Thursday, December 18, 2008

California cops invite feds over for good times

In an excellent catch by the California chapter of NORML, documents submitted to the House Judiciary Committee reveal that the California Police Chiefs Association has been chafing under the state's relatively permissive marijuana laws, particularly regarding the medical use of the drug. Essentially shopping for tougher rules, the head of the police group sought the assistance of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to bypass the protections of California law.

From an October 2, 2006 letter (PDF) to DEA Administrator Karen Tandy written by then California Police Chiefs Association President Steve Krull (who retired last year as chief of police in Livermore):

This document clearly points out the dangers and frustrations that law enforcement has experienced in California with trying to enforce marijuana laws. Some situations have reached the point where state judicial officers (local judges) are ordering our rnernbers to return marijuana which has been lawfully seized.

As you are aware this has become a political issue in California, and even though local police chiefs want to enforce the law, some cities have determined that California law is what they want to follow.

So Krull and company are unhappy with the laws in their state and annoyed that local judges are actually holding the police to those laws. Their solution?

What the California Police Chiefs Association is requesting is that DEA become more actively involved in working with local law enforcement to close these distribution centers, seize their profits and all marijuana which might be located and to take these cases into the federal judicial system.

We understand this is an issue of priorities with DEA, but it is the feeling of the California PoIice Chiefs Association, and our members, that a concentrated effort sustained over a period of time would send a strong message to local and county government that "medical marijuana" is not allowed and that those who profit from the sales and distribution of marijuana under the guise of "medicine" will face the consequences.

Whether Tandy responded specifically to the begging letter or not, DEA agents have certainly been busy raiding marijuana dispensaries in California. In July of this year, as if rubbing Californians' noses in the power of the federal government, the DEA raided Nature's Wellness Collective in Orange, California -- just weeks after a state judge awarded the place a favorable ruling in the course of a lawsuit to keep the dispensary in business.

At almost the same time, federal drug cops raided Organica Collective, a Culver City dispensary -- just after a court ruled that federal law does not preempt (PDF) state law on marijuana.

Last year, the Los Angeles Times documented the DEA's targeting of many larger medical marijuana dispensaries in the state as part of an apparent effort to end the drug's status in California through sheer intimidation.

We always knew that federal officials have been dead set on suppressing state and local deviation from drug prohibition. Now we know that they were invited to do so by the cops down the street who are paid by and work for the people who put those local laws in place.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

read some Gary Webb or Mike Ruppert on the CIA and their role in the drug trade, and more about GHWB and Wackenhut/Prisons for profit and the wacko war on drugs (for private profit and electioneering)at Tarpley.net

December 18, 2008 7:29 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

oh yeah, the opium poppies are flowing again in Afghanistan thatnks to another Bush. Good ol' Skull and Bones!

December 18, 2008 7:30 PM  

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