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December 05, 2009
Mystery Explained
Although there's considerable discrepancy between the Obama Administration’s widely reported statements that federal raids on pot clubs in states with medical marijuana laws would cease and the occurrence of such raids, there’s been no explanation that I was aware of until interest generated by a somewhat different issue prompted me to Google “prosecutions of medical marijuana violations.” Prominent among the first hits was a recent Justice Department memo from a Deputy Attorney General showing how the federal Bureaucracy hedges its bets; notice the ambiguous escape hatch: "sales to minors," bulleted on the second page.That's apparently more than enough ambiguity for the DEA to justify any raid it opts to carry out by referring to a federal law that defines 21 as the "legal" age for alcohol for the entire country. Never mind that annual federal statistics confirm that 80-90% of American teens routinely defy that law without being prosecuted as felons; also notice when the states' prerogatives were once again usurped by the feds, It was probably no accident that it was in 1984, on the "Just say no" watch of Nancy Reagan and the Gipper; both of whom expressed inflexible views on a number of social issues.
The final abuse of common sense is that there's abundant evidence that cannabis discourages excessive use of alcohol, particularly by the same youthful demographic that is most at risk from intemperate use of alcohol and operating motor vehicles. Go Figure.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at December 5, 2009 08:58 PM