California Medical Marijuana: White House Puts an End to Federal Raids on Dispensaries. Local DEA Offices Make One Last Mad Dash For Cash.

Since President Obama’s inauguration there has been an uptick in federal raids on California’s medical marijuana dispensaries (remember, medical marijuana is legal under California law but illegal under federal law).    During the campaign President Obama repeatedly said that he would respect state laws and stop the federal harassment.  According to the White House,  these recent raids were executed ny Bush-era holdovers at the DEA making one last cash grab.

OK fine, the White House didn’t mention the “cash grab” part, but the cash grab can’t be ignored. When a local DEA office executes a search warrant, they are allowed keep a big chunk of the assets they seize — the money is then used for official purposes only, of course.

Here’s what usually happens at one of these raids: The DEA agents storm in and tell the patients/customers to leave, all the staff gets rounded up into one room and “detained.”   After that, the agents take all of the weed and all of the money.  They leave without arresting anyone.  This is not a raid, this is a robbery.

Yeah, the feds have brought some cases against a few dispensary operators, but mostly these  search warrants are “part of an ongoing investigation” which never seems to end.  Last week,  when asked how the feds decide which dispensaries to raid, one agent said “the ones that are targeted are the ones making millions and millions of dollars.”  Duh.

The LA Times reports:

At the heart of the controversy are places like the Beach Center Collective in Playa del Rey, where an employee said DEA officers confiscated so much property Tuesday that it would not be able to reopen.

“They took everything,” said the 32-year-old employee, who asked not to be named out of fear of prosecution.

“You name it, they took it — right down to the television. The computer, patient files, medicine, cash in the register — that’s it, we’re done.”

Before we get to the Obama Administration’s reaction to the latest DEA heists, we want to give a high-five to “The Field” over at Daily Kos for his/her beautifully delusional view of law enforcement culture.  The DEA didn’t inform the Los Angeles Police Department before the raids.  They’re not required to, but usually the feds let local cops know that they’re going to to be in the neighborhood kicking in doors.   “The Field” had an explanation for why it went down this way:

…the DEA was so worried that the LAPD might alert the White House of its plans beforehand and so it bypassed the normal procedure there.

OK, there’s many reasons why the DEA didn’t inform LAPD but we promise you, that is not one of them.  But kudos for proclaiming that the LAPD and the White House make secret phone calls to each other to gossip about the DEA.  No wonder newspapers are finished,  how can they compete with the crack investigative reporting at DailyKos?

And now here’s what the Obama administration had to say, as reported by the Washington Times:

The White House said it expects those kinds of raids to end once Mr. Obama nominates someone to take charge of DEA, which is still run by Bush administration holdovers.

“The president believes that federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws, and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to fill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review their policies with that in mind,” White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

Good news indeed.  The next step is consistent enforcement at the state level, but that’s for another day.