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October 19, 2009
Pot In The News
In a late-breaking item on Sunday,the AP reported that unnamed Justice Department officials had announced the Obama Administration would clarify its guidelines on the DEA’s controversial practice of raiding California marijuana dispensaries. As usual, the story listed all the states with medical marijuana laws without explaining why California has been the only one to experience such raids. As someone who has been following the medical marijuana issue since California's initiative made the ballot in 1996, I've learned to take all such claims with a large grain of salt.Yesterday, even as the AP story was being aired prominently on NPR in the Bay Area , a trusted source e-mailed the actual text of the "official" Justice Department announcement; it emphasized that the CSA is the law of the land and that certain conditions would be sure to trigger "DEA interest." Among them was "sales to minors."
The rat I smelled on Sunday was suddenly a lot more noticeable.
Meanwhile, the detailed Newsweek account of a 2007 DEA raid on someone I'd come to know when he operated a dispensary in San Francisco in 2002 confirmed what I'd come to suspect from various sources: both the DEA and local cops use such raids as opportunities to trash the premises while plundering them. A fraction of seized money may be returned, but the illegal product never is. The victims are usually so happy to escape formal charges that they don't make too much of a fuss and often resume selling, even as they realize that they may be targeted for another official robbery in the future.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at October 19, 2009 04:11 PM