Stephen Dinan and Ben Conery THE WASHINGTON TIMES Thursday, February 5, 2009<\/p>\n
Drug Enforcement Administration agents this week raided four medical
\nmarijuana shops in California, contrary to President Obama’s campaign
\npromises to stop the raids.<\/p>\n
DEA Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart<\/p>\n
The White House said it expects those kinds of raids to end once Mr.
\nObama nominates someone to take charge of DEA, which is still run by Bush
\nadministration holdovers.<\/p>\n
“The president believes that federal resources should not be used to
\ncircumvent state laws, and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to
\nfill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review
\ntheir policies with that in mind,” White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.<\/p>\n
Medical use of marijuana is legal under the law in California and a dozen
\nother states, but the federal government under President Bush, bolstered by
\na 2005 Supreme Court ruling, argued that federal interests trumped state
\nlaw.<\/p>\n
Dogged by marijuana advocates throughout the campaign, Mr. Obama repeatedly
\nsaid he was opposed to using the federal government to raid medical
\nmarijuana shops, particularly because it was an infringement on states’
\ndecisions.<\/p>\n
“I’m not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent
\nstate laws on this issue,” Mr. Obama told the Mail Tribune newspaper in
\nOregon in March, during the Democratic primary campaign.<\/p>\n
He told the newspaper the “basic concept of using medical marijuana for the
\nsame purposes and with the same controls as other drugs prescribed by
\ndoctors, I think that’s entirely appropriate.”<\/p>\n
Mr. Obama is still filling key law enforcement posts. For now, DEA is run by
\nacting Administrator Michele Leonhart, a Bush appointee.<\/p>\n
Special Agent Sarah Pullen of the DEA’s Los Angeles office said agents
\nraided four marijuana dispensaries about noon Tuesday. Two were in Venice
\nand one each was in Marina Del Rey and Playa Del Ray — all in the Los
\nAngeles area.<\/p>\n
A man who answered the phone at Marina Caregivers in Marina Del Rey said his
\nshop was the target of a raid but declined to elaborate, saying the shop was
\njust trying to get back to operating.<\/p>\n
Agent Pullen said the four raids seized $10,000 in cash and 224 kilograms of
\nmarijuana and marijuana-laced food, such as cookies. No one was arrested,
\nshe said, but the raid is part of an ongoing investigation seeking to trace
\nthe marijuana back to its suppliers or source.<\/p>\n
She said agents have conducted 30 or 40 similar raids in the past several
\nyears, many of which resulted in prosecutions.<\/p>\n
“It’s clear that the DEA is showing no respect for President Obama’s
\ncampaign promises,” said Dan Bernath, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy
\nProject in Washington, which advocates for medical marijuana and for
\ndecriminalizing the drug.<\/p>\n
California allows patients whose doctors prescribe marijuana to use the
\ndrug. The state has set up a registry to allow patients to obtain cards
\nallowing them to possess, grow, transport and use marijuana.<\/p>\n
Kris Hermes of Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group
\nin California, called the raids an attempt to undermine state law and said
\nthey were apparently conducted without the knowledge of Los Angeles city or
\npolice officials.<\/p>\n
He said the DEA has raided five medical marijuana dispensaries in the state
\nsince Mr. Obama was inaugurated and that the first took place on Jan. 22 in
\nSouth Lake Tahoe.<\/p>\n
“President Obama needs to keep a promise he made, not just in one campaign
\nstop, but in multiple speeches that he would not be spending Justice
\nDepartment funds on these kinds of raids,” Mr. Hermes said. “We do want to
\ngive him a little bit of leeway, but at the same time we’re expecting him to
\nstop this egregious enforcement policy that is continuing into his
\npresidency.”<\/p>\n
He said he is aware that Mr. Obama has not installed his own DEA chief but
\nthat new Attorney General “Eric Holder can still suspend these types of
\noperations.”<\/p>\n
The Justice Department referred questions to the White House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stephen Dinan and Ben Conery THE WASHINGTON TIMES Thursday, February 5, 2009 Drug Enforcement Administration agents this week raided four medical marijuana shops in California, contrary to President Obama’s campaign promises to stop the raids. DEA Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart The White House said it expects those kinds of raids to end once Mr. Obama […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[456,3,263],"tags":[139,358,205,26,142,160],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-green-revolution","category-health","category-hemp-and-ganja","tag-cannabis","tag-health-stuff-you-need-to-know","tag-hemp","tag-marijuana","tag-pot","tag-prohibition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":612,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions\/612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}