Tweet
Just as US Attorney General Eric Holder announces that he will shortly “clarify Department policy” on marijuana dispensaries in states where laws allow them (Rhode Island in particular) United States Attorney Dwight Holton rounded up all but two of the District Attorneys in Oregon to sign a letter about the Feds’ zero tolerance policy:
“The sale of marijuana for any purpose—including as medicine—violates both federal and Oregon law and will not be tolerated,” says the warning from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. “People and businesses that conduct sales of marijuana face the risk of prosecution, civil enforcement action and seizure of assets.”
The letter is also signed by the head of the Oregon Sheriffs Association and the Oregon Chief of State Police. Missing is the signature of the Multnomah (Portland) County District Attorney:
One notable absence from the list of co-signers is Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schrunk. He tells WW his office has different priorities.
“I don’t like to threaten things that we realistically are not geared up to do,” Schrunk says. “We’ve been at the forefront of trying to do rehabilitation for drug offenders. We have one of the oldest drug courts in the country. I think we’ve tried to have a progressive, realistic view.”
US Attorney Holton’s letter (at Willamette Week here) follows the familiar, sweeping format of other heavy federal warnings to “owners, operators and landlords of Oregon marijuana dispensaries.” It’s the first of its kind in Oregon. Since the invented terror beat may be unraveling for Holton, the US Attorney may think it’s time to crack down on the other evildoers amongst us: sick people who need the medicine their own doctors have prescribed that fixes what ails them.
Because that’s how our federal government needs to occupy its time. Right?
61 Comments
Essentially, Holton’s Terror Team lost a big argument in the Mahomud case this week, trying to protect the FBI from having to turn over the broken tape recorder and dead battery that was supposed to have captured the critical first conversation between the alleged “bomber” and his entrappers. So he needed a distraction. This letter must be it.
Hello, Teddy, **hugs**
Just as the DEA swiveled from alcohol prohibition to cannabis prohibition (can’t have unemployed agents, yanno), so will all the drones, surveillance, SWAT tactics be moved from Iraq to be refocused on us. Although if anyone is worried about the future employment prospects of the DEA SWAT, they are so well trained they could join the army.
tweeted, recommended and upvoted at reddit teddy. thanks for bringing this travesty to my attention.
Teddy, my thinking is that the schizo statements by AG Holder is tied up with the fact of Leonhart heading up the DEA. Why Obama ever appointed her is a mystery to me.
This link, invented terror beat may be unraveling for Holton, doesn’t mention Holton; please clarify. Or are you simply pointing out that the U.S. Attorney’s office in Oregon is as screwed up as the one in Alabama?
Holder: DOJ Won’t Target Medical Marijuana in States That Allow It
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/holder_doj_wont_target_medical_marijuana_in_states_that_allow_it/
Senate to vote on the appointment of Michele Leonhart to head DEA
http://www.talkingdrugs.org/senate-to-vote-on-the-appointment-of-michele-leonhart-to-head-dea
Appointed head of DEA two 1/2 years after Holder’s initial statement; and thank you Al Franken:
http://stash.norml.org/sen-al-franken-d-mn-on-michelle-leonhart-appointment-as-dea-administrator
Cannabis policy and particularly allowing medical use is near a demographic tipping point where it will opposing it will become a political liability rather than de rigeur for politicians. We just have to wait for perhaps a couple million more ignorant old people to die and it’s a done deal.
Like many other social issues, the die is cast and as allowing marijuana to be legally consumed won’t throw a wrench into the real priority of the powers that be- concentrating the nation’s wealth into fewer and fewer hands- it, like gay marriage, will eventually come to pass. The superwealthy just don’t really have a dog in this fight. The only changes that will absolutely not be allowed are those that will take money from the pockets of the rich or otherwise address wealth inequalities. Everything else is on the table when the polling data says to switch sides. The powers that be don’t really give a rip about any of this social policy stuff one way or the other as long as it doesn’t interfere with their taking everyone else’s money away from them.
Bigger problems to be revealed however. This in today from Jeff Kaye:
Dwight Holton is the US Attorney for Oregon, whose subordinates lost their arguments in the Mohamed Mohamud hearing this week in federal court here: the FBI has to turn over the recorder and dead battery that did NOT capture the first conversation with the erstwhile terrorist.
Not sure what your Alabama question refers to.
Eric Holder has been dishonest about medical marijuana since he was sworn in: federal raids continue across all states, and his subordinates issue letters that frighten landlords and threaten dispensaries everywhere. It’s maddening.
Your argument is correct except that super-majorities are required in polls before politicians actually move on issues: note that DADT repeal was favored by more than three-quarters of Americans before it happened.
What I meant is that the Oregon U.S. Attorney’s office is as fucked up as the Alabama U.S. Attorney’s office as per the diaries RogerShuler has been writing.
It’s more than maddening as it puts the whole medmari movement in a situation it should not have to be confronting.
The U.S. response to the U.N. report is but another example of stinkin thinkin by the U.S. government, just like the foreign policy. Acting in a manner that is actually against the interests of the country.
…”happened” being still executory
Obama keep his word and did add a layer of transparency to his administration.
No one can now doubt that Barack H. Obama is a Republican, fascist tool.
Again, thanks Teddy.
Oops! Make that “…kept…”. :>)
I am happy to see Washington’s war on marijuana morph into a war on the states. Another front is opening in Vermont where the Fascists will prevent single payer health care. Washington is increasingly and correctly identified as the enemy of the people. I don’t believe there will be revolution but instead several or many secession movements.
I don’t believe we the people should tolerate Dwight Holton.
Yep, HI Teddy and thanks as everyone has pointed holder has the same problem 0 has, say one thing and do the opposite.
Having just watched “Inside Job,” I was struck by how many millions the banks make, after their unregulated escapades, laundering drug money. The War on Drugs is very profitable to the MOTU. If you haven’t seen the film, do. The interviews with the two rightwing academics from Columbia, Mishkin and Hubbard, are priceless.
Does Obama want to lose Portland? Without Portland Dems lose Oregon and Portland is one place where Lefties and Potheads can swing a vote.
Note also that state police organizations are increasingly using traffic stops for fishing expeditions, in that they are actively using them to inquire into other possible unrelated violations, such as drug possession, not just use or trafficking.
They are receiving explicit training in how to evaluate the driver, occupants and car for a host of “suspicious” signs that might signal violations wholly unrelated to traffic violations. Presumably, being para-military and bureaucratic organizations, their staff are being graded on how many such violations they find.
Good for stats, good for revenue. Not so good for the public, as it is another sign of increasingly intrusive police efforts that broadly target everyone, not just those under active investigation based on probable cause. Be aware, too, that cell phone and car computer data and metadata can make the most innocuous statements or estimates seem like lies.
In general, be peaceful and cooperative; do not fill in the blanks, but answer direct statements with facts, not characterizations. Do not agree with characterizations or follow leading questions offered by the police. I don’t know and I don’t recall are just fine until you understand the context, purposes and limits of the stop. Discretion and blandness are quite sufficient initial responses.
The Obama/Blue Dog problem is they try and appeal to a middle that is the middle position not the middle position of the majority of voters.
Forget the medical evidence, forget what the majority of voters want.
Forget regulating the Oxy mills in Florida they get a pass. I am sure the beer, Vicodin and Oxy makers are happy we must force Americans who work physical labor to pay to kill their pain rather than grow a garden.
Never mind the addictive nature of the legal stuff…thats a design feature to get more money!
My, my, welcome to a police state!
The ‘We’ who know that the Bill of Rights is being flushed down the commode is getting smaller everyday.
I think the same guys who do the numbers for O’s economic policy are doing the numbers for his drug policy.
Just think how many farmers would not need government cash if they could grow pot.
Sure the average guy will grow it in a garden but for pot food which since it gives people the munchies I am sure pot will be included in every bit of processed food once its legal. I expect 21 and above sections in grocery stores and of course Pot Beer will be the next big thing.
Organic Portland pot beer will be huge!
But of course the Crony Capitalist like things as they are because they are already making money off of legal drugs.
Keep pot illegal and keep sending African Americans to prison in greater numbers than Whites is Holder’s plan?
When will Holder and Obama do anything about the fact Dark People get sent to prison more for the same crimes?
I want to hear those Oreo’s do something about that rather than hear more about another way the system can send Dark People to jail.
Note Mods when your African American and you betray your own people ( as well as every Dark Person who voted for you ) your an Oreo slang terms for traitors should be allowed if the person explains why the label fits and provides an argument.
Cripes how many Dark People not only African Americans can’t get good jobs because of Pot felonies?
I count at least one here at the Lake…me:)
But, but — like in other “wars” there’s so much money in it!
The federal and state expenditures so far this year on the drug war are about $18 billion according to the Drug War Clock.
And fight serious opposition like Taliban or Yemenis? Ha!
Parasites eating the seed corn we take productive people and put them in jail. we lose as a society the cost of educating potheads, we lose the taxes they would have paid if they could get the jobs they deserve on merit. We lose as lesser people get these jobs instead.
But but cops need jobs and Dems and GOPers need scapegoats!
There is plenty of crime for cops to stop and if Dems and GOPers talked about and created jobs they would not need scapegoats to get votes.
But yes to create jobs the Rich would have to be taxed at 90% like FDR did.
We can either save the economy now and tax the rich to create jobs or we can watch the rich get less and less rich as the bottom food chain they feed on gets poorer.
Again, the feds working to insure Big Pharma will corner the market and get all the receipts from pot. How many Big Pharma lobbyists are not wanting the legality of pot? More people harm and wipe others out when under the influence of alcohol–not when under the influence of pot. But the drunk defense works so well for so many in court when bad things happen to wealthy people. Why does it appear the fed government researches, does trials, grows and makes the purest form of pot themselves? How come? What for?
Cannabis should be re-legalized and all pot-related felonies erased from the record, for the sake of social justice, for one. **hugs**
So many hugely important issues would be resolved or amazingly improved with legalization, it’s makes your mind swim.
Two – industrial and environmental repercussions – google properties of hempcrete. (sequesters carbon, insulates)
Three – world hunger – google nutritional properties of hemp seed.
Four – medical, of course, but google endocannabinoid regulatory system. (returns body to homeostasis ((rest, calm)), bringing down inflammation, panic attacks, etc,)
Five – destroying cartels; if we all could grow our own, pot would be cheaper than tomatoes and not worth the bother.
“Because that’s how our federal government needs to occupy its time. Right?”
Of course it is, for a terror police modeled on a proto-Gestapo structure.
Why does it appear the fed government researches, does trials, grows and makes the purest form of pot themselves? How come? What for?
To isolate the chemicals in pot and improve them in such a way that only drug companies and not regular people can make them once they have a product that can compete with pot and is of course addictive addiction is a great way to get return customers they drug companies will introduce legal pot probably with a commercial showing Obama and Holder eating new legal pot brownies.
After all Bob Dole did commercials for Viagra
Thanks for the hug:) Your arguments make economic sense but the Crony Capitalist Parasites are already making money off the current system and are to lazy to invest in new opportunities…that would require work!
This is why Green Energy can’t get any serious funding in America big oil has made the rich rich and they don’t want to work to create anything new because they already got cash.
And of course new rich people making money off of legal pot, green energy, etc would compete with their kids.
In a sense tax cuts for the rich kills jobs, kills innovation, and results in Reverse Darwinism just look at Bush, then look at the current crop of GOPers who want to be President and can’t even get Bush level polling.
Despite running against a President with $4 gas and 9% unemployment.
Obama may lose California for threatening massive Fed enforcement if Cal legalized it. 46 per cent voted yes. If just 25% of them decide to not vote for O, he loses Cal, and the election. Then he joins Big Dawg at 3 million a year…
Add Washington State to that list if you lose Seattle you can’t win Washington.
I am reading “The DEA Nobody Knows”, an investigative journalism expose of the consummate ineffectiveness of the DEA. But it is only available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.
The DEA uses the J. Edgar Hoover style of secret police organization to intimidate everyone from Congress on down, apparently including Obama and Holder, whose initial policy statements on medical marijuana were openly contradicted and countermanded by several DEA and US Attorney districts, so far with impunity. It’s tragic we have elected such a weak person as President.
Obama and Holder are fascists.
And they are also using traffic stops to throw dope on people, when they search for an hour and a half and find nothing.
You got all this right. Sad but true.
In what world is Obama a “Democrat”? I’d love to hear one sound reason ANYONE would vote to reelect him. He MUST BE primaried!
It’s a slippery slope folks: let the plans grow freely and pretty soon the animals will get ideas…
er…plants
My state, Colorado, is one of I think sixteen states that have okayed medical marijuana. Our state left loopholes in which counties and cities could make selling and growing illegal, what a mess!
Jeralyn Meritt keeps track of the developments with Holder and the state AGs.
http://www.talkleft.com/tag/medical%20marijuana
“We just have to wait for perhaps a couple million more ignorant old people to die and it’s a done deal.”
If they’re really the problem, it’s doubly tragic, since the aged mind can derive huge benefits from moderate cannabis use …
Exactly correct. Gates said it “will happen” on his watch, but it can’t happen on his watch if he leaves the Pentagon at the end of June, since certification hasn’t happened nor has the statutory post-certification 60-day waiting period happened.
Thanks for that link, I had meant to include a link to Jeralyn in my post. She’s on top of this issue nationally.
Dang, this is all so sad and so overwhelming.
The DEA intimidates doctors, using the threat of rescinding their ability to prescribe medicine. Without that license, a doctor can’t function.
I find this article confusing. Oregon Pot Dispensaries. . . so has that state decriminalized at the state level, or not?
If not the article makes sense, and the stern warnings from state enforcement officials (save one) would be consistent with Oregon law.
Either way, state decriminalization or not, such would not affect Fed law and the right (or obligation?) of the Feds to enforce it. Holder’s prior statement that deprioritizing some enforcement in states which decriminilize was interesting, but also problematic.
Nonetheless for any state to demur at the state level, either by decriminalization or negative prioritization, it would inconvenience the Feds and cost Fed money to enforce its own desired end game rather than just letting a state do that effort on its own.
As an extreme example suppose all 50 states decriminalized and said to the DEA, in effect, to go ahead and enforce the Fed law and leave us alone. In other words, “We will not assist, be an agent, or be a party to that.” Practically speaking wouldn’t that amount to a near veto at the states’ level? Of course that won’t happen, but it illustrates that some erosion of Fed authority will inevitably build up whenever an additional state joins that list in one way or another — wasn’t Mass was the most recent to do so?
Especially since he wants to practice medicine without a license.
YOU READ MY MIND VER BATUM…
Actually I think you’re right own on both accounts: “plans” as in “thinking for oneself” as well as “plants.”
I didn’t vote for Obama (nor McCain) in 2008 and won’t be doing so in 2012. I refuse to be an accessory to evil and I hope you feel the same way.
Bingo!
People outside tech and biotech industries have no idea of the intensity of focus and the destroy-anything-in-our-way thinking that possess the execs of these corporations.
The deeper I look into the chemical and biological properties of cannabis, the more I see the *huge* potential that lies in this lovely plant.
But if I can grow it, isolate the compounds (there are several ways, doable in simple labs), and use it to address major physical and psychological issues….well a wide range of highly-profitable drugs become completely unneeded.
This is economic war. Stop the F’ing hippies before they destroy the golden goose.
(And as pointed out above, the PTB have to do this *now* before a critical mass of the population discovers how helpful cannabis can be.)
Here in California it’s not just The Big O that could lose.
We all feel pretty smug about the third-party status of the Republican Party these days. Dems own this state.
Kiss that dominance goodbye.
He won’t lose Oregon.
But if an electoral swing state like Ohio or Florida or Pennsylvania was a med marijuana state, I bet Obama would be a little more progressive on the issue.
There’s an easy cure for this: click on one of the little blue words (teh kidz call them “links”) in Teddy’s post, and read what appears on your screen. Seriously, it would certainly take less time and effort than penning several paragraphs of confused questions, and would have the bonus effect of not annoying the rest of us.
(Short version of the answer: Oregon decriminalized medical marijuana use in 1998 for individuals with a doctor’s prescription, but the law makes no mention of dispensaries. The resulting legal grey area is the source of the ongoing dance between those who are eager to profit from dispensing it and the drugwarriors whose continued lucrative income depends on spreading lies and FUD about marijuana being evil and dangerous.)
Brilliant analysis.
Keep on truckin, friend.
I always wonder about that shrinking set of Teh Rich – what do they do, where do they go, and with whom? They’re setting themselves adrift in a lifeboat in stormier seas full of drowning people clawing to get into their boat. Will they have to resort to cannabalism to survive, when their supply lines go down? They should take off their Rich insignia and melt into the crowd before we all get to that point.
Pharma joins the Oil/MIC.
ThingsComeUndone; left conversation bits above.
You don’t even need to synthesize this wonderful plant- ingest it whole and let your body choose among the 60, or 80+ phythcannabinoid buffet natural cannabis serves up. Also, google ‘endocannabinoid regulatory system’ (= our own body’s cannabinoid system ((consisting of 2 cannabinoids, receptors (((present everywhere in our body except the medula oblongata controlling involuntary heart rate and breathing, thus making it impossible to kill yourself with cannabis)))).
Western medicine says we have to isolate one compound from a plant, synthesize it, measure it to an average standard, and inject in sterile conditions. The other way is herbal; you plant and tend and nurture this living plant, keeping it from pests and molds (lady bugs and cinnamon), form a living relationship with it (oh, hello, Prince Charles, fancy seeing you here!), and I swear this plant will play a spiritual role again amongst hoi polloi and be empowering.
sorry; phytocannabinoid
Bingo!
Cannabis is the Get-Off-the-Grid plant! Except for TV, you could retire and never miss a beat. Clothes, fuel oil, nutrition, hempcrete, chicken feed. In fact, homesteaders couldn’t imagine why revenuers started ripping out their hemp patches, back in the 1930s.