Light Up! Pot Raids on Clinics to End

Just days after President Obama's inauguration, DEA agents raided Medical Marijuana clinics in Colorado and the Los Angelas, California, area as Bush Administration holdovers continued with standing policy. The raids at Venice, Marina Del Ray, and Playa Del Ray yielded $10,000 in cash and 224 kilograms of marijuana and marijuana-laced food.

Protestors were quick to cite multiple campaign pledges by President Obama that stated he would reverse the current policy, which have seen dozens arrested in 30 to 40 such raids in the last several years.

"I'm not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue," Then-Candidate Obama told the Mail Tribune newspaper in Oregon in March, during the Democratic primary campaign. "(the) basic concept of using medical marijuana for the same purposes and with the same controls as other drugs prescribed by doctors, I think that's entirely appropriate."While thirteen states have laws that allow medical marijuana use the federal government never recognized those laws. "Anyone possessing, distributing or cultivating marijuana for any reason is in violation of federal law," Sarah Pullen, a DEA spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said February 5th.

Attorney General Eric Holder stated at a Washington News Conference February 25th, "What the president said during the campaign, you'll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we'll be doing here in law enforcement. What he said during the campaign is now American policy."

While the DEA is still lead by Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart, AG Eric Holder is the highest ranked crime-fighter in the land, and the DEA is a part of his Justice Department.

There has been a long-going disagreement of philosophy, with the position taken by many who oppose medical marijuana that the system can be circumvented and used as a cover for recreational drug use and other criminal activities. Proponents compare marijuana's medical use to the prescribed use of morphine, an addictive opiate that heroin was originally created to combat, that is still widely used in medicine.

Sources:

The Washington Times, DEA pot raids go on; Obama opposes, by Stephen Dinan and Ben Conery
Associated Press, Whiff of change in US medical marijuana policy, by Devlin Barrett
The San Francisco Chronicle, U.S. to yield marijuana jurisdiction to states, by Bob Egelko