By Sam Sabzehzar | October 26, 2011
Retired LAPD Deputy Chief Stephen Downing speaks to the crowd at the Federal Bldg in downtown Los Angeles.
Anna T. Boyce, one of the Co-authors of California’s Compassionate Use Act, is urging President Obama to do what he does best and sit down to discuss the escalating overreach by Federal authorities on medical marijuana in their war on drugs.
In what has become an overwhelming show of solidarity for medical marijuana in California, and resistance from a federal push back that has threatened the state’s medical patient population, a multi-pronged approach has united voices fighting for one cause, and it has never been louder.
Ms. Boyce is one of the originators of Prop 215 and is saddened by the lack of leadership in California, and even more disgusted with the lack of leadership out of Washington on this issue.
California was the first state to legalize medical cannabis, and the federal government has a threshold for allowing federal illicit substance; beyond 15 years is too long and time to reign in.
If there mere act of a state allowing it isn’t tolerated by D.C., like the letters to more recent states suggests, why has Obama’s Justice Department waited 15 years to tell us what they told Arizona in six months.
Anna’s letter asking the president to sit down was delivered to the Los Angeles U.S. Attorney’s office during a protest where hundreds of medical marijuana patients and patient advocates gathered to galvanize support and solidarity for the millions of medical cannabis patients throughout the country.
Other protests are also taking place in California and other states that allow for the medical use of marijuana.
California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who was put into office through the support of medical marijuana patients, issued a statement in support of patient’s rights as well, citing that an overly broad reach by the feds will affect safe access rights for qualified patients.
There will be a series of events planned to apply pressure at the grassroots level leading up to a rally in Sacramento lead by Americans for Safe Access November 9.
Last week, Regulate Marijuana Like Wine proponent and retired Superior Court Judge Jim Gray lead a press conference where he issued an indictment to the elected officials in Sacramento and throughout the state that have failed to do their jobs and create responsible regulations.
A Los Angeles rally this week underscored those points, and many others, as leaders from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition once again revealed damaging indictments regarding the practices of the police chiefs and departments that are taking federal funds and enforcing federal drug laws in exchange for those dollars, in the face of scientific date proving these practices have failed as a law enforcement policy.
Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and Senator Mark Leno have voiced their concern and contempt for the federal overreach, and Congressmen Farr and Rohrabacher are preparing statements and pushing for anti-prohibition legislation nationwide.
In the most current issue of O’Shaughnessy’s, Fred Gardner’s article “The ‘War on Drugs’ is NOT a Failure,” contents that these failed policies help the war be a success by keeping a self-sustaining economy driving foreign and domestic policy, aids in the infringement of our rights, and keeps our for-profit prison industrial complex well-funded on Wall Street.
Bush wouldn’t need to justify these things, but for DEA raids on medical marijuana on Obama’s watch, the rhetoric that drug cartels will become the reasoning behind the policies that will lead to the further success of the prison-industrial complex, the pharmaceutical industry, weapons manufacturers and corrupted policy makers and enforcers, like those involved in the ATF ‘Fast and Furious’ campaign that lead to mexican cartels armed to the teeth who found themselves promoted even after the FBI whistleblower gave an exclusive to the main stream media.
With the fight moving from the streets to the courts in the upcoming months, the DEA will be defending their logic behind scheduling cannabis in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, which has lead to departments such as the NYPD to plant the plant to meet the quota that was set to justify the budget that was created to bust the kid that didn’t have it them anyway.
Maybe by then President Obama will have meet with Anna T. Boyce and will not have tried to reconcile his statements with the his Justice Department’s actions, and why they aren’t going after the rogue agents that are breaking the law to justify enforcing it?
Perhaps it’s because the policies are failures but the tactic is to fail in the War on Drugs, which makes it a successful war for those who waged it.
