Obama Cracks Down on Medical Marijuana

People talk about the expense and pointlessness of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the equally counterproductive War on Drugs--particularly marijuana--has been going on for much longer. The most recent battles have taken this war to unique new heights of sheer absurdity as the administration of President Hopey-Changey--who many of his naive supporters might have assumed would be ratcheting things down--is now sending in Drug Enforcement Administration agents to crack down on medical marijuana dispensaries in California. Here is the Santa-Rosa Press Democrat with the story:

U.S. Drug Enforcement Agents on Thursday raided a medical marijuana cooperative that holds a Mendocino County sheriff's permit to grow medicinal pot, further demonstrating the gaping discrepancy between state and federal marijuana laws.

The seizure of 99 pot plants came less than a week after U.S. Justice Department prosecutors in California attorneys announced they would be cracking down on medical marijuana, which continues to be illegal under federal law 15 years after the state's voters approved it.

One would think that in this age of supposed federal budget "austerity" that the government would figure out a better way to expend its resources. Sadly, that is obviously not the case.

Lest you think I am being unfair to President Obama by implying that he is personally implicated in this effort, here is another tidbit from the story:

At a press conference Oct. 8 in Sacramento, the state's four U.S. Attorneys announced a crackdown on the medical marijuana business. “The California marijuana industry is not about providing medicine to the sick,” said Laura Duffy, the San Diego-based U.S. Attorney. “It's a pervasive, for-profit industry that violates federal law.”

The U.S. attorneys are political appointees who are named directly by the President. Whenever you see a coordinated effort like this among multiple U.S. Attorneys, you know that the White House has given either its implicit or explicit approval for their efforts.

So gaze for a moment upon the totality of Obama's sorry ass law enforcement record. No prosecutions for the war crimes or torture policies of the Bush Administration. No prosecution of the big banks and Wall Street for crashing the economy through fraudulent financial shenanigans. And yet he applies the full force of the law on people who grow a largely harmless natural substance to alleviate the horrible pain and suffering of cancer patients.

Once again, I'll ask the members of my former political tribe--the liberals and progressives--the key question: how the fuck would things be any worse had John McCain won the 2008 presidential election?