Fakes Left, Goes Right

OBAMA'S CROSSOVER DRIBBLE ON MARIJUANA POLICY

Executive summary: Obama fakes left, goes right. Passes to Holder at
the head of the key. Holder holds the ball, looking for a cutter.
Looks in to Brown posting up, then swings it over to Russoniello on
the wing. The Warriors veteran finds Obama behind a screen from
Holder. Obama launches from beyond the arc... Off back iron. Rebound, Sibelius.

It has been business as usual for the Drug Enforcement Administration
since Barack Obama took office. Attorney General Eric Holder has
decreed a "policy change," and some PC (as in Pro-Cannabis) lobbyists
and lawyers have hailed that "policy change" as a major victory. But
try explaining it to workers at any of the six dispensaries that have
been raided by the Obama-era DEA.

"I would have let them in if they would have showed me something,"
said John W., 35, who came to the front door of Emmalyn's on Howard
St. in San Francisco on the afternoon of March 25. "They were dressed
kind of like me," according to John, who was garbed in a football
jersey. "Once they actually got in I could see that they had
bulletproof vests that said DEA on the back. But I couldn't see that
from the door. The only thing I could see was a person with a gun. I
asked for a search warrant or a badge but they didn't show me either
one, they just battered down the gate.

"They rushed in and pushed us down -me, two or three patients, a lady
who doesn't work here anymore, and Rose [a beautiful woman of 30 who
was behind the counter when your correspondent visited Emmalyn's a
week after the raid]. There were between 15 and 20, all DEA. The man
lying next to me didn't put up any kind of struggle but he kept
saying, 'I'm a patient.' And 'Why are you doing this?'"

"They never asked me no questions. They just went through the whole
place and took the medicine we had and the little bit of money." Some
heavy machinery was deployed to rip out a safe that had been bolted
to the floor. The agents hauled it off, past a passionate group of
protesters on the sidwalk chanting, "This medicine is marijuana.
Listen to Obama." Did they know that Obama has said no such thing?

"To me it was robbery," John said of the raid. "That's how it feels.
I was scared at first but then I just started listening to their
conversations. They were in such a good mood, like they'd just won a
championship or something. Then when they didn't find very much they
started saying, 'There should be more. There should be more.' We
tried to tell them that upstairs was just a tenant who had nothing to
do with us but they went up there and broke in and actually took
their stereo equipment out of their apartment.

"A lot of their conversation was really sarcastic. Like poking shots
at us and the whole movement. 'You guys are pretending that dope is
medicine...' It was really disturbing but I just stayed quiet. They
saw a headline on the West Coast Leaf (a tabloid that covers the
medical marijuana movement/industry) about Obama ending the raids and
that gave them a big laugh: 'We didn't get that memo.'

"One agent asked me if I had a card. I said yes. He said 'Well,
what's wrong with you?' I said "Better than me tell you, I could show
you. And I showed him. I have a disease called Blount's Disease. One
of the bones in the bottom portion of my leg didn't grow. See, if I
stand up straight, you can see how much shorter one of my legs is.
(About two-three inches.) He said, 'Well that medicine is not going
to help your leg grow.' That's highly disrespectful. But you know, I
was like, 'Why am I even debating with this person?'

"I figured that it wasn't the time or the place to tell them the
truth. A lot of people come through here. People in wheelchairs,
young people in wheelchairs, the handicapped. Different
problems. Sometimes people won't have cards, they'll have their
letter of recommendation. Even though I try not to read 'em, the
information is on there. It makes me feel bad for them: AIDS
patients, hepatitis patients, cancer patients. Sometimes people come
in here and they just start to cry because they're appreciative that
we're here because out of all the medications that they take, this is
one that they really get relief from."

The raid was typical in that no arrests were made. Emmalyn's reopened
the next day with product lent by a nearby dispensary. Beautiful Rose
says, "We wanted to make sure that our patients would be taken care
of. That we would be here for them and for everybody."

Cannabis dispensaries tend to serve poor people. Rich people have
land in the country, and middle-class people have friends with land
in the country.

The raid occurred one week after Eric Holder's statement that DEA
would target only dispensaries that violated state as well as federal
law. "What state law did they violate?" wonders attorney Brendan
Hallinan (Terence's son), who is representing Emmalyn's. "They were
permitted by the city. They were in the process of changing their
layout to provide wheelchair access. They take pride in their low
prices. They were one of the smallest clubs in San Francisco in terms
of how many patients they served."

Documents laying out the DEA's case against Emmalyn's are under seal
because the investigation is supposedly ongoing. If it turns out that
the operators were laundering money or importing BC bud, then
dispensaries that don't engage in such practices can continue to
believe that the Obama Administration will leave them alone. But if
Emmalyn's is charged with nothing more than unpaid taxes -which
should provoke a warning from the state board of equalization, not a
rip-and-run from DEA- then the terror level will rise back to blood
orange, as in the time of Bush.

Don't be surprised if Obama's approval rating begins slipping in
California and beyond. Millions of people felt offended when he made
light of the marijuana question during his on-line press conference.

Desperately Seeking Clarification

With acting DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart (a Bush appointee) by
his side, Attorney General Holder told reporters March 18 that the
Department of Justice would henceforth target "people, organizations,
that are growing, cultivating substantial amounts of marijuana and
doing so in a way that's inconsistent with federal law and state
law." In the week that followed, proceedings in three federal cases
were put on hold pending clarification of the supposed "policy change."

In Los Angeles, U.S. District Court Judge George Wu delayed the
sentencing of Charles Lynch and asked the U.S. Attorney to provide a
written summary of the new DOJ policy. Lynch, who operated a
dispensary in Morro Bay, had been convicted on cultivation-for-sale
charges. He contended that he was operating legally under California
law and with the support of city officials.

In San Jose, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel asked the US Attorney
to produce a written version of the new policy, which could affect a
case now called Santa Cruz v. Holder. The case stems from the
September, 2002 raid on WAMM (The Wo/Man's Alliance for Medical
Marijuana). The city and County of Santa Cruz subsequently sued the
Attorney General for blocking the implementation of California's
medical marijuana law.

In San Francisco, attorney Bill Panzer asked U.S. District Judge
Charles Breyer for 30 days to seek an explanation from AG Holder of
the reported "policy change." Panzer represents Ken Hayes in a case
dating back to 2002. At the time Hayes was indicted (along with Ed
Rosenthal and Rick Watts), he was in Canada, having moved there with
his wife and one-year-old son. He remained out of the country until
late 2008. Panzer wrote a letter in February and another in March to
US Attorney Joseph Russoniello asking how the DOJ "policy change"
would affect settlement of the case against Hayes. After getting no
reply, Panzer told Judge Breyer that the US Attorney had a conflict
of interest because he was pursuing a policy contrary to that of his
client, the United States of America. Breyer said he didn't want to
get in the middle of a discussion between the AG and the US Attorney,
and gave Panzer his 30-day delay. "Holder already has my letter,"
Panzer told PotShots April 9.

Russoniello: Nothing's Going to Change

Another attempt to get clarification of current federal policy was
made by defense specialist Joe Elford when he and Northern District
US Attorney Joe Russoniello debated at Hastings School of Law April
8. Elford recounts:

"He said their policy didn't change in 1996. He said that they had
treated marijuana offenses the same before and after California
passed its medical marijuana law. They have a limited budget and so
they have to prioritize. His claim was that they've always gone after
the bigger dealers who make a lot of money. Which is not completely true...

"He revealed that after Attorney General's announcement, the four US
attorneys in the state met and they decided that nothing was going to
change. That the policy would be what it has always been. He said
that there would be little likelihood of a legitimate medical
marijuana provider -a grower or a dispensary-being prosecuted by the
federal authorities so long as people complied with the [state]
attorney general's guidelines. He didn't go so far as to say they
wouldn't be prosecuted, but he came close to saying that. Which is
how Americans for Safe Access feela that Obama's new policy should play out.

"He had his copy of the [state] attorney general's guidelines with
highlighted passages. He actually said that of the 300 dispensaries
in California are profiteering dispensaries which are making a bunch
of money and violate the attorney general's guidelines... All
dispensaries are fair game because they violate state law as well as
federal law. That's scary.

I asked, 'Who are you to judge what's a violation of state law?'
There's a real problem here --a process problem. A federal agent who
is not supposed to be interpreting state law makes a determination
that a dispensary is not complying with state law. So then they bust
the person and drag them into federal court where state law is not an
issue. So this person will never get a jury to pass on whether they
violated state law. They will end up getting very severe mandatory
minimum sentences.

It would be good if the U.S. Attorney talked to the [state] attorney
general about whether there's a violation of state law before taking
down a grower or dispensary. The problem is, they're going to rely on
what some rogue cop who doesn't believe in it [California's medical
marijuana law] in the first place says is a violation of state law."

Another problem is, what Elford calls "rogue cops" are most cops.

The audience," Elford went on, "was less polite than I would have
expected from a room full of law students. In response to a student's
comment about marijuana being less harmful than alcohol or
cigarettes, Russoniello actually interrupted her and said, 'No,
alcohol is more harmful than both of those substances.' That had a
significant number of the students actually jeer him."

At one point Russoniello put down the medical marijuana industry for
not having a self-policing trade association. Elford pointed out that
the threat of federal prosecution was an obstacle to forming such an
organization. "The dispensaries are trying to self-regulate and
impose standards, but you don't know how many people at these
meetings are DEA agents posing as operators, so you might be setting
yourself up for federal prosecution by trying to organize a trade association."

The overriding irony is that arch-capitalists like Joe Russoniello
- -your basic Mean White Man-- have to define making a profit as a
criminal act in order to take down medical marijuana growers and dispensaries.