White House: DEA Raids in Medical Marijuana States Will Stop

I think of changing the course of the government as being like turning an aircraft carrier - it takes a really long time once the order is given.

There is a lot of inertia and bad policies that will continue until someone has a chance to review them, and a lot of decisions that are made by mid-level bureaucrats who have fallen into bad habits and will themselves have to be reviewed.

A lot of patience will be required to clear out a mess the size of what Bush left.

OK, i'm no expert. but i was sailing in the BVI once, and we were on a collision course with a British destroyer (yes, NOT an aircraft carrier, I know...) and that thing stopped on A DIME! It was HUGE!!  (but we had the right of way). 

Just like Eskimos don't really have 25 ways to say 'snow'...

And thank you, Al, for telling everyone to chill. I was going to call the White House on this subject, but I didn't (yet) because I figured he has a few more important things on his plate at the moment...

Sanity is being born.  Being born takes time.  Inhale.

thanks Al, now if we can just reform our drug laws to take the pressure off Mexico.

While these Bushie-burrowed holdovers may think they're getting their last licks in against the dirty hippies and the new Islamo-communist president, what they're really doing is volunteering for the role of Mole in the game of Wack the Burrowed Bushie Mole.  As its name implies, the game involves government employees publicly and gratuitously defying Obama administration policies because these righteously right-wing employees don't like the policies they're being instructed to implement.  The soon-to-be-whacked Moles engage in these acts of defiance despite the fact that (1) the Mole's actions are, without exception, ultimately futile and (2) the Mole's futile and defiant action will almost certainly result in career dis-enhancement, if not suicide.

Gen. James Pohl played when he refused to suspend proceedings against a Gitmo detainee per President Obama's orders, resulting in his boss being forced to dismiss all pending charges against one of the suspected bombers of the USS Cole.  While defying the C-in-C's orders probably isn't the best thing a military judge can do for his career, making your boss look bad is just plain dumb.

A couple of Bush-appointed AUSA's, Buchanan (see Tommy Chong) and Martin (see Don Siegelman) are playing a slightly different version by declaring that they won't be resigning their posts, as US Attorneys traditionally do when an incoming president is elected from another party, but will instead wait to be fired, in order to start their new careers as Right Wing Martyrs.

Those crazy republicants are hilarious when they get into their death spiral!

Al, I laughed out loud--you *are* the man.

this is very encouraging! wow.

amazing how the police forces we've entrenched in our culture (ICE, Feds, Gen. Betrayus, etc) get so hooked on their own game, they are hard to call back in from the yard. they don't want to stop their junk. gets em high. 

NOW. if we can just stop las redadas on the humans trying to do work and support their families and make a life, i'll really be grinning hard like michael phelps.

Nezua - The thought has already occurred to me today that this is a very good sign for Obama's very similar pledge to stop the ICE-Immigration raids. It would be harder for him to do one without doing the other.

As with the clinic raids, it won't take a long time, but it will take a little time to get the bureaucracy in tune with it, me thinks.

Although I know I will not agree with Obama on everything, such as some of his cave-ins on the stimulus package, I also know that I will agree with him on most things.

This is an example, as is his taking time with closing Guantanamo.  The simple reason is that it takes time to put people into place to actually change policy.  And most people don't really understand how many people the Bush administration "burrowed" into many federal agencies and departments before they left.

Additionally, other than some obvious things, such as no torture, reversing the rule on aid to NGO's that provide or counsel on things including abortion and others, it is important that this administration do things in a way that shows it really wants to know exactly what has been in place and is changing things not for the sake of change but because the change is appropriate and right.

As I said, there are things he has done and will do that I won't agree with, but as I said once before during the primaries and leading up to general, the only possible President out there that I would agree totally with is me.  Not even you, Al.

I believe the raids will stop fairly quickly in terms of government time since irritating the executive branch and it’s new policies will not serve the interests of most DEA agents who wish to remain employed, and continue their careers. I think this a matter of getting the new rules into the field manuals, and sending memos to various department heads. I do not think it will be long process like the approval of Buprenorphine use for opiate addiction, which took 5-6 years to make it through the government bureaucracy. After successful field studies in 1996 by NIDA that concluded the medication to be a better alternative than methadone for many opiate addicts, it was not until 2000 that Congress passed DATA, the Drug Addiction Treatment Act of 2000, allowing for its use in opiate addiction. Another 2 years passed for the FDA to approve it for this use in 2002 since at the time no drugs had been approved by the FDA for DATA . Also in 2002 Buprenorphine was a Schedule V drug, but was changed to a Schedule III after the DEA reassessed its potential for abuse even though the drug had been in use since the 1980s’ as an analgesic.

“Further, in 2002 the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reassessed the potential for abuse of, diversion of, and addiction to buprenorphine and rescheduled it from a Schedule V drug to a Schedule III drug, thus increasing the penalties for illegally obtaining, possessing, or abusing buprenorphine.” - DOJ

Whether this was a way to appease the DEA with it’s approval for addiction treatment it hard to say, but it would not surprise me if that was the main reason behind the rescheduling, as well as, appeasing the addiction industry, which only allows approved addiction specialists to dispense the medication for addiction while other doctors may only dispense it as an analgesic, even though the drug has been found in studies to be an effective anti-depressant. Also, will Medical Marijuana be Scheduled in the future, and only be available through licensed addiction industry physicians, and controlled by the FDA, ending the community based medical marijuana projects; opening a new wave of enforcement against any unlicensed growers, prescribers, and unauthorized users?

So, the raids in my opinion will stop rather quickly 3 months to a year, and we may even see marijuana decriminalized or even legalized if Obama wins a second term. My worry is that the public fight against the Drug War will end or diminish greatly in America if marijuana is taken out of the conflict, leaving the much smaller percentage of American drug users, those who use other illegal substances in the grips of the Drug War madness for decades to come. Similar to the way they were excluded in AIDS policy changes with needle exchange programs being blocked from federal funding, and IV drug use prevention classes, and materials being largely ignored or poorly implemented while sexual prevention of AIDS took precedence over IV drug use prevention, leaving a small minority of Americans to suffer the wrath of a preventable disease.

...even if I am cranky watching Michael Phelps apologize for doing what large majorities of 23 year olds do.  I feel bad for the guy having to suck it up when you know he wants to tell everyone to take a flying leap.

Homing Pigeon

>>>"My worry is that the public fight against the Drug War will end or diminish greatly in America if marijuana is taken out of the conflict, leaving the much smaller percentage of American drug users, those who use other illegal substances in the grips of the Drug War madness for decades to come."

That sounds like the crabs in a bucket syndrome.  You know, where if some crabs somehow start to succeed in escaping the bucket, the other crabs will pull them back down.

What is far more likely to happen after the end of marijuana prohibition, is the public will see the sky didn't fall, become rational, and do the right thing with all recreational drugs - especially since the size of the "problem" will be exponentially smaller.

Al, just wondering, any way to figure out how much these raids cost? Be interesting to see how much they're spending - during this difficult time - on this stuff.  Seems a great place to start cutting government waste.

The Greatest Story Never Told Study: Smoking Pot Doesn't Cause Cancer--It May Prevent It!

Pot Shows Promise as Cancer Cure Not familiar with clinical research about marijuana's potential anti-cancer properties? You're not alone.

and the crucial role of organizing in raising civilian spending levels to useful level, by John Bellamy Foster at Monthly Review. Note in the current context, the attack on public education spending in yesterday's Senate deal on the stimulus package.

Here's what you're dealing with in terms of the abuse of medical marijuana patients in the Los Angeles area.

The current DEA chief, Michele Leonhart, played a key role in retaliating against the the whistleblower [DEA Special Agent in Command Sandalio Gonzalez] in the House of Death mass murder case and subsequent cover-up. That case involved a U.S. government informant, with the knowledge of federal agents and prosecutors, assisting in multiple murders in Mexico.

Leonhart also is the former commander of DEA's Los Angeles field office. Leonhart was appointed deputy administrator of DEA in 2004 after being nominated by George Bush and took on the role of Acting Administrator of the agency when Karen Tandy resigned from the post of DEA Administrator in 2007 to take a job with Motorola — which has provided technology to DEA as a goverment contrator in the past and is in a position to benefit from the billion-dollar-plus Plan Mexico largesse.

The current head of DEA's Los Angeles field office, Tim Landrum, moved into that post in 2007 as well, and Leonhart would have played a major role in that appointment, not only because she knew by then she was moving into the top seat at DEA, but LA is her old stomping ground.

The raids on the Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensaries would not have been carried out absent their orders and approval. Leonhart and Landrum, in other words, are most responsible for defying the Obama administration with respect to this issue. I would not be surprised to see their heads role in the near future if Obama is serious about getting DEA out of the business of raiding these clinics.

But there is another important player in all of this, Thomas O'Brien, the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, who was appointed by Bush to that post in 2007 in the wake of the U.S. Attorney scandal. The DEA raids in Los Angeles would not have been carried out absent the approval of his office -- since it is the U.S. Attorney's Office that serves to prosecute such cases. If they were onboard with Obama's directions in this matter, they would not move forward with prosecutions, and the DEA would have no case to make, hence no reason to raid the clinics.

Here's a bit of background on O'Brien's attitude toward local laws:

Cities and counties in California are passing ordinances to ensure that medical marijuana dispensaries follow the law and serve patients properly. By treating all who provide medical marijuana to the sick as common drug dealers, the DEA has become the single largest obstacle to effective regulation of these establishments. A major Los Angeles raid actually occurred at the exact moment that members of the city council were holding a press conference to discuss an ordinance to regulate medical marijuana providers. At a Coachella Valley Association of Governments meeting in January, [then] Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom O’Brien even threatened officials with prosecution for aiding and abetting a federal crime if they acted to regulate medical marijuana dispensaries. [Emphasis added.]

In other words, if local officials passed laws to regulate the clinics, they were, in effect, legitimizing them, and O'Brien threatened that such action would constitute "aiding and abetting a federal crime."

So it seems O'Brien is at the center of this storm as well and should now be in the sights of any corrective action Obama seeks to take to right the ship in this matter.

After all, if these folks are willing to defy the wishes of a sitting president on this policy matter, how can they be trusted on anything else?

In his initial days in office, Obama has been correctly focused on the economy and getting his cabinet through the Senate-approval process, so all the rot put in place by Bush and Alberto Gonzalez at DOJ is, for the most part, still in place. With the recent approval of Eric Holder as Attorney General, we should expect to soon see some cleaning of the house at DEA [a DOJ charge] and among the ranks of the Bush-appointed U.S. Attorneys.

Until that happens, expect more abuses, disloyalty and undermining of the Obama administration's stated goals and objectives. But don't expect it to be tolerated for long.

ron paul famously said in an interview, when asked how we might get our troops out of iraq- they marched , they can march out'... likewise a simple executive order is all it takes to stifle these moralistic beaurocrats who demand punishment for behaviour that annoys them but in no way harms them... even president reagan quipped- 'government exists to protect us from each other, we can not afford enough government to protect us from ourselves'... more simply put- end the war on drugs, or at least call a truce! it could in fact be done quickly... i will not stop demanding it.

May I add the following DEA ruling, cica 1988

There are those who, in all sincerity, argue that the transfer of
marijuana

- 67 -

------------------------------------------------------------------------

to Schedule II will "send a signal" that marijuana is "OK" generally for
recreational use.  This argument is specious.  It presents no valid
reason for refraining from taking an action required by law in light of
the evidence.  If marijuana should be placed in Schedule II, in obedience
to the law, then that is where marijuana should be placed, regardless of
misinterpretation of the placement by some.  The reasons for the
placement can, and should, be clearly explained at the time the action is
taken.  The fear of sending such a signal cannot be permitted to override
the legitimate need, amply demonstrated in this record, of countless
suffers for the relief marijuana can provide when prescribed by a
physician in a legitimate case.

The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been
accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very
ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision.  It would
be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand
between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of
the evidence in this record.

The administrative law judge recommends that the Administrator
conclude that the marijuana plant considered as a whole has a currently
accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, that there is no
lack of accepted safety for use of it under medical supervision and that
it may lawfully be transferred from Schedule I to Schedule II.  The judge
recommends that the Administrator transfer marijuana from Schedule I to
Schedule II.

Dated: SEP 6 1988

Francis L. Young
Administrative Law Judge

The feds have known for a long time Cannabis is not a Sch. 1 narcotic.

Speak up now and demand prohibition be done away with!

It never worked and never will.

We simply canot afford this breach of freedom any longer.

We do not have a free market in fuel, medicine, oil, building materials, food etc. if Cannabis remains illegal.

We must have a free market, our air depends on it.

Turns out the hippie's were right all along.

Who's the dope now?