Pubdate: Wed, 28 Aug 2013
Source: Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
Column: Higher Ground
Copyright: 2013 C.E.G.W./Times-Shamrock
Contact:  http://www.metrotimes.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1381
Author: Larry Gabriel

THE STATE OF WEED IN AMERICA

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Pot Moms, and More

The Drug Enforcement Agency has reportedly ordered all security and 
armored vehicle companies to cease servicing marijuana businesses.

The past couple of weeks have been a very strange trip for 
Michiganders engaged with marijuana rights. It started with Dr. 
Sanjay Gupta posting an apology for his past opposition to medical 
marijuana on the CNN webpage. Titled "Why I changed my mind on weed," 
Gupta wrote that he had "mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement 
Agency listed marijuana as a Schedule 1 substance because of sound 
scientific proof."

Gupta followed that up with an hour-long CNN special titled Weed, in 
which he explored the scientific and anecdotal evidence showing that 
medical marijuana was real and effective. The most startling example 
was that of a 5-year-old girl who suffered from a form of epilepsy 
that gave her 300 life-threatening seizures each week.

After her parents - at their wits' end when no therapies helped - 
administered a CBD-rich strain of cannabis to her, the seizures 
dropped to two or three per month. The child, whose development was 
delayed due to the seizures, is now walking, talking and riding a bicycle.

That was a pretty good moment. Gupta, the man President Obama nearly 
named surgeon general of the United States in 2008, was throwing his 
weight behind medical marijuana.

But it got better. The day after Gupta's special, U.S. Attorney 
General Eric Holder gave a speech to the American Bar Association 
where he announced the federal government would no longer pursue 
mandatory minimum sentences for low-level, nonviolent drug offenders.

"Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for 
no truly good law enforcement reason," Holder said.

It wasn't coming out in support of decriminalization, but it was a 
step in the right direction and it addresses one of the many 
arguments against drug prohibition: We incarcerate more people than 
anywhere else in the world and spend a whole lot of money doing it.

Then, just a couple of days later, CNN's Piers Morgan hosted another 
special, Gone to Pot, in which he entertained arguments from both 
sides of the marijuana issue. It had more of a journalistic balance 
and it gave pro-pot activists - who don't get heard very often - 
equal footing in the argument. Included among Morgan's guests were 
four "pot moms" who claimed they were better mothers because they 
used marijuana.

All of this - in a matter of just a few days - seemed like it could 
be a PR precursor for some kind of federal softening of marijuana 
prohibition in the not-too-distant future. In the midst of all this, 
a federal judge ruled New York City's controversial stop-and-frisk 
policy, which clearly targeted racial minorities for low-level drug 
and gun possession, unconstitutional.

It looked like the changes were a-coming and they were coming fast - 
on a national level. It seemed fitting that Seattle's annual Hempfest 
was getting ready to kick off for the first time in a state that had 
legalized marijuana. In fact, there are reports out of Washington 
state and Colorado that the feds have not told them not to proceed 
with legalization provisions in those states. Colorado state Sen. Pat 
Steadman told Talking Points Memo, a Web-based news publication, they 
had "tacit approval" to proceed. Things were looking good.

Then I looked at the local scene and the story was anything but 
positive. Over the past few weeks, three area marijuana dispensaries 
have been raided. People's Choice in Ann Arbor stood out among them 
because it's located in what has long been a progressive marijuana community.

The raids, reportedly executed by federal agents, were serving state 
warrants with the aid of local police officers. The other locations 
are the Shop in Ypsilanti and Bazonzoes in Walled Lake. There is no 
obvious connection between any of the establishments.

Special Agent Rich Isaacson of the DEA field office in Detroit 
confirmed to the media that the raids took place, but made no other 
comments. So far, it's unclear whether any arrests were made or 
charges filed. Everyone from those facilities is lying low and the 
police aren't talking.

The fact that these are DEA raids based on state warrants seemed 
strange to me. I figured if the DEA is involved there would be 
federal warrants. None of these places seems big enough to be on the 
federal radar - nothing like the big California establishments that 
have been raided.

Then I figured since they were state warrants, the state had pushed 
the feds to hit these places. I called attorney Matt Abel of Cannabis 
Counsel to see what he thought. Abel had just returned from Hempfest 
and didn't know much about the raids, but he did discuss how this 
federal-state thing can work.

"State police or sheriff's departments sometimes loan people to the 
DEA," says Abel, explaining that they get sworn in temporarily. "That 
could be what's going on. They can say they are DEA but they aren't 
really. I bet you their badges are probably state badges. If the feds 
do a raid, they won't take a bunch of local cops with them. They take 
one. Federal raids tend to be almost all federal agents and these 
seem to be the reverse of that" with almost all local police and one 
federal agent.

If Abel is correct, then these are not really federal raids. They are 
more likely state raids, with a veneer of federal authority to help 
scare people. In the case of the Shop, it was reported that there was 
one officer wearing a DEA shirt. Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti are both 
marijuana-tolerant communities, in a tolerant county. I doubt they 
invited anyone in.

This smacks of state level meddling. State Attorney General Bill 
Schuette has been less vocal lately in his war against medical 
marijuana, but it seems he's conducting it as aggressively as ever.

Schuette has always couched his attempts to control medical marijuana 
in Michigan with vague threats based on federal law. He once said 
that a police officer that returns confiscated state-legal medical 
marijuana to a patient could be subject to federal charges of 
delivering a controlled substance. These recent raids smell like they 
originated somewhere in the AG's operation.

These are the paroxysms of policy in flux. An unevenness of how 
things are perceived and enforced as the pushing and shoving goes on. 
As public opinion evolves, and we move closer to ending marijuana 
prohibition, there will be ebbs and flows.

The tide of public opinion has moved strongly and steadily in support 
of legalization of marijuana over the past 20 years, and a majority 
of Americans now support it. However, until this is settled, with 
federal guidance, people will be tragically harmed.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom