The Mexican drug cartels feed on the marijuana prohibition, deriving two-thirds of their incomes from selling marijuana in the U.S.  The violence they use to protect this cash flow is among the most vicious, sadistic brutality committed in the world today.

Unable to convey the full horror of the acts being committed with normal words, the Mexican media invented new ones. This is their glossary (Los Angeles Times):

Levanton: the kidnapping of one or more members of a rival gang, or other enemy. Unlike traditional kidnappings, the point is not ransom, but to torture and kill a foe. Victims of a multiple levanton may end up fusilados.

Fusilados: from the Spanish for rifle, to be executed in the style of a firing squad, or with a shot to the head, known as a tiro de gracia. This occurred in an attack at a Ciudad Juarez drug-treatment clinic in early September.

Encajuelado: Based on the word for “trunk,” a body dumped in the trunk of a car. This is a common method of disposing of victims of a drug hit. Often, the bodies are bound and gagged with packing tape or are encobijados, wrapped in blankets. Sometimes they are accompanied by a handwritten narcomensaje.

Narcomensaje: A scrawled drug message, often rambling or peppered with misspellings. Such missives are typically meant to threaten rival drug cartels or government security forces. Messages sometimes take the form of banners, known as narcomantas, and hung from bridges or in other public places to demonstrate a gang’s audacity.

Plaza: Not the quaint public square you see in nearly every Mexican town, but rather any defined drug marketplace, such as a smuggling point. Much of the violence since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon declared war on drug cartels, is due to fighting among gangs over coveted plazas, or turf, including street-level sales taking place in tienditas.

Tiendita: Any place where drugs are sold in small quantities on the street — a house, apartment building or even a little store. Tienditas, or “little stores,” play a big role in what Mexican officials say is a worrisome increase in domestic drug use and addiction in Mexico, which once served mainly as a pipeline to the United States with little local consumption.

Halcones: To guard strongholds, trafficking groups rely on a network of street-level informants — taxi drivers, fruit vendors, teen boys — known as halcones, or falcons. Halcones provide early warning of the arrival of federal police or soldiers that have been dispatched around Mexico as part of Calderon’s drug war.

Cuerno de chivo: “Goat horn,” nickname for the AK-47 assault rifle, a favorite of cartel gunmen. The name refers to the curved shape of the magazine. Hit men are increasingly making use of even more powerful weapons, including .50-caliber machine guns and 40-millimeter grenade launchers. Authorities also report a rise in the use of potent pistols, able to fire through body armor, that are known here as matapolicias, or cop killers.

Narco-(anything): It’s handy for headline writers and coiners of terms that narco combines with almost any noun. Alone, narco can refer to a trafficker or the entire illegal drug trade, as in, “The government’s war against el narco.”

A little creativity yields narco-fiestas (opulent, drug-laden parties featuring foreign dancers or big-name musical groups), narco-zoologicos (narco-zoos, collections of exotic animals that, for some reason, are collectors’ items for traffickers) and narco-candidatos (politicians reputed to be in cahoots with drug gangs).

Attorneys who defend suspected capos are narco-abogados, or narco-lawyers.

Narco-policias are cops on the take.

And representing the drug war’s next generation: Narcojuniors, the well-heeled children of traffickers accused of helping run the criminal enterprises.

(Los Angeles Times) With its moratorium on new medical marijuana dispensaries declared unlawful, the Los Angeles City Council is now poised to act quickly on a strict ordinance that it has struggled with fitfully for more than two years.

On Tuesday, the city attorney’s office delivered a draft that some members want the council to take up within a week. The sudden acceleration stems from a Superior Court ruling Monday that left the city unable to enforce its ban and derailed its four-month-old drive to shut down new dispensaries.

Under the latest proposal, most dispensaries would be required to close immediately and could not apply to reopen for six months. The 186 dispensaries that registered with the city when it passed its moratorium in 2007 would be allowed to remain open for six months, but then would have to meet the ordinance’s requirements.

You’re going to immediately shutter some 600+ medical marijuana storefronts?  The illegal marijuana dealers of the Los Angeles Basin couldn’t have asked for a better windfall.  The Mexican drug gangs sure have to like this change of events.  What, you didn’t think the Los Angelenos who have been keeping those storefronts in business were just going to stop smoking pot, did you?

The ordinance could effectively outlaw most dispensaries in the city by prohibiting sales of medical marijuana. Both City Atty. Carmen Trutanich and Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley maintain that state law does not allow over-the-counter sales, though they say collectives owned by the members are allowed to recoup their expenses. Dispensary operators say the sales, usually in 1/8 -ounce increments, are meant to cover their operating costs.

The ordinance requires collectives to keep records on members and suppliers and to make them available to police, which operators fear could leave them vulnerable to federal prosecution even though the Justice Department on Monday formally told its prosecutors not to pursue medical marijuana users and dispensaries that follow state law.

The draft ordinance also adds a provision that requires collectives to notify council members and neighborhood councils of their plans to open, and another that bars anyone who was convicted of a felony within the previous 10 years or who is on parole or probation from managing a collective.

So, like, if you were growing medical marijuana for patients and providing it to them in a collective way, like, say, Eddy Lepp, and the feds prosecute you and make you a felon, then you, one of the most experienced people for the job, are not eligible.

In addition, the ordinance would limit the number of dispensaries by requiring them to be at least 1,000 feet from schools, parks, libraries, religious institutions, child care facilities, youth centers, hospitals, medical facilities, substance abuse rehabilitation centers and other collectives.

In a dense urban environment like Los Angeles, I doubt there are very many properties that aren’t within 1,000 feet from one of those institutions.  Can we at least open dispensaries next to liquor stores; I always seem to see them within 1,000 feet of those institutions.

The ordinance also would restrict the dispensaries’ operations. They could be open only between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. They could have no more than 5 pounds of marijuana or 100 plants on hand, and marijuana could not be consumed on site. They also would not be allowed to sell or manufacture edible marijuana products.

I don’t think Carmen Trutanich and Steve Cooley have ever seen Star Wars: A New Hope. Like Darth Vader battling Obi-Wan Kenobi in a lightsaber duel, they don’t realize that killing the Jedi master only makes him a stronger agent of The Force.  For over a decade now, people in Los Angeles have grown accustomed to buying quality marijuana in many varieties and forms from business establishments.  They have seen a hint on the promised land and will not appreciate returning to the “call my guy and wait and hope and take whatever weed I can get” world.

This action by the LA City Council will backfire in the worst way possible in their eyes: it will galvanize the majority that already believes marijuana should be legal for all and taxed with distribution through regulated business outlets.  There is no putting this genie back in the bottle.  Californians have seen semi-legalized marijuana and they like it.

(Los Angeles Times) A Superior Court judge concluded today that Los Angeles’ moratorium on new medical marijuana dispensaries is invalid and granted a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the ban sought by a dispensary that had sued the city.

Judge James C. Chalfant determined that the city failed to follow state law when it extended its initial moratorium. “The city cannot rely on an expired ordinance,” he said.

Green Oasis and a number of other medical marijuana collectives sued the city last month, challenging its efforts to control the dispensaries. The lawsuit argued that the City Council violated state law when it extended the ban until mid-March and that it is unconstitutionally vague.

Although the injunction applies only to Green Oasis, the judge’s ruling calls into question the city’s power to enforce the moratorium against hundreds of dispensaries that have opened in the last two years. The ruling could inspire other dispensaries to join the lawsuit or file similar actions.

Robert A. Kahn, an attorney for Green Oasis, argued that the dispensary did nothing wrong, noting that, under state law, the moratorium expired 45 days after it was first enacted. “The did not believe they were violating the law,” he said.

You see, Californians decide to pass Prop 215 thirteen years ago.  The language left open the possibility of opening up dispensaries.  The people turned to California and said, “Oh, somewhat wise and kinda benevolent state government, what are the rules regarding dispensaries?”  The state replied, “Uh, homina homina homina, er, federal law, eh… well, it’s up to the cities and counties.”

So the people then turned to the cities and counties and said, “Can you tell us what the rules are regarding dispensaries?”  Oakland looked about and saw there were no rules, so they set about crafting some, working with the stakeholders in the process, and ended up with clearly-defined rules, rules that have led to world-class dispensary operations that restored blighted neighborhoods and approval by the dispensaries and the public of steep taxes on the dispensaries that improve the city’s fiscal status.

But other cities, like Los Angeles, said, “We don’t have any rules for it… but we don’t have any rules against it…” and refused to promulgate any guidance to the fledgling dispensary industry.  Some people honorably worked with officials and neighborhoods and businesses to create world-class dispensary operations, but far too many other people jumped into the dispensary business to thinly veil their marijuana dealing in the cloak of medical legitimacy.  As the number of dispensaries closed in on 200, Los Angeles said, “Whoa, hold up until we can figure out how to regulate this mess!” and issued a 45-day moratorium on any new dispensaries.

But since many of the dispensaries are lawfully operating under Prop 215, Los Angeles couldn’t just issue a blanket denial of all applications for new dispensaries, so they created a loophole on the moratorium called a “hardship exemption”, a loophole large enough to drive Cheech & Chong’s Nice Dreams van through it.  For two years Los Angeles sat on its thumbs, failing to craft any rules to govern the exploding dispensary industry.  Thus the industry is closing in on one thousand outlets, and as this judge wisely decided, Los Angeles can’t just ban them by relying on an expired 45-day moratorium with a huge loophole.

This is not the fault of the dispensary industry.  The good guys have always been interested in reasonable regulations and the carpetbagging weed dealers, well, they’re doing what entrepreneurs do in the absence of regulations (see also: AIG, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Goldman-Sachs, etc.)  This is a failure of local government to do its job in protecting the public and governing business, even with thirteen years and obvious licensing issues staring at them from Los Angeles Times headlines month after month.  Now the headlines generated by the “bad apples” (especially as DA Cooley gears up to bust them all) will paint a negative picture of medical marijuana and sully the reputations of the good guys out there in LA, when it’s really the local government’s fault for letting it get so out of hand.

On the bright side, Los Angeles’ ineptitude in allowing so many retail marijuana outlets may just make this all a moot point.  There may be so many of them and so many people accustomed to their convenience that closure of any of them will lead to enough popular backlash to pass outright legalization in 2010.

OK, when I get really pissed , I like to turn the sarcasm knob to eleven…

(Los Angeles Times) Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said Thursday he will prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries for over-the-counter sales, targeting a practice that has become commonplace under an initiative approved by California voters more than a decade ago.

Because the people of Los Angeles have had enough of conveniently purchasing their marijuana in a controlled, safe storefront, paying taxes to the state, and providing a boost to the local economy.  They’d much rather go back to giving $400 cash to “their guy” who might be back in a couple of hours if he can find the other guy who said he could get the weed.  See, that’s why the number of dispensaries in Los Angeles County skyrocketed from a few dozen to a few hundred in just a couple of years, because the customers really really dislike this model and are so disgusted by the lack of problems from dispensaries that they are clamoring for DA Cooley to bring the hammer down.

“The vast, vast, vast majority, about 100%, of dispensaries in Los Angeles County and the city are operating illegally, they are dealing marijuana illegally, according to our theory,” he said. “The time is right to deal with this problem.”

See, the DA has a theory.  Not a mandate, not a clear statute being violated, but merely the wisp of an idea that maybe after he’s ransacked hundreds of taxpaying businesses, stolen their cash and destroyed their equipment, and put hundreds of thousands of needy patients back out on the streets to pick up medicine from drug dealers in the park, maybe he can lose a few court cases that he can appeal to the Supreme Court that will once and for all end marijuana sales in California… well, at least the above-ground, taxed, regulated marijuana sales.

Cooley and Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich recently concluded that state law bars sales of medical marijuana, an opinion that could spark a renewed effort by law enforcement across the state to rein in the use of marijuana. It comes as polls show a majority of state voters back legalization of marijuana, and supporters are working to place the issue on the ballot next year.

Hey, I have an idea!  If you really want to stop the 56% of California voters who want to just go ahead and legalize over-the-counter marijuana sales for everyone, wait til they’ve seen what it could look like for real on a limited, medical basis, get them used to the convenience, selection, and quality of dispensaries, and then take it all away from them in an operation that generates sympathetic visuals for wheelchair-bound Californians and compelling narratives of police-as-unwelcome, smash-and-grab thugs.  I’m sure that rather than increase the support for putting an end to your stupid prohibition once and for all, at least 7% of the California voters will change their mind because they really liked the way things were before Prop 215.

In addition to prosecuting dispensaries, Cooley said he would consider going after doctors who write medical marijuana recommendations for healthy people. Medical marijuana critics argue that some doctors freely recommend the drug to people who are not ill.

Thank goodness for all of DA Cooley’s medical school training so that he will be able to overrule a doctor’s opinion by deciding who’s too healthy to use marijuana.  President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, back in his Clinton administration days, tried this nonsense of squelching a doctor’s right of free speech and the Supreme Court stuffed it in Conant v. Walters.  But I’m sure that DA Cooley has a much tighter legal theory to support putting a cop between you and your doctor.

(Los Angeles Times) During one of the raids, officers shot a dog believed to be a pit bull, but the circumstances of the shooting remain unclear, a law enforcement spokesman said.

The Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Los Angeles Police Department, Torrance Police Department and Culver City Police Department took part in the raids.

Law enforcement agencies have been cracking down on pot dispensaries for some time, but officials did not immediately say what prompted these raids.

(Los Angeles Times) One of the people who was instrumental in pushing for laws to increase the legal drinking age to 21 now calls his actions “the single most regrettable decision” of his career.

Dr. Morris Chafetz, a psychiatrist who was on the presidential commission in the 1980s that recommended raising the drinking age to 21, made his remarks in an editorial that he is shopping for publication and which he released to the advocacy group Choose Responsibility. Chafetz wrote the editorial to mark the 25th anniversary of the law that was signed by President Ronald Reagan on July 17, 1984.

“Legal Age 21 has not worked,” Chafetz said in the piece. “To be sure, drunk driving fatalities are lower now than they were in 1982. But they are lower in all age groups. And they have declined just as much in Canada, where the age is 18 or 19, as they have in the United States.”

Chafetz said the law instead has resulted in “collateral, off-road damage” such as binge drinking that occurs in underage youth and crimes like date rape, assaults and property damage.

NORML doesn’t take a stand on the use of other drugs, other than to report scientific and medical facts about them.  For instance…

(MSNBC) Alcohol abuse kills some 75,000 Americans each year and shortens the lives of these people by an average of 30 years, a U.S. government study suggested Thursday.

Excessive alcohol consumption is the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States after tobacco use and poor eating and exercise habits.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the study, estimated that 34,833 people in 2001 died from cirrhosis of the liver, cancer and other diseases linked to drinking too much beer, wine and spirits.

Another 40,933 died from car crashes and other mishaps caused by excessive alcohol use.

And to remind you that cannabis is a far safer substance for your body and for society and its greatest harm is caused by its prohibition.

I, however, will make some personal observations about drinking age.  Way back in the Eighties, when my ties were skinny and my shoes were checkered, the drinking age in my home state of Idaho was 19.  The Summer of ‘84 was the one before senior year in high school for me, but I was only 16 and my friends were all 17 and close to 18 (I started first grade a year early because I was reading the copyright notices on the handouts for “C is for Cat” on my first days in kindergarten).

That law got signed by President Reagan and all the states were now under the blackmail threat of losing federal highway funds if they didn’t raise their drinking ages to 21.  Idaho, however, is a very libertarian-minded state.  Our state dug in its potato-mashing heels and kept the age at 19 all through my senior year and through my college years.  I am constantly humiliated by my friends all turning 19 and me being unable to join them as they went out to the nightclubs to cruise for wild American foxes because I’m still 17 or 18.

I did drink, though.  It was that Summer of ‘84 when I first drank alcohol.  Ghost Busters was playing at the Frontier Cinema (motto: there are plenty of good seats where ceiling plaster won’t fall on you) and me and the guys snuck in Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers in our trenchcoats.  Yes, we ran around in trenchcoats in the summer.  It was the Eighties and way before Columbine.  I got hammered on the six I’d snuck in.  I even knocked over the empty bottles as we left and everyone laughed as they rolled forever down the sloped theater floor.  From that point forward, drinking was a fairly routine part of our weekend party plans.

Fast forward to January of 1989.  Democratic Gov. Cecil Andrus is prepared to sign the bill passed by the Republican-dominated legislature to raise the drinking age to 21.  I am 18 years old, about to turn 19 on the last day of the month and finally join my brothers in the quest for the ever-elusive wild American foxes.  But in an amazing turn of events, ol’ Cec is out of the state and Republican Lt. Gov. Butch Otter is in charge when the bill hits the governor’s desk.  Ol’ Butch, a strong libertarian, perhaps too a fan of wild American foxes, vetoes the bill!  It was the best birthday present ever!  I turned 19, the bill didn’t get back to Andrus’s desk until April, but as it raised the age to 21 it also grandfathered-in those of us who were already drinking.

And I mean “drinking”.  Dropping out of college, becoming a full-time rock musician, and living in big rental houses with a bunch of dudes having contests over how much and how fast we could drink.  It would be another three years of that before I discovered cannabis and my drinking tapered off.

As for the drinking age, I think that if you can join the military, you can have a beer.  Or a joint.  If there is an age of majority, let it be one age.  Eighteen feels right socially – you’re out of high school, off to college, voting – and it seems right developmentally.  Let adults be adults and let’s be consistent about who the adults are.

(Los Angeles Times) Julio Ledezma had been chief of police in La Junta, a town of 8,700 in northern Mexico, for barely three months when a pair of strangers paid him a visit.

They said an aide to the mayor had sent them, and they bore gifts: a briefcase stuffed with cash and a truck for Ledezma’s personal use.

In return, the new chief was to distract federal police at security checkpoints with fake calls for assistance. The diversion would allow drug traffickers to drive through the area without inspection.

Ledezma could refuse — and be killed.

He could take the bribe — and be owned by the Juarez cartel.

He chose to stall. He told the men he had to talk to his boss first. He approached civic leaders, trying to rally support. Word got back to the traffickers, and on Ledezma’s 45th birthday, six men with military rifles surrounded his home while he was out buying steaks and jalapeños for his birthday dinner.

The gunmen told his wife that they would find him and kill him, no matter where he went in Mexico. They waited about 20 minutes, then left.

When Ledezma returned, he realized that resistance was not an option. He drove to Juarez with his wife and their 15-year-old daughter and crossed the Bridge of the Americas into El Paso. There, they asked for political asylum.

Their request will probably be rejected, because asylum is reserved for people fleeing political oppression or ethnic discrimination. Police officers who stood up to drug cartels don’t necessarily qualify.

Indeed, the U.S. government is aggressively fighting Ledezma’s petition on the grounds that the threat that caused him to flee is inherent to police work, according to his lawyer, Eduardo Beckett. U.S. immigration officials said they could not comment because asylum cases are confidential.

George Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William and Mary in Virginia and an expert on U.S.-Mexico relations, said that if immigration judges began to grant asylum liberally to people fleeing the cartels, “We’d have literally tens of thousands of police officers coming to the United States, not to mention some mayors, too.”

Down in Mexico, this scenario is called “Plata o Plomo” — “Silver or Lead” — meaning you can take the cartel’s offer of silver or you can take the cartel’s offer of bullets.

The corruption is epidemic because the cartels just have far too much money and firepower.  How many honest cops are going to stick with their $1,000 / month salaries when cartels offer ten to twenty times that much in bribes to those who’ll take them and execution style murders of entire families to those who won’t?

Just remember, 60% of that “Plata” is American money that would disappear from cartel hands if we legalized domestic production of marijuana.  How tragic – we fund the Mexican cartels because we prohibit a plant that Americans demand, then we supply 90% of the firearms and ammunition the cartels use to terrorize police, but when the police run to us in fear for their lives, we won’t grant them asylum.

(Los Angeles Times) The sentencing of a man who has become a key figure in the national debate over medical marijuana was postponed Thursday, with a federal judge saying he was inclined to impose a more lenient sentence than the five years required by federal sentencing guidelines, but questioning whether he had the authority to do so.

“If I could find a way out, I would,” U.S. District Judge George H. Wu said. He gave lawyers in the case until June 2 to file briefs regarding the impending sentence of Charles Lynch.

Lynch, 47, ran a medical marijuana dispensary in Morro Bay on the Central Coast in 2006 and 2007. Despite having the blessing of the city’s mayor and other public officials, he was charged with violating federal drug laws for distributing marijuana and was convicted by a federal court jury in Los Angeles last year.

Cultivating, using and selling doctor-recommended medical marijuana is allowed under some circumstances in California and a dozen other states, but federal law bans the drug altogether.

Though Lynch was not charged with violating state law, prosecutors contend that he broke the law because he was not truly a “primary caregiver” entitled to dispense marijuana to patients and that he profited from the operation of his business.

Much of the discussion Thursday dealt with whether Wu was required to sentence Lynch to a mandatory minimum of five years or whether the defendant was entitled to a lesser sentence under a so-called safety valve.

The next hearing in the case, which the judge said would be the last, is scheduled for June 11.

So the federal prosecutors contend Lynch was violating state law regarding the patient/caregiver relationship, yet since federal law doesn’t recognize state medical marijuana laws, Lynch isn’t allowed to mention state law in his defense.  Got it?  When it comes to federally prosecuting Lynch, his violation of state law is admissable, but when it comes to federally defending Lynch, his adherence to state law is inadmissable.

President Obama, when you promised “What I’m not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue”, isn’t the Charles Lynch case exactly what you had in mind?  Attorney General Holder, when you promised “Our focus will be on people, organizations that are growing, cultivating substantial amounts of marijuana and doing so in a way that’s inconsistent with federal and state law”, how do you justify prosecuting Charles Lynch?

Shortly after AG Holder made the announcement on Feb. 26, I wrote this:

Here’s my prediction: we will see more medical marijuana dispensary raids and the Obama Administration will claim they have no issue with legitimate medical marijuana providers, but these providers were operating outside California law and these providers were diverting medical marijuana to the black market and these providers were selling to minors and whole raft of excuses where they emphasize that these providers are a reasonable exception to “using Justice Department resources” because they were outside of Prop 215 / SB 420 / Jerry Brown’s Guidelines and therefore, the DEA is not “circumvent[ing] state laws on this issue”.

If the federal government believes that dispensaries are operating outside California law, then they need to refer those cases to California’s attorney general.  If California decides these people are violating California law, then California should prosecute them.  The promise not to conduct raids unless dispensaries break California law is hollow when the feds get to decide someone broke California law with no trial or evidence before conducting the raid.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Los Angeles Times:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I have said this before; I will repeat it: I have the greatest admiration and courage for President Calderón and his entire Cabinet, his rank-and-file police officers and soldiers as they take on these cartels. I commend Mexico for the successes that have already been achieved. But I will not pretend that this is Mexico’s responsibility alone. A demand for these drugs in the United States is what is helping to keep these cartels in business.

This war is being waged with guns purchased not here, but in the United States. More than 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border.

So we have responsibilities, as well. We have to do our part. We have to crack down on drug use in our cities and towns. We have to stem the southbound flow of guns and cash. And we are absolutely committed to working in a partnership with Mexico to make sure that we are dealing with this scourge on both sides of the border.

A “crackdown“, eh?  My dictionary defines that as “the severe or stern enforcement of regulations, laws, etc., as to root out abuses or correct a problem.”  So, Mr. President, can you explain to us what it is about the current paramilitary no-knock raids, shooting family pets and unarmed college students, tasering and abusing Baptist preachers, shooting and killing 92-year-old women and mothers holding their babies, harassing and incarcerating sick people for growing medicine, dropping dying people from transplant lists, pillaging and plundering legal California businesses, and arresting over 775,000 people for mere possession of marijuana and “inhal[ing], frequently, that was the point” that is not already a crackdown?

We reported on US Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement regarding the Obama Administration’s policy on medical marijuana providers in states with medical marijuana programs.  The Attorney General said, ”What the president said during (the) campaign . . . is now American policy,” referring to then candidate-Obama’s statement last April.  When asked about medical marijuana on a trip through Oregon, Obama said, “What I’m not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue.”

Did we celebrate too soon?  Is anyone concerned that nobody has specifically said, “The US Justice Department will not raid providers of medical marijuana in the states where that is legal” or even used the words “medical marijuana” with respect to these statements?  Are you frightened that these statements leave a bit too much wiggle room for clever politicians?  Read this story from the LA Times and then answer:

The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles sent a confidential memo to prosecutors last week ordering them to stop filing charges against medical marijuana dispensaries, then abruptly lifted the ban on Friday, according to sources familiar with the developments.

A Justice Department official said Friday that the attorney general did not direct O’Brien or any other U.S. attorney to alter policies regarding the prosecution of such cases.

In addition to being told to stop filing new cases, prosecutors were instructed to refrain from issuing subpoenas or applying for search warrants in pending cases, said the sources, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Another e-mail came out Friday instructing prosecutors to resume work on medical marijuana cases.

Here’s my prediction: we will see more medical marijuana dispensary raids and the Obama Administration will claim they have no issue with legitimate medical marijuana providers, but these providers were operating outside California law and these providers were diverting medical marijuana to the black market and these providers were selling to minors and whole raft of excuses where they emphasize that these providers are a reasonable exception to “using Justice Department resources” because they were outside of Prop 215 / SB 420 / Jerry Brown’s Guidelines and therefore, the DEA is not “circumvent[ing] state laws on this issue”.

I hope I’m wrong, because if Barack Obama can’t forsee the enormous backlash even one more raid will provoke, he’s not as savvy a politician as I once thought.