Green War at the Club of Disaffection

Quotes from Barack Obama:

“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


California's in a heap of trouble. William Kennedy, the mercurial swing vote on the Supreme Court of the United States, took a rare excursion with the liberal wing this week. He decided that California's prison system is so overcrowded that it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and joined his liberal cronies in a 5 to 4 decision. And we have to rid ourselves of 33,000 prisoners in California over the next two years.

"Overcrowding has overtaken the limited resources of prison staff; imposed demands well beyond the capacity of medical and mental health facilities; and created unsanitary and unsafe conditions that make progress in the provision of care difficult or impossible to achieve," wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy for the majority.

We currently have 130,000 prisons incarcerated in prisons in the golden state. 33 prisons that were designed for a maximum of 80,000 people. I have an idea. Why not free the approximately 17,000 people that are stewing in California's prison and jail system for marijuana related offenses? California still arrests around 60,000 people yearly for marijuana offenses, according to the Department of Justice.

Jeffrey A. Miron is a senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Professor Miron earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and chaired the economics department at Boston University prior to joining the Harvard faculty. Miron wrote a white paper last year that explored the financial benefits to ending the drug war.

State and federal governments in the United States face massive looming fiscal deficits. One policy change that can reduce deficits is ending the drug war. Legalization means reduced expenditure on enforcement and an increase in tax revenue from legalized sales.This report estimates that legalizing drugs would save roughly $41.3 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition. Of these savings, $25.7 billion would accrue to state and local governments, while $15.6 billion would accrue to the federal government.Approximately $8.7 billion of the savings would result from legalization of marijuana and $32.6 billion from legalization of other drugs.The report also estimates that drug legalization would yield tax revenue of $46.7 billion annually, assuming legal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco. Approximately $8.7 billion of this revenue would result from legalization of marijuana and $38.0 billion from legalization of other drugs.

Unfortunately, our President, Barack Obama, an admitted former pot smoker, has not been forthright with the American people in regards to marijuana. Before becoming president, then-Senator Obama campaigned on the promise that he would not use "Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws." His Attorney General, Eric Holder sent initial signals that the administration would respect state laws regarding medical marijuana. In 2009 he sent out the famous Ogden Memo to U.S. Attorneys:

The prosecution of significant traffickers of illegal drugs, including marijuana, and the disruption of illegal drug manufacturing and trafficking networks continues to be a core priority in the Department's efforts against narcotics and dangerous drugs, and the Department's investigative and prosecutorial resources should be directed towards these objectives. As a general matter, pursuit of these priorities 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.

Contrast that with this letter sent to the Arizona Department of Health Services May 2, 2011:

 "The United States Attorneys Office ... will vigorously prosecute individuals and organizations that participate in the unlawful manufacturing, distribution and marketing activity involving marijuana, even if such activities are permitted under state law."

...U.S. Attorneys Jenny Durkan of Seattle and Michael Ormsby of Spokane, recently threatened "civil and criminal legal remedies" (read: sanctions) against Washington state citizens, including state employees, who assist with or engage in the production or distribution of medical cannabis, "even if such activities are permitted under state law."

The Department of Justice has been involved in a similar pattern of harassment of State Marijuana programs across the country recently. Letters have been sent to local and state officials in at least 9 different medical marijuana states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

According to the Colorado Independent, in a Nixonian twist, ...the IRS is thought to have begun audits on at least 12 medical marijuana dispensaries in California under the determination that past business deductions are invalid because of a clause in the federal tax code prohibiting any business that traffics in Schedule I or II drugs from making business deductions on their tax returns. The move could bankrupt every dispensary that it targets. The first dispensary to receive a final audit decision from the IRS is the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana (MAMM) in Fairfax, Calif.

Rather than easing draconian laws that penalize marijuana users like heroin users, the drug war has gotten worse during the Obama Administration. There were over 835,000 Americans jailed for marijuana in the first year of the Obama presidency, higher even than his predecessor. There have been at least 90 DEA SWAT-style raids since Obama took office.

It has been nine years and the Federal Government  has still failed to answer a request to reclassify the drug from Schedule 1 to a drug with medical benefits.

A coalition of public interest advocacy groups filed suit today in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to compel the Obama administration to respond to a nine-year-old petition to reclassify marijuana under federal law.
The suit was filed by attorneys Joe Elford of Americans for Safe Access (ASA) and Michael Kennedy of the NORML Legal Committee on behalf of the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC). The Coalition, which includes NORML and California NORML, filed a comprehensive rescheduling petition with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on October 9, 2002 challenging marijuana’s Schedule I classification as a controlled substance with “no currently accepted medical use” and a “high potential for abuse.” The agency formally accepted the petition for filing on April 3, 2003, and per the provisions of the United States Controlled Substances Act (CSA) referred the petition to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in July 2004 for a full scientific and medical evaluation.
To date, the federal government has not publicly responded to the petition.
Today’s lawsuit petitions the Court for a writ of mandamus “directing the DEA and the Attorney General to issue a full and final determination on petitioners’ Petition to reschedule marijuana, or, alternatively, state whether it will initiate rule making proceedings, within 60 days.”
It states:
“The DEA’s delay here of more than eight years since the rescheduling Petition was filed — and more than four years since it received HHS’ binding evaluation and recommendations — is inexcusable. … [T]his agency delay in acting on the rescheduling Petition is unreasonable, requiring this Court to intervene.”
Under the CSA, the Attorney General has the authority to reschedule a drug if he finds that it does not meet the criteria for the schedule to which it has been assigned. The Attorney General has delegated this authority to the Administrator of the DEA, presently Michelle Leonhart.
The 2002 CRC petition seeks to reschedule cannabis from its Schedule I designation to a less restrictive class under the CSA “on the grounds that: (1) marijuana does have accepted medical uses in the United States; (2) it is safe for use under medical supervision and has an abuse potential lower than Schedule I and II drugs; and (3) it has a dependence liability that is also lower than Schedule I or II drugs.”
NORML filed a similar rescheduling petition with the DEA in 1972, but was not granted a federal hearing on the issue until 1986. In 1988, DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Young ruled that marijuana did not meet the legal criteria of a Schedule I prohibited drug and should be reclassified. Then-DEA Administrator John Lawn rejected Young’s determination, a decision the D.C. Court of Appeals eventually affirmed in 1994.

Nine years is plenty of time. I read the other day about a little girl suffering from a rare form of cancer who died recently whose family could not procure the drug legally for her. As a medical marijuana user and patient who went through multiple bouts of cancer and heart surgery, I can tell you from personal experience how marijuana kept me off addictive painkillers and eased my discomfort during my long struggle. Yes, some people are gaming the medical system but I still run into many elderly people that don't know how to score and are suffering for their inability to procure a benign substance that can deliver necessary relief without any harmful side effects.

The people who still have their head in the sand are law enforcement who use drug war booty to enrich their departments and the criminal cartels who stand to lose money if reefer is legalized or decriminalized.

President Obama has a habit of saying one thing and doing another. We have a never ending war in Afghanistan and the middle east, a continuation of Bush era warrantless Patriot Act/ Wiretap behavior, complete backtracking on mountaintop coal removal and oil drilling. Now he gets heavy with the pot heads. I am starting to wonder how long it will take before my liberal friends figure out that he is actually a priggish, prevaricating hypocrite.