The DEA is no longer taking orders from the President.
(SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.) - It's a simple fact that governments don't always have control of their military agencies. This seems to be the case with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency in the United States.
The agency, in spite of strong and direct words from both the President and the Attorney General, Eric Holder, is literally ignoring and dismissing a directive to back off from its incessant drive to bust legal medical marijuana dispensaries.
Holder told reporters just days ago, on March 18th 2009, that the DEA would only raid medical marijuana providers if it found violations of both state and federal laws.
But it appears that this agency, the DEA, is nothing more than a bunch of armed criminals operating as rogue vigilantes.
We have received unconfirmed reports that the leaders of the pharmaceutical industry, with cash bursting through its bank accounts, are actually paying off the DEA to conduct this unauthorized activity.
And if this agency that is literally and seriously out of control is telling the President and the public that they aren't part of the system, then it is time to dismantle the DEA and put the money into real police agencies that take care of fighting crime in this country.
Bruce Mirken with the Marijuana Policy Project says Wednesday's Drug Enforcement Administration raid on Emmalyn's California Cannabis Clinic, a licensed medical marijuana collective in San Francisco, has raised serious questions among medical marijuana supporters about implementation of the new policy announced by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder last week.
According to the San Francisco Department of Public Health, Emmalyn's had obtained a temporary city permit and was actively working with the city to meet all the requirements for a permanent license.
"It is disturbing that, despite the DEA's vague claims about violations of state and federal laws, they apparently made no effort to contact the local authorities who monitor and license medical marijuana providers," said Marijuana Policy Project California policy director Aaron Smith.
"For an agency that for eight years said it couldn't care less about state law to suddenly justify raids as an effort to uphold state law simply doesn't pass the smell test."
"Because so little information has been released thus far, we have more questions than answers," added Aaron Houston, MPP director of government relations.
"But with an actual shooting war along our Mexican border, not to mention federal law enforcement there being so overwhelmed that traffickers coming through the border with up to 500 pounds of marijuana are let go, it's very hard to believe that this is the best use of DEA resources, especially in a city with an active program to license and regulate medical marijuana providers."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor.Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 in Afghanistan with Oregon troops. Tim recently returned from Iraq where he covered the war there while embedded with an Oregon Guard aviation unit. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated with Google News and several other major search engines and news aggregators.You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com
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