Cracking Down on Medical Marijuana (Stupid California AG Edition)

Nick Gillespie | June 23, 2005

Here's Bill Lockyer, California's Attorney General bullshitting after the Supreme Court decision in Gonzalez v. Raich, which banned medical marijuana even in states that had approved its use:

People shouldn't panic. There aren't going to be many changes. Nothing is different today than it was two days ago, in terms of real-world impact.

More on that here.

Not much has changed--except for this:

Federal agents executed search warrants at three medical marijuana dispensaries on Wednesday as part of a broad investigation into marijuana trafficking in San Francisco, setting off fears among medical marijuana advocates that a federal crackdown on the drug's use by sick people was beginning.

About 20 residences, businesses and growing sites were also searched, leading to multiple arrests, a law enforcement official said.

Whole thing here.

Comments

|6.23.05 @ 3:46PM|#

I've said this before and I'll say it again:

Somebody should round up all the sickest, saddest medical MJ patients around and drop them off at an FBI or DEA field office. Cancers of the digestive tract necessitating colostomy bags, open sores, uncontrollable vomiting, the whole works. Make the DEA deal with it.

If I were deathly ill, I'd be willing to vomit on a DEA agent.

|6.23.05 @ 3:52PM|#

Yeah, well Bill Lockyer is the poster child for nanny statism in Cali. He would have made a good KGB head.

He's just so good at decided at the spur of the moment what's the dividing line between legal and illegal.

|6.23.05 @ 3:56PM|#

Time to move to a free country folks...oh wait, there are none!

Okay, Thoreau, I'll meet you on the south side of Walden Pond and we'll start from scratch.

|6.23.05 @ 4:01PM|#

Could local governments in California use Eminent Domain to close down federal law enforcement offices?

California version of joe: "Hi, Mr. DEA guy, we've decided that, as part of our comprehensive community redevelopment plan, your DEA field office is blighted. Your office will be demolished and replaced with a marijuana store."

DEA Agent: "That's preposterous! Marijuana is illegal! And this is federal property!"

CA joe: "Yeah, well, we're levying a local tax on marijuana, and that will generate a lot of revenue and serve a public purpose. So, adios!"

DEA Agent: "You can't do this!"

CA joe: "We've got a team of illegal immigrant day laborers here to help box up your belongings and move them onto a truck. This is California, after all. Jose, Miguel, come on in!"

Lonewacko: "Our sovereignty is being violated!"

|6.23.05 @ 4:02PM|#

The Illinois attorney general is threatening to crack down on candy made from hemp seed oil.

First they get the kids with candy, and before you know it they are shooting heroin in the bathrooms between classes.

|6.23.05 @ 4:22PM|#

Well, I sure feel safer now...

|6.23.05 @ 4:27PM|#

Not that this will surprise anyone, but people are really getting unhinged and confused about marijuana. Yesterday I was listening to Mike Gallagher (a right edge talk show host) in my car (don't ask me why- curiosity I guess). He and his callers were raging about Spencer's Gifts which apparently sells marijuana flavored candy. His assertion (among others) was that kids would get the taste for marijuana and then be more likely to smoke it. I wish to all that is holy that I was making this up. So wrong on so many levels...

|6.23.05 @ 4:32PM|#

Since the Civil War, has anyone tried to organize a jury nullification movement?

|6.23.05 @ 4:40PM|#

You know, I got this strange urge to shoot up after eating a poppy seed muffin.

|6.23.05 @ 4:44PM|#

Ken Shultz

Is this something like what you had in mind?

http://www.fija.org/

The Anti-Puritan|6.23.05 @ 4:47PM|#

To be fair, Lockyer is not completely wrong. "Nothing is different today" in the sense that the Raich decision upholds the deplorable status quo. Federal raids on California cannabis dispensaries are, quite unfortunately, nothing new. It's business as usual because courage on this issue is rare among public officials. Lockyer, for example, has none.

|6.23.05 @ 5:05PM|#

Don't forget...illegal drugs just support the terrorists. So the DEA is just fighting to keep America free...

...to keep acting like a lunatic pack of histrionic morons.

Raich & Keno have never made me more ashamed of the sickened, out-of-touch fools on our U. S. "Supreme" Court.

|6.23.05 @ 5:06PM|#

sorry...that was Kelo

|6.23.05 @ 5:24PM|#

The DEA is fighting foreign terrorism by going after the *domestic* supply.

That's government for you.

|6.23.05 @ 5:35PM|#

"If I were deathly ill, I'd be willing to vomit on a DEA agent."

I'm perfectly fine and I'm more than willing to do it.

|6.23.05 @ 6:00PM|#

[quote]Somebody should round up all the sickest, saddest medical MJ patients around and drop them off at an FBI or DEA field office. Cancers of the digestive tract necessitating colostomy bags, open sores, uncontrollable vomiting, the whole works. Make the DEA deal with it.[/quote]

Thoreau, I'd like to agree with this, but I think this society has gotten so inured of just swallowing the feds' line that even if they disagreed with it, they're not likely to speak up, and even if they wish to speak up they haven't the slightest idea how.

Sorry, just in a downer of a mood today, I guess.

|6.23.05 @ 6:01PM|#

Oh, and imagine that those [quote] tags are italic tags. *smacks forehead*

|6.23.05 @ 6:04PM|#

mediageek-

I'm not suggesting this as a way to garner sympathy. I'm way past believing that will ever happen.

But I wouldn't mind seeing a few DEA agents covered in vomit. That would be fun to watch!

|6.23.05 @ 6:06PM|#

Besides, like I said above, there's always eminenet domain! We'll just kick the DEA out and replace them with a marijuan dispensary that pays taxes!

|6.23.05 @ 6:19PM|#

Hey, if we're dreaming, Thoreau, how about a "we really meant that Bill of Rights stuff" consitutional amendment? :)

|6.23.05 @ 6:42PM|#

Eric-

To be serious about your idea, I've long felt that we need an amendment to clarify the second amendment. I felt that way back when I supported gun control, and I feel that way now that I oppose it. The "well regulated militia" stuff is confusing. Whatever the historic purpose and meaning may have been, and however unambiguous it might have been once upon a time, nowadays it causes confusion.

Which is not to say that a more explicit Constitutional provision could forever escape the clutches of politicians who want loopholes, and judges who are willing to abide by it, but at least it would slow the process. My personal preference would be something like:

"The right of self-defense being necessary to the security of free people, the right of the people to keep and bear firearms and other weapons (including concealed weapons) for defense of persons and property shall not be infringed. None of this shall be construed to deny private property owners the right to bar weapons from their private property."

|6.23.05 @ 9:22PM|#

thoreau-

Perhaps a better tack would be to write a legal document, and then tie the verbiage it contains to the definitions within a contemporaneous dictionary.

In other words, you write your constitution, and then put a footnote at the end saying something to the effect of "in order to keep the meaning of our document cohesive, please refer to the Oxford English Dictionary from year XXXX in the event that a debate regarding the meaning of a particular term or phrase comes up."

Certainly not fool proof, but would go a long way to ending idiotic debates like the one over the definition of the word "regulated" as it was meant by the founders and "regulated" as it is meant today.

/meh

|6.23.05 @ 10:58PM|#

To be serious about your idea, I've long felt that we need an amendment to clarify the second amendment.

Jerry Pournelle commented on his website that, had the founders not been constrained by Quaker sensiblities, the second amendment might have required all citizens to be armed. That would have been nice and unambiguous, and if the founders had realized where we'd end up today it might well have been done anyways, maybe with a stipulation that those whose conscience prevents it are exempted. I don't have any primary sources for this, but it seems reasonable given what is known about the founders.

|6.24.05 @ 2:14AM|#

Eric - To be serious about your idea, I've long felt that we need an amendment to clarify the second amendment.

Oh, definitely. I'd want an item-by-item "clarification" in "twentieth-century language" of the entire Bill of Rights (and maybe one or two other amendments, and a clause or two) for every leftie or rightie wankjob out there who thinks one or more are just inconveniences to rationalize away.

aahpat (Pat Rogers)|6.24.05 @ 4:58PM|#

Weekly quotation quiz at LeftIndependent blog.

A question for drug policy reformers.

Who said: (In a speech about drug war policy and terrorism.)

"We will never eliminate sin in America; but if we work together, we certainly can limit it."

President Bill Clinton
President George W. Bush
Rev. Billy Graham
Sen. Bill Frist
Rep. Dennis Hastert
Rep. Mark Souder