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Anti-Medical Marijuana Michele Leonhart to Remain DEA Head
By Ben Morris
As expected, President Obama has nominated acting head of the DEA Michele Leonhart to take the post on permanently. We have been generally happy with the Justice Department during Obama’s freshman year, but it would be nice to see a new face at DEA. Here’s why.
Early in Leonhart’s career, she was the Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles Field Division, where she oversaw President George W. Bush’s brutal tactic of raiding and arresting medical marijuana patients. Most readers will remember the raids on dispensaries that remained a part of the former president’s war on drugs until 2009, but during the early years of the Bush administration, these raids were directed at individual patients, not just distributors. The raids were intended to send a political message and undermine emerging medical marijuana laws. Bush was smitten with Leonhart’s work fighting innocent cancer patients, and in 2003, he promoted her to deputy director.
In that role, Leonhart rejected the application of Professor Lyle Craker of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst to research marijuana’s medical value. Professor Craker was proposing the kind of project considered essential if marijuana is ever to be licensed by the FDA as a prescription medicine, and a DEA administrative law judge ruled in Craker’s favor. Leonhart, however, ignored the judge’s ruling and denied Craker’s application. Her reasons were transparently phony: an ideological opposition to medical marijuana dressed up in pseudoscientific language. This is precisely the sort of nonsense Obama has pledged to end.
At a news conference in April, Michele Leonhart said that legalizing drugs “would be a failed law enforcement strategy for both the U.S. and Mexico.”
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Comments
Rogue law enforcement
Michele Leon continues with the drug raids even after Obama told the DEA to stop arresting medical marijuana users. She has her own agenda and won't obey the will of the people, or even the President.
Time to show this conservative sow the door.
I charge forward recklessly, leaving chaos in my wake.
It all started with a lie
The prohibition of marijuana was voted into law ,based on a lie,it is maintained as a schedule 1 drug with lies,and our government even lies about how many people smoke marijuana. They do not want us to realize that their estimates are 1/2 the actual number of tokers.
Estimated profit of the cartels(conservative estimate)40 billion dollars or more for 2009.
Estimated profit from marijuana using the DEA's estimate of 70%
of cartels money derived from marijuana= $28 billion.
DEA's estimated number of marijuana users in the US=over 2 million regular users.
If 2 million tokers spent 28 billion dollars for pot,they smoke way too much and they are too rich.
If the average toker spends $100 a week for marijuana,that would be approximately $5000 per year,some spend more,some less.
That works out too over 5 million tokers,and does not include people buying domestic marijuana or growing their own.
Suppose pot use doubled
Most drug war cheerleaders proclaim that if marijuana were re-legalized, pot use would skyrocket. I believe that the Netherlands example shows that this probably would not happen. The Dutch use pot at less than half the rate
Americans do.
But suppose pot use did increase. Suppose pot use by adults doubled. Would this necessarily be bad? I submit that it would not. As pot use increases, alcohol use declines.
Most frequent marijuana users don't drink alcohol, but those who do drink alcohol drink substantially less than non-marijuana users.
I believe that most doctors would agree that heavy marijuana use is a lot less harmful than heavy alcohol use. Heavy alcohol use can and does kill. No amount of marijuana use has ever killed anyone.
Schedule I Cannabis is a damned lie.
Keeping Cannabis illegal while tobacco and alcohol are dispensed freely is *MURDEROUSLY STUPID*.
[It has helped control this glaucoma patient's asthma for over forty years.]
-Richard Steeb, San Jose California
ANY questions?
http://tinyurl.com/Tashkin
http://tinyurl.com/Henningfield-Benowitz
http://www.breakthematrix.com/Alternatives/Top-10-Cannabis-Studies-the-Government-Wished-it-Had-Never-Funded
What a waste of Money
The government spends 42 billion a year fighting Marijuana. Such a waste of local, state and federal resources. Every state is in debt right now. Some are threatening to layoff or furlough a sizable portion of its staff. Unemployment is expected to rise for the next year and it is projected to last until 2014 at least. Every day TONS of Marijuana are seized. Think how much gets through, probably a a few hundred tons a week.
We can't keep throwing money on a fire and asking why it burns!
We pay so much money for what? What does it solve? I could buy weed in Junior High. Now that I am 43 it is actually hard to come by. Don't we want to keep it away from kids ?
We should fire all of Washington and vote out the crooks at state and local level.
Its time people understand what their money is really going towards. If 50% of the public feels it should be legal maybe the 50% that is so hell bent on keeping it illegal should pay for us.
The law does nothing and shouldn't even be there in the first place. I wish this would really catch fire on the media .
There are SO many potential juicy stories about this. All the anti- cancer properties, the prison system, the potential for pro- environment opportunities, human rights , and liberty.
Please. If you read this, tell your friends, family and co- workers how much is spent on something less intoxicating than cough syrup.
Why?
Why does Obama keep letting us down?
The last thig that we need in America is more people denied their medicaine, while being put in prison so that private prisons and prison guard unions can make money .
Mr. Obama if you want Healthcare for everyone, why do you keep our medicine of choice against the law ?
It is time to end prohibition .