Washington, DC -- On the day that Eric Holder was sworn in as the next U.S. Attorney General, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) conducted raids on multiple medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles. No arrests were made, but typical of such raids, money and medical marijuana were seized from the facility. [Americans for Safe Access [3]]
Despite President Obama’s campaign trail promises to end the DEA’s controversial attacks against state medical marijuana laws, the raids have continued under the leadership of Bush officials who have yet to be removed from office. It’s a disgraceful last minute effort to politicize the issue as the new attorney general takes office.
This is really a wicked strategy if you think about. The reality is that they simply have nothing to lose. Obama has already pledged to end these raids, so the folks who enjoy doing them are afraid they’ll be told to stop any day now. Clearly, they won’t stop until explicitly told to do so.
If DEA hopes to mount a defense of their tactics and try to persuade Obama to reverse his position, continuing the raids is their only apparent option. As ugly and unpopular as these activities have become, they must be continued in order to maintain the viability of their argument that the raids are important. After all, how important could the raids be if you aren’t even doing them?
I imagine the new president is thoroughly annoyed by all of this, as he’s hoping not to make headlines with his marijuana policy. Alas, neither the DEA nor the marijuana reform community intends to make that particularly easy for him. My assumption has generally been that Obama would quietly make the raids go away and we’d begin celebrating at an arbitrary point when it became clear that things were different. If DEA had been willing to accept that fate, things may well have played out that way.
Unfortunately, these maniacs won’t go quietly. So let’s spell it out for the new administration: You have to stop them. That’s exactly what you promised to do on the campaign trail and it clearly didn’t bite you at the ballot box. Fix this now.