Reply #110

President Obama, who was recently interviewed by Rolling Stone magazine, weakly defended his administration's practice of aggressively raiding permitted dispensaries by claiming that "there haven't been any prosecutions" of medical marijuana patients. President Obama conspicuously avoided the question of why he was using Justice Department funds to carry out a campaign against medical marijuana that not only contradicts a campaign pledge, but has also far surpassed that of his predecessor President George W. Bush. Obama's Justice Department has conducted more than 200 SWAT-style raids on dispensaries and growers in at least 9 medical marijuana states since he took office in January 2009.

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The raid came during the waning days of the Bush administration, as signals from Obama of a soon-to-come change in federal marijuana policy made the future of enforcement uncertain. During Bush's presidency, DEA agents conducted more than 200 raids in California alone. But even with a new administration in place, the federal government's approach to medical marijuana has remained inconsistent. Since 2008, federal raids have occurred in Los Angeles, San Diego, Bakersfield, and other cities that license medical dispensaries. As with the previous administration, the selective enforcement of federal laws is something of a mystery.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/medical-marijuana-dispensaries-in-legal-limbo/Content?oid=2044006

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During the Bush years, the DEA raided more than a hundred California dispensaries, sometimes merely seizing their medicine and cash, sometimes prosecuting their operators and sending them to federal prison. But the DEA has also gone after a medical marijuana organization in Washington state that supplied starter plants for its members, used a federal grand jury in Oregon to obtain patient records, and even threatened New Mexico officials planning to implement that state's medical marijuana distribution program.

In Thursday's raid, DEA agents hit the Holistic Solutions dispensary in South Lake Tahoe, seizing cash and medical marijuana. They made no arrests.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2009/jan/23/medical_marijuana_dea_hits_calif