A steady drizzle continued over the medical marijuana parade in recent days, when the federal government threatened and/or sued a few dozen MMJ storefronts in California and Washington.
In the Central District of California, which covers the Los Angeles metro area, the U.S. Attorney’s Office filed three lawsuits seeking property forfeiture and sent letters to folks associated with 66 MMJ storefronts in Anaheim and La Habra. Not only were the shops illegal under federal law, but under state law, according to a news release. “While these marijuana stores purport to be ‘medical marijuana dispensaries’ operating pursuant to California law, and claim to be distributing marijuana for medical purposes, such distribution is not a recognized exception to the [federal] Controlled Substances Act,” the U.S. said in the lawsuits. The current round of threats brings to almost 300 the number of close-or-we-will-fuck-you-in-the-ass letters sent to operators in the Central District in the past 10 months. Ouch.
Then on Thursday in the kinder, gentler Western District of Washington, the Drug Enforcement Admistration sent letters to 23 “dispensaries” that are operating near schools, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Druken’s office. “We all work hard to create a safe zone for kids in school. There is a reason that both federal and state laws prohibit sales of marijuana in school zones. We need to enforce one message for our students: drugs have no place in or near our schools,” Durken said. Ouch again, a little. I am down with keeping drugs away from kids, mmmkay?
If this all seems a bit depressing, please remember that it seems momentum is behind the MMJ community across the nation. The train is moving too fast for the federal government to stop it. Thank you, Western District of Washington, where federal officials seem to be reasonable and, well, kind. California U.S. attorneys, please take note of your esteemed colleagues in Washington. Meanwhile, I guess we will all just keep marching along in the MMJ parade under our umbrellas.
This article appears in Aug 23-29, 2012.
It’s possible that many of the early Prohibitionists did not actually intend to kill hundreds of thousands worldwide and put 1 in every 30 American adults under supervision of the correctional system while bringing shame upon what was once a shining beacon of liberty and prosperity. But predictively similar to our “Great Experiment” of the 1920s, this foolish and counter-productive ‘re-run’ has once again spawned rampant off-the-scale criminality, corruption, a bust economy, mass unemployment, the world’s highest incarceration rate, a civil war in Mexico, an un-winnable war in Afghanistan, and an even higher rate of drug-use (both legal & illegal) than in all other countries that have courageously refused to blindly follow us down this sadomoralistic, dystopian rat hole.
Prohibition has helped fill our Prisons and Jails to capacity. Violent criminals, murderers, rapists and child molesters are released early to create space for so called ‘drug offenders’. Half of court trial time and also a huge chunk of police officers time is pointlessly wasted. Enormous untaxed profits from illegal drugs fund multi-national criminal empires which bribe law enforcement authorities and spread corruption faster than a raging bush fire. Prohibition takes violent criminals and turns them into multi-billionaires whilst corrupting even entire countries, including our own. Our drug laws are also funding the Taliban and al-Qaeda whose illegal opium profits allow them to buy weapons and pay it’s fighters more than $300 a month, compared with the $14 paid to an Afghan policemen.
Alcohol prohibition in the US ran from 1919 to 1933 – Now google ‘The Great Wall Street Crash’ and see when that happened!
To support prohibition is such a strange mind-set. In fact, It’s outrageous insanity! –Literally not one prohibitionist argument survives scrutiny. Not one!
The only people that believe prohibition is working are the ones making a living by enforcing laws in it’s name, and those amassing huge fortunes on the black market profits. This situation is wholly unsustainable, and as history has shown us, conditions will continue to deteriorate until we finally, just like our forefathers, see sense and revert back to tried and tested methods of regulation. None of these substances, legal or illegal, are ever going to go away, but we CAN decide to implement policies that do far more good than harm.
http://1929crash.com/
If you have liberty then expect prosperity, but there’s most definitely no chance of prosperity without liberty.
well written article.
don’t ever let anyone tell you that being literate, intelligent, articulate precludes the ability to tell people to fuck themselves. imo it practically demands it. a lot.
just make it legal allready!
What they are saying is, even if you’re legal and have a licence your not.
They will bust you, if they want to and it just doesn’t matter what you think.
So…..the best thing to do is stay small and do your own thing. I like that much better.
All I know is this, the article & the posts that follow are all written by intelligent people. It’s nice to feel that I’m surrounded by support sometimes!