From the Washington Times
DEA continues pot raids Obama opposes
Why the fuck is the DEA continuing these busts when the President is clearly against them? More importantly (especially to the folk who may end up in jail in the meantime) why the fuck doesn’t Obama ORDER them to stop? He doesn’t need to wait until a new administrator takes over.
I really don’t get this and it just burns me up.
Where are the people (usually conservatives) who always whine about “where our tax dollars are going” when it comes to the DEA and marijuana busts? Talk about a monumental waste of time and cash. They probably tripped over a few junkies/crack addicts/meth-heads on their way to raiding the medical marijuana shops, too.
These are the same geniuses that spent 9 million to bust Tommy Chong.
Apparently it doesn’t bother Obama that much, or else he would, like you said, tell them to stop. I don’t really see the problem, though. The medical marijuana shops are illegal, it’s the DEA’s job to stop illegal drug sales, so they’re doing their jobs.
Probably because the guys who know they are going to get replaced don’t care what the guy who’s going to replace them thinks and the guys beneath them appreciate paychecks in this fiscal environment.
As Attorney General, Holder is the head of the DEA, right? He was only confirmed Monday and hopefully that’s enough to put a stop to this.
It doesn’t matter. Obama could have issued an order the day he was inaugurated if he thought it was a priority. But it seems he doesn’t. I can’t blame him, he’s got lots of shit to deal with already.
He probably doesn’t want to deal with the political consequences if the lame duck guy defies his order. I wrote a bit about this dilemma in a staff report:
Whether or not he’d draw any criticism under these cirumstances, he’s replacing the guy anyway. It’s probably simpler to let the guy be a schmuck for a little longer and get rid of him without controversy.
Illegal at the federal level, completely legal at the state level. The states that allow medical marijuana all think that the federal government has no right to bust marijuana dispensaries.
Of course the busts continue.
Many (most?) American citizens know little regarding the rationale regarding why cannabis is an illegal drug. All they know is that they have been told that it is dangerous, that it is associated with laziness, the hip hop culture, hippies, and the ‘gateway drug’ theory. Political inertia demands the status quo.
To his credit, the President has stated his opposition to raids on medical marijuana facilities. Granted, that’s about five leagues to the right of the proper response (Legalize it already, it ain’t done nobody no harm save the legal consequences that are enforced upon them by a clueless government blindly following the dictates of men long dead!) but ya takes what ya can gets in the soundbite age. And there are bigger fish to fry–there always will be–so there is no urgency nor controversy involved in doing what we’ve always done, i.e, sticking it to those who utilize marijuana.
Give it a few months. I think the raids will end before the year is over.
Right, and the DEA is a federal agency. If the states want to take the position that the federal government doesn’t have that right, they’re going to have to take it up in the courts.
Some states tried that over a hundred years ago…didnt work out so well 
Though to be honest, they really didnt work through the court as much as they should have…
They did that; the US Supreme Court decided in Gonzales_v._Raich that the federal government has the ability to regulate all commerce between the states, legal and illegal. The dissents are interesting, because they were from three “law and order” justices (Rehnquist, Thomas, and O’Connor), all of whom were believers in federalism (especially Rehnquist, who, when nominated, hoped to start a “federalism revoluation.”)
Because the Supreme Court had already decided that wheat grown for ones own personal use affects interstate commerce and could be regulated, it stands to reason the same can be said for home-grown medical marijuana.
To allow medical marijuana, California is going to have to spearhead an initiative to amend the Constitution. Or Obama can nominate some new Supreme Court justices…
Or Obama can give the DEA different enforcement priorities. Or Congress could amend the statute. These weren’t likely to happen when Raich was decided, but Obama can certainly appoint a DEA adminstrator with different enforcement goals. Nothing in the Constitution says that every federal law must be enforced against every violator (e.g., http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/71mcrm.htm#9-71.010 ) nor does it say federal law must ban medical marijuana.
Most people have forgotten this, but on the campaign trail in 2000, GWB actually stated support for medical marijuana while campaigning in a pot-friendly state. Then he took office and did the complete opposite.
I like Obama, but deep down, I’ve always known that he was still a politician and that all that “change” stuff was likely little more than the empty words of a job applicant trying to please his potential employers. I’m sure a lot of you suspected the same.
Welcome back to politics as usual. 
Oh, come on. Doesn’t it seem reasonable that pot is not high on his list of priorities at the moment? Isn’t that, in fact, a good place for it to be? We have more important issues right now.
I bet it seems pretty high on the list of priorities of those people who got arrested.
That’s just the thing, though. There will always be an issue more important than this one. Does that make it okay to ignore it forever?
A couple months ago, Obama’s transition team did a web site with questions from the public, and other members of the public could vote on which question they’d like to see answered. The highest-voted question was about taxing and regulating pot. The answer was a flat, one-sentence, NO. No nuance. No shades of gray. No explanation. Just no.
Obama has smoked pot. He knows it’s no big deal. He had the chance to stand up and do the right thing. Instead, he did the thing that he thought would curry the most political favor.
Like I said, politics as usual.
I forgot what I was going to say
Excellent username/post/thread combo. 