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Monday, May 7th, 2012

Pelosi Blasts Crackdown on Medical Marijuana

Author:     BOB EGELKO
Source:     San Francisco Chronicle
Publication Date:     Friday, May 4, 2012
 Link: Pelosi Blasts Crackdown on Medical Marijuana
Stephan:   This is actually fairly remarkable, although it hasn't received much coverage. Only rarely does the majority leader of the party holding the White House come out publicly, let alone this strongly, against the President's policy. That Obama has broken his campaign pledge in 2008 is well known. Why he has done it is less clear, although I ran a story a few days ago that suggests some possible reasons. That and the campaign. What Pelosi, I think, is reacting to is the general sense in California that they were developing a rational legal structure based on the wine industry for taking marijuana out of the shadows and making a legitimate tax paying industry of it. One that would reduce crime, reduce law enforcement and judiciary costs, as well as serving the very real needs of thousands of patients for whom marijuana is a god-send. My recommendation to the pro-marijuana forces is that they band together in the Democratic Party and go to Obama's campaign and tell them that they will not campaign, or do anything to support his re-election unless he commits to stop the attacks and to creating a rational policy ending prohibition. Without California it would be very hard for him to win the election. It is time to end this madness that is destroying millions of lives... and I don't mean marijuana is the cause.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has joined critics of the Obama administration’s campaign against medical marijuana suppliers in California, saying the government is endangering patients and undermining its own proclaimed policy of deferring to states on the issue.

‘I have strong concerns about the recent actions by the federal government that threaten the safe access of medical marijuana to alleviate the suffering of patients in California,’ the San Francisco congresswoman said in a statement Wednesday.

It was Pelosi’s first public criticism of the actions announced in October by U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag of San Francisco and federal prosecutors in the state’s other three regions to crack down on marijuana dispensaries by going after their landlords.

The prosecutors accused pot suppliers of using California’s 1996 medical marijuana law as a cover for making huge profits. They said they would notify dispensaries’ landlords that they were violating federal drug laws and could lose their property or face criminal prosecution.

Since then, about 300 marijuana dispensaries in California have shut down because of fears of prosecution or eviction, including five in San Francisco, said Kris Hermes, spokesman for the advocacy group Americans for Safe Access. He said more than 1,000 medical marijuana suppliers are still operating.

Critics of […]

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