legalizing marijuana even for non-medicinal purposes in one state in contravention of federal laws would surely draw a court challenge, one that would likely win.
Not a reason not to do it, of course, and there are multipliers that would come with ending criminalization (not imprisoning nonviolent marijuana offenders). I’m pretty sure it will hit next year’s ballot and that our spineless dems here in CA will run screaming away from it.
I don’t know if you were here awhile back when I mentioned that in high school I rolled my joints at night for the following school day. Always eleven because apparently ten would not have been sufficient…
I liked it when I had nothing to lose. Now that I own property I’m not willing to take the risk. Probably would if it were legal but I’m not holding my breath.
CSI-Miami tonight is about e-coli in produce & frankenfoods. Think it might be a social breakthrough to get these ideas into primetime programs.
What is a frankenfood, something like a frankenfurter? Or frankenbeans?
How much would that save CA? Not to mention the fact that prisons are criminal training schools, so the fewer in them, the fewer future hardened criminals.
I’m going to pretend here and whhhoooossit, hold my breath. Ah, just the the remembrance get’s me mellow.
I never iro.
PS, if you grab those t shirts right out of the dryer and smooth them out before folding, you Never Have To Iron Again.
About corn fed beef. Apparently corn is hard to digest because of the cellulose. So the techno food company added a gene from a bacteria that breaks down cellulose to the corn, so that it is easier for the cattle to digest. Then something biochemical happened (missed exactly what), and the result was bottulism, which got pooped out & drained onto the produce field which is downhill.
You do it your way, and I’ll do it mine. :-)
Well, of course.
Like the way we read different stuff. It’s a good thing, I think.
We’re the poster girls for diversity. And, cute and smart too! What else could anyone want?
This site’s backstage problems are starting to work on my last nerve. Just sayin’.
What are the assumptions you make because first if pot is legal cost go down Corn at $10 a bushel for example would be great for farmers hydroponic tomatoes sell for what less than a $1?
People are used to paying allot more for pot I bet you could cut the current price in half I don’t know what it currently is grow the best organic hydroponic pot around and still make a better profit than a midwest corn grower.
Now say cut the price of pot in half and then tax it at levels that would make the price drop only equal a 10% drop in price. How much money would you raise?
Not only would it save a decent amount of money, it’s pretty much mandatory. California is under a federal court order to release 44,000 prisoners immediately because their crowded prisons are violating the 8th Amendment of the Constitution banning cruel and unusual punishment (prisoners are dying from substandard medical care, among other things). The Governor and Legislature’s plan, signed into law a week or so ago, only reduced the population by 20,000. And canceled a lot of the drug treatment and rehab in the prisons. It’s a total mess.
I admit this is a problem in my scheme however getting Doctor’s notes are not that hard.
Someone typed awhile ago that CA is a failed state.
Olympia Snowe is Stewart’s target tonight.
I wonder how Arnold will spin his term as Governor from being anything but a lack of leadership, a slave to the no tax lobby. blind to the words inflation and gas prices going up force the price of everything the state government buys up which means higher taxes are needed to provide government services.
A governor with a Mantra no new taxes a belief with no plan.