A group of House members — mostly California Democrats — called on President Barack Obama Friday to end the Justice Department’s crackown on California’s medical marijuana dispensaries.
In a letter sent to the White House, the nine members said that the initiative tramples on states’ sovereignty and will push patients with cannabis prescriptions into the black market.
“No longer should the federal government’s laws supersede the wishes of local citizens who have decided that their fellow neighbors ought to have the right to legitimately use medical marijuana,” the House members said, in their letter. “As we have seen for years, seriously ill patients will attempt to obtain their medication however they can and it is unconscionable for the DOJ to use its limited resources to endanger the lives of patients who are simply seeking to ease their suffering.”
The members also called on the president to either classify marijuana as a schedule II or schedule III drug under the Drug Enforcement Administration’s controlled substance schedule, or support legislation that would reclassify it as such. Currently, marijuana is listed as a schedule I drug, which the federal government considers as having “no currently accepted medical use in treatment,” and the members argued that a reclassification “will clear up any ambiguity as to what the legitimate role of the federal government is in this arena.”
On October 7, California’s four chief federal prosecutors — Los Angeles U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr., San Francisco U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, San Diego U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy and Sacramento U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner — announced that they would crackdown on the state’s medical marijuana system, claiming that it violates the Controlled Substances Act, and that federal law “takes precedence over state laws and applies regardless of the particular uses for which a dispensary is selling and distributing marijuana.”
Reps. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Pete Stark (D-Calif.), Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), Sam Farr (D-Calif.), Mike Thompson (D-Calif), Jared Polis (D-Colo.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), and Bob Filner (D-Calif.) all signed the letter calling on President Obama to stop the initiative.
Sixteen states and the District of Columbia either have laws on the books that permit doctors to prescribe marijuana as a pain reliever, or have passed such legislation that has yet to take effect.
The inevitable & nefarious effects of Prohibition have made us totally subordinate to a corporatized, despotic government with a heavily armed and corrupt, militarized police force whose often deadly intrusions into our homes and lives are condoned by an equally corrupt and spineless Judiciary who are intentionally protecting Transnational Corporate Institutions over Individual American Citizens.
Prisons have been filled to capacity. Violent criminals, murderers, rapists and child molesters are released early to create space for these so called drug offenders. Half of court trial time and also a huge chunk of police officers time is pointlessly wasted. Enormous untaxed profits from illegal drugs fund multi-national criminal empires which bribe law enforcement authorities and spread corruption faster than a raging bush fire. These laws take violent criminals and turn them into multi-billionaires whilst corrupting even entire countries such as Columbia, Panama, Mexico and Afghanistan. The extreme violence on and south of the border is drug gangs fighting for turf in this lucrative business. The drug laws are also funding the Taliban whose illegal opium profits allow it to buy weapons and pay it’s fighters more than $300 a month, compared with the $14 paid to an Afghan policemen.
Due to the tyrannic and mindless actions of prohibitionists, tens of millions of people world-wide (both users and non-users) have been either killed, maimed, incarcerated or had their lives very seriously disrupted. Prohibitionists are solely responsible for an immense increase in violent organized crime, an AIDS Pandemic, the undermining of international development and security and a grave abuse of human rights on a scale barely witnessed in human social history.
Corporate greed and individual bigotry have accelerated us towards a situation where all the usual peaceful and democratic methods needed to reverse the acute damage done by prohibition no longer function as envisaged by the Founding Fathers of our once great and free nation. Such a political impasse coupled with great economic tribulation is precisely that which throughout history has invariably ignited violent revolution.
In order to avert what will surely be a far more violent situation than we are already experiencing, and to restore our Republic to a system “OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE,” there appears to be just one last avenue left to us – Jury Nullification. If we choose not to use this peaceful means for change then a violent solution may inevitably be forced upon us:
“To function as the founders intended, our republic requires that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
– Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” – John F. Kennedy
Jury Nullification is a constitutional doctrine that allows juries to acquit defendants who are technically guilty, but who don’t deserve punishment. All non-violent drug offenders who are not selling to children, be they users, dealers or importers, fall into this category. If you believe that prohibition is a dangerous and counter-productive policy, then you don’t have to help to apply it. Under the Constitution, when it comes to acquittals, you the juror have the last word!
To avoid such carnage and turmoil on a scale not seen in this land since the 1860s, we may have just one last chance: If you wish to see this insane prohibition replaced by a workable policy based on science, public health and sound principles of Justice & Human Rights, one that will ensure a safe future for your children and grandchildren, PLEASE VOTE TO ACQUIT! — We must now create what we can no longer afford to wait for.