Edward H. Jurith, Drug Policy Leader and Attorney, 1951-2013

Edward H. Jurith, a key figure in American drug policy making since the early 1980s, died peacefully at home in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, November 9, 2013. Ed has been my friend since 1981.

Ed served at very senior levels in the Office of National Drug Control Policy at the White House for almost 20 years, including serving as Acting Director for almost all of 2001 at the start of the Bush Administration and during 9-11. Ed had been Director of Legislative Affairs, General Counsel and finally Senior General Counsel at ONDCP, beginning in the Clinton Administration. At the beginning of the Obama Administration he was again Acting Director until Gil Kerlikowske was confirmed on May 7, 2009.

Ed also represented the United States for many years in the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on the Executive Committee and as chair of the Education Committee.

Ed was a very distinguished lawyer. For over twenty years he was a leading member of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Substance Abuse, and at the time of his death was chair of its successor entity, the Task Force on Substance Use Disorders of the Health Law Section. He was also a very popular adjunct professor of law at the Washington College of Law at American University.

 Ed was a son of Brooklyn, NY. He graduated from Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn in 1969, American University cum laude in 1973, and Brooklyn Law School in 1976. He practiced criminal law in Brooklyn and was involved in politics. He worked with U.S. Rep. Leo Zeferetti (D-NY), from Brooklyn, who in 1981 became the Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control (SCNAC).  That year, Mr. Zeferetti brought Ed back to Washington to be Counsel to the Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control (SCNAC).

The Select Committee on Narcotics was responsible for investigating and reporting on the entire range of drug abuse issues. At that time, I joined the staff of the House Subcommittee on Crime, chaired by U.S. Rep. William J. Hughes (D-NJ), responsible for overseeing federal drug enforcement programs and processing amendments to the Controlled Substances Act in addition to money laundering, organized crime, gun control, pornography and other issues. Mr. Hughes was also a member of the Select Committee on Narcotics and I staffed his participation on the Select Committee. Thus I attended many hearings that Ed organized.

From the start there was a friendly professional tension between us. The Narcotics Committee had a very focused agenda and a fair deal of staff and budget, and some very senior and powerful members, including, after 1983, Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY), a very senior member of the New York Delegation, a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee, and a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus. But it had no power to report legislation. It could hold hearings and press conferences and issue reports and press releases -- but the Select Committee could not write any bills. The Crime Subcommittee had a very broad agenda: we had a smaller staff and drugs was just one of many important issues that we had to address. But we could write and move legislation to amend the drug laws or to modify DEA's powers. That was genuine power.

In 1983, the Select Committee on Narcotics organized a study mission to Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and Jamaica to oversee U.S. anti-narcotics activities in those countries, to learn about those countries narcotics problems and anti-narcotics activities, and to meet with the top political, law enforcement and judicial officials of those countries to convey U.S. concerns about narcotics. Mr. Hughes and our Ranking Republican Member, Harold Sawyer (R-Michigan), arranged to accompany the SCNAC, and they were able to bring our subcommittee chief counsel, our Republican associate counsel, and me, an assistant counsel, as well. Since the trip was a Select Committee show, I did not have to work as hard as Ed and his colleagues, but those intense experiences strengthened our bond.

By 1984, I was often sharing with other staff and others my view that the war on drugs was a mistake and that some form of legalization of drugs would better fight crime and protect public health than prohibition. After my deep involvement in the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 -- along with Ed and his colleagues on the Narcotics Select Committee, as well as the House leadership, I carried out a strategy to leave the Judiciary Committee and work full time to end drug prohibition.


By 1987, Ed had been promoted to Staff Director of the Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. After I left Capitol Hill, Ed and I became friendly sparring partners on a number of occasions when the fundamentals of drug policy were being challenged.

In 1990 or '91, the American Bar Association established a Special Committee on the Drug Crisis, and Ed and I both were able to participate.

A few years later, the Special Committee was formalized as the Standing Committee on Substance Abuse. Ed, then the General Counsel of the White House "drug czar," was warmly welcomed. I was appointed by the ABA Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities -- the powerful organizational home the ABA's "liberals" -- to be their liaison to the standing committee. The Standing Committee strongly embraced an ABA-Join Together study that identified the crippling problem of continued stigmatization of persons in recovery, and Ed and I worked together on ABA policy to address that. Ed took the lead in encouraging the ABA House of Delegates to endorse Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMP), but the proposed policy was defeated on privacy grounds. Today PDMPs are widely respected tools to identify doctors who are irresponsibly prescribing prescription narcotics or persons who are using multiple doctors and pharmacies to obtain large quantities of opiates and diverting them away from legitimate pain patients.

At the ABA Standing Committee, after a few years, most lawyers would move on to another project in the ABA, but Ed and I stayed on. When the Raich v. Ashcroft medical marijuana case headed for the Ninth Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals, Ed and I began to collaborate on what became a series of continuing legal education programs on the subject held at three ABA annual meetings over the years. Prominent members of the ABA, including judges, served on the Standing Committee, but rarely with the experience in drug policy matters that Ed and I had. Often some matter of drug policy would provoke a mini-debate between us. A number of times I was told by one or another member how educational, stimulating and respectful they found our impromptu debates.

On Feb. 7, 2007, Ed spoke to a forum that I moderated, hosted by the Drugs and the Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association, on proposed legislation to regulate medical marijuana in New York State. As always he was generous with his time, completely prepared, powerfully cogent in making his points, and unfailingly polite and gracious before an audience largely composed of those opposed to his position.

Ed Jurith was an extremely intelligent and diligent lawyer deeply dedicated to making the world around him better. He built an enormous network of friends who treasured his relaxed and open sense of humor, and his loyalty. We all knew him as a man who told the truth and honored his commitments. We learned how he adored his wife and boys, and treasured his joy as a father and husband.

In early August when I learned that ONDCP Director Gil Kerlikowske was being promoted to Customs Commissioner, I hastily wrote a blog and threw out some prominent names as appropriate successors, such as former Baltimore City and Howard County Health Commissioner Peter Beilenson, U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), or U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO). But as I reflected on who, in the real world, would really be the most effective successor, I realized it would be Ed Jurith. Ed knew every aspect of the job, he had the long experience of working closely with Congress, with all of the involved federal and international agencies, and with all the private and state agencies in the field regarding prevention, treatment and enforcement. Ed also had profoundly good judgement. He knew what could work, and what wouldn't and had the courage and drive to fight for what was needed. His vision of the work was not driven by ideology, by partisan advantage seeking, or by personal ambition. He deeply wanted to free individuals, families and communities of the pain of substance use disorders. He was not interested in preserving organizational budgets or fiefdoms, but in justice and mercy. I knew that open support from a "drug legalizer" like me was not the most strategic approach, and so I worked behind the scenes to put Ed's candidacy for ONDCP Director before the President, the Vice President and other key players. If Ed's treatment for cancer had not failed to restore him, I think we could have found the perfect ONDCP Director to work with Attorney General Eric Holder and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to re-balance our drug policy in a world with the parity for treatment  and expanded coverage of the Affordable Care Act, with legal marijuana in Washington, Colorado, and other states, and medical marijuana being demanded by legislatures and voters across the nation. His death is a real loss to the nation and the world, as well as his family and friends.

I shall my conclude this tribute to Ed Jurith with a much longer version of a story I briefly told his family and friends after his funeral mass Friday.

Advocates of "drug policy reform" or drug legalization (and journalists, civic association and academic programmers) often have a hard time finding prominent, qualified representatives of the prohibition-based national drug strategy to debate in public forums. What legalizers criticize as their opponents' strategy of trying to win the argument by ignoring its legitimacy, or an unwillingness to risk the embarrassment of defending the indefensible, is partly a legitimate unwillingness to face what is often a highly partisan audience willing to indulge itself with mocking laughter and snarky outbursts.

Ed Jurith was unafraid of critical audiences and faced them often, always with grace and good humor. I witnessed both the rudeness of the pro-legalization audiences in mocking the government's spokesman, and Ed's self-composed presentation.

On March 17-18, 2000, three very prominent New York City institutions arranged a two-day conference on the questions, "Is Our Drug Policy Effective? Are there Alternatives?" The distinguished sponsors were the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (now known as the New York City Bar Association), the New York Academy of Medicine, and the New York Academy of Sciences. The proceedings were to be transcribed and were published in the Fordham Urban Law Journal (Vol. XXVII, No. 1, October 2000, pp. 3 - 361). Forty-two distinguished experts across a wide range of fields were invited to speak. Most of the well known drug legalizers or critics of the status-quo policy were on the program: former Mayor Kurt Schmoke of Baltimore, MD, Ethan Nadelmann, JD, PhD,  U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet (SDNY), Harvard Professor Lester Grinspoon, David Boaz of the Cato Institute, et al.

Ed was invited and knew that it would be a hostile audience, but he was willing to come. In fact he was the only representative of the federal government. His remarks were greeted by jeers and laughter. Near the end of his remarks he said, "I was surprised that when I showed those slides earlier there was laughter concerning youth misbehavior and marijuana use.You may not believe the data, but I do not believe anyone thinks that it is healthy for young people to abuse drugs. This is the cynicism we need to get beyond." (p. 46).

Mayor Schmoke made the next speech, and I followed him. At the beginning of my remarks I said,

"I want to commend my old friend and colleague, Ed Jurith, for his thoughtful presentation a few minutes ago and for his willingness to come and speak to what he anticipated was going to be a critical audience, not a warmly receptive audience. I do not see you, Ed, in the audience, but Ed has always been a man whom I could talk to in a very civil and informed manner about drug policy, even though we have disagreed. Ed is an honorable and bright public servant who is genuinely committed to the public interest in these matters." (pp.53-54).

Ed, thank you for being my rival, ally and partner, and always my friend.

Ed's family would welcome gifts in Ed's memory to be made to his high school alma mater, Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn, NY.

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Medical marijuana can treat infantile seizures -- the tragic price of federal delay of medical use of marijuana

The Washington Post produced an excellent 10 minute video on the use of specially bred strains of medical marijuana to treat infantile seizures that, untreated, lead to catastrophic developmental delays and disabilities. It features an Indiana family bankrupted by the costs of the conventional and ineffective treatments choosing to move to Colorado where legal, regulated medical marijuana is available for pediatric care.

A mother wonders, if the heavy stigma that surrounds the medical use of marijuana had been removed years ago (California passed its medical marijuana law in 1996. DEA's Chief Administrative Law Judge ruled in favor of medical marijuana in 1988!) would she have sought treatment for her boy at a much earlier age, sparing him the disability he suffers from? Her 10 year-old boy, after a decade of the "conventional," FDA-approved medications, now functions at the level of a 4 year-old, still not toilet trained nor able to recognize colors or letters.

Everyone laments that the FDA is not involved in the research and development of these treatments. That FDA involvement is not the fault of the babies, their parents, their doctors, or the medical marijuana researchers. The non-involvement of the FDA is fundamentally the fault of President Barack Obama, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Attorney General Eric Holder (whose wife is a widely respected physician).

The Obama Administration has disregarded the political advantages of endorsing a scientific embrace of medical marijuana in order to appease law enforcement bureaucracies and lobbyists from numerous law enforcement officer organizations such as the Fraternal Order of Police. I think it is plausible that the Administration has also been influenced by the politically powerful pharmaceutical industries which are likely to lose market share for numerous product lines if medical marijuana is legal at the federal level, but I have not seen evidence that documents this hypothesis.

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Maryland becomes 19th medical marijuana state on May 2nd. In neighboring D.C. dispensaries are poised to open.

On May 2, 2013 Maryland Governor, Martin O'Malley, signed an act making Maryland the 19th medical marijuana state. Delegates Cheryl D. Glenn (Baltimore City) and Dan K. Morhaim, M.D. (Baltimore County) are the legislative heroes in overcoming the Governor's and state Health Secretary's resistance to the bill. The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan votes in the House of Delegates and Senate, having been supported by the Maryland State Medical Society and the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland, among others. Implementing the bill, H.B. 1101, creating a program of clinical medical marijuana at "academic medical centers," is going to be time-consuming.

Morhaim, has championed the legislation for a decade, since former Delegate Don Murphy (R-Baltimore County) led the fight for the Darrel Putman Compassionate Use Act, enacted in 2003. Murphy later traveled around the nation working to convince Republican governors and state officials to support medical marijuana under the aegis of Republicans for Compassionate Access.


Meanwhile, in the District of Columbia, medical marijuana dispensaries, originally authorized by a public referendum in 1999, are going to open very soon, according to an article in the Washingtonian magazine and a report on NBC4TV. These stories report about Capital City Care in the NoMa section of D.C. near the NoMa/New York Avenue Metrorail station, and the Takoma Wellness Center in Takoma neighborhood of D.C., near the Takoma Park Metrorail station.

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American Bar Association: Health Law looks at drugs

The American Bar Association's 20-year old Standing Committee on Drug Abuse was merged into the Health Law Section in August after the Annual Meeting with the start of the association's new year.  Here is a very thoughtful column by the Section Immediate Past Chair, David H. Johnson of New Mexico, on the breadth of the issue from the perspective a lawyer not looking from the criminal justice/enforcement perspective.

Amidst its other work and continuing legal education (CLE) programs, the Standing Committee was a leading voice (adopting policy in 2004) decrying the terrible collateral consequences of drug convictions and the stigma for persons who once had a substance abuse problem.  And it organized three well-attended annual meeting programs on legal issues related to medical use of marijuana (including the Raich case -- before it went to the Supreme Court).

As a task force of the Health Law Section, this group can become a more important voice.

If you are a lawyer or law student reading this blog, join the ABA -- it is a welcoming, progressive and influential institution -- and join the Health Law Section and the Substance Abuse Task Force. Think about how your informed voice might further help develop wiser policies on substance use and misuse.

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Martin Lee: Medical marijuana raids to appease "Fast and Furious" critics

According to the excerpt from acclaimed drug historian Martin Lee's latest book, Smoke Signals, published in TruthOut, he argues that the 2011-2012 campaign against California medical marijuana dispensaries was designed to deflect partisan political criticism of Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice for the blunders of the "Fast and Furious" BATF undercover operation. "Fast and Furious" was intended to discover how the Mexican drug cartels were acquiring high-powered American firearms. But the guns "walked" (BATF lost track of a couple thousand of them), the weapons ended up in the hands of the criminals and a several were used to shoot or kill U.S. law enforcement agents.

The GOP-controlled House Government Reform Committee, having an opportunity to be outraged at BATF, a unit of the Justice Department, demanded to know what Holder knew about the raids. He stonewalled. Some Members of Congress have sought his resignation, and the House of Representatives has voted him to be in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the Committee's subpoena. It is a big political embarrassment for the Administration.

But Lee's “explanation” does not hold water. It is an interesting hypothesis unsupported by any facts or analysis of the context and history.

Aside from the complete lack of evidence in Lee's explanation, the ostensible political rationale does not make any sense. There is no evidence that the Representatives “gunning” for Holder and Obama regarding Fast and Furious were especially outspoken critics of medical marijuana to the degree that their ire with law enforcement incompetence in the Fast and Furious case might be mollified by a concerted enforcement effort against medical marijuana.

The premise is flawed. Anyone who has followed the 40-year history of the hatred of the NRA, and its congressional allies, for the BATF knows that nothing is going to substitute for an attack on BATF. I was in the middle of this hatred starting in March 1981 when President Reagan was shot, until I left Capitol Hill in 1989. I set up at least a dozen hearings on some aspect of gun control in that time. I handled the House consideration of the NRA's "wet dream" (the Firearms Owners Protection of Act of 1986), the "cop killer bullet" legislation, the undetectable plastic handgun imbroglio, and development of the "Brady Bill" that we got out of the Judiciary Committee in 1988. (Speaker Tom Foley kept the bill from going to the House floor). For comparison, the loathing for BATF on the part of scores of Members of Congress is probably greater than the loathing of the Pentagon felt by many liberals during the depths of the Vietnam War.

Simply consider how a political/enforcement shell game, such as the one Lee suggests motivated the medical marijuana policy change from the 2009 Ogden memorandum, would be executed. There is no evidence, for example, that Administration critics were given private briefings immediately in advance or after medical marijuana raids or enforcement initiatives, such as sending forfeiture-threatening letters to landlords or notices to banks. In the kind of campaign Lee imagines, this would be a prototypical step to give the critics politically useful opportunity to make a timely or newsworthy condemnation of the “evil” of medical marijuana. That is the kind of special political consideration that would be used to curry favor on Capitol Hill that Lee imagines. In addition, there is no evidence that the raids were targeted in the districts of Holder’s critics to especially appease them.

In fact, given that the critics were pro-gun, the BATF letter to all Federal firearms licensees stating, if licensed gun sellers have knowledge that a prospective gun buyer is a legal state medical marijuana patient they are in violation of the Gun Control Act prohibition on sales of guns to known illegal drug users, made no sense. It created political outrage in the Mountain West where almost everyone owns a firearm. That letter could not have been part of an effort to use medical marijuana enforcement to mollify Administration critics of BATF as Lee asserts.

Fundamentally, the medical marijuana raids themselves were not as Lee says, “an all-out vendetta.” They were, to a shocking degree, so ad hoc, unfocused, uncoordinated and poorly announced to the press and public that it is inconceivable that anyone in the Administration believed these raids could be held up as an exemplar of DoJ law enforcement competence and vigor. If anything, the discombobulated character of the DoJ attack on medical marijuana operations invited further attack upon the Obama administration by its enemies as further evidence of law enforcement incompetence.

While the attacks have shuttered hundreds of dispensaries, including numerous first class operations, and have devastated many friends of drug policy reform, objectively, as a concerted law enforcement initiative – especially one designed for a political purpose -- it has been a shockingly incoherent mess. A better analogy of how DoJ has gone after medical marijuana is that of unconnected guerrilla operations, with units striking here and there with the hope of disheartening a much stronger enemy, but not substantially changing the political reality or the balance of power.

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June 2012: The new direction of marijuana politics?

Jill Harris, managing director of strategic initiatives at Drug Policy Action (the political arm of the non-profit Drug Policy Alliance), has an op-ed in USATODAY on June 20, 2012 that concludes that key Democratic office holders and a couple of key primaries are the "weather vane" pointing to the political logic of marijuana decriminalization specifically and reform more generally.

The policy case for marijuana decriminalization is over 40 years old now. The concept was advanced by the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse in its 1972, and about a dozen states enacted such laws in the early 1970s. Ms. Harris is making an excellent political case that this reform is once again politically safe; indeed politically astute.

I am thrilled that she was able to have this op-ed published in one of the most important newspapers. But I would be much more confident if this op-ed column had been authored by a professional political commentator. If so, political advisers to the President and Democratic candidates would probably pay closer attention.

Consider some history of marijuana and politics. A key prize in President Bill Clinton's successful campaign for re-election in 1996 was California, which he won with 51%. (President Georg H.W. Bush won California in 1988 with 51%, but Clinton won California in 1992, with only 46%). That year, the medical marijuana initiative, Proposition 215, received one million more votes than Bill Clinton! In 2004, George Bush won re-election in Montana as voters there passed a medical marijuana initiative. And in 2008, as Obama carried Michigan, voters passed a medical marijuana initiative. Blue state, red state -- it doesn't matter.

In May 2011, the legislatures of three states sent medical marijuana legislation to their governors, who signed the laws. In recent weeks, Connecticut became the 17th medical marijuana state, the New Hampshire legislature sent a medical marijuana act to their governor (who has threatened a veto), and Rhode Island's legislature enacted a marijuana decriminalization law. (And as I noted earlier, the candidates more sympathetic to marijuana reform won primary elections in Oregon and Texas!)

In 2007 and 2008, the Obama political team outmaneuvered the premier national political machine of the past 20 years, the Clinton organization, to snatch the Democratic nomination. As incumbent, he has been unchallenged for renomination in his party. But it is clear that he has failed to re-energize the young people who rallied and volunteered for him. When it comes to marijuana, the administration of Barack Obama seems to think the zeitgeist is locked on 1995! Perhaps this is because Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder turned marijuana policy over to a DEA Administrator who spent her career in California and Washington with photographs of the two George Bush's on her wall.

Perhaps Obama and his team believe the Attorney General's misrepresentations to the House Judiciary Committee and the public that the Justice Department crusade against medical marijuana is merely designed to help states enforce conformity to their laws. If so, they appear to be sitting in a 1995 medical marijuana time capsule. On this issue, sadly out of touch and deaf to their savvy colleagues like Andrew Cuomo and Rahm Emanuel, the Obama team's self-delusion points to a Mitt Romney inauguration next January.

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Democrats worried about medical marijuana? Pelosi's statement first in 7 years; new MPP Poll; OR AG race

A survey by the Mason-Dixon polling organization, commissioned by the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), found overwhelming and across the board rejection of the Obama Justice Department's attack upon state medical marijuana programs. Every demographic -- Independents, Republicans, Democrats, senior citizens, parents, young voters, white, black and Hispanic -- overwhelmingly support state medical marijuana programs

On May 2, 2012, the Democratic Party's biggest fundraiser, Nancy Pelosi, issued a statement criticizing the Justice Department policy on medical marijuana. This was her first official statement in SEVEN years on medical marijuana. It is clear that she sees an urgency about this issue that has not existed for Democrats before.

On May 15, the results of the Oregon Democratic Primary for Attorney General resulted in the victory of Ellen Rosenblum, the candidate supporting medical marijuana, getting 64 percent of the vote over the prosecutor who condemned medical marijuana.

This is a significant issue for most Americans! Millions of Americans have cancer. Millions more think every persistent pain may be cancer. But Mitt Romney rebuffed a question from a Denver TV reporter on medical marijuana as not an "issue of significance" in a recent interview on the CBS affiliate.

Medical marijuana is sure an "issue of significance" to a New York state judge who revealed on the op-ed page of The New York Times on May 17 that he is using marijuana to fight his life threatening pancreatic cancer -- in violation of the law.

This is an "issue of significance" and Obama is not demonstrating the political skills that enabled him to outmaneuver Hilary Clinton in 2008.

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Obama doesn't get it > Rolling Stone interview

Obama is interviewed in a recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine.
His comments about medical marijuana are absurd:

Let me ask you about the War on Drugs. You vowed in 2008, when you were running for election, that you would not "use Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws about medical marijuana." Yet we just ran a story that shows your administration is launching more raids on medical pot than the Bush administration did. What's up with that?
Here's what's up: What I specifically said was that we were not going to prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical marijuana. I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana – and the reason is, because it's against federal law. I can't nullify congressional law. I can't ask the Justice Department to say, "Ignore completely a federal law that's on the books." What I can say is, "Use your prosecutorial discretion and properly prioritize your resources to go after things that are really doing folks damage." As a consequence, there haven't been prosecutions of users of marijuana for medical purposes.

The only tension that's come up – and this gets hyped up a lot – is a murky area where you have large-scale, commercial operations that may supply medical marijuana users, but in some cases may also be supplying recreational users. In that situation, we put the Justice Department in a very difficult place if we're telling them, "This is supposed to be against the law, but we want you to turn the other way." That's not something we're going to do. I do think it's important and useful to have a broader debate about our drug laws. One of the things we've done over the past three years was to make a sensible change when it came to the disparity in sentencing between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. We've had a discussion about how to focus on treatment, taking a public-health approach to drugs and lessening the overwhelming emphasis on criminal laws as a tool to deal with this issue. I think that's an appropriate debate that we should have.

Obama is completely dodging here. He is blaming legislation for having let his Justice Department get out of control. This "large scale commercial operations" is a red herring. How did he think that hundreds of thousands of patients would get their medication. It is outrageous that more people are now dying from prescription drugs than are killed in automobile accidents each year. Yet DEA is doing almost nothing to investigate the large corporations that manufacture and distribute these drugs, other than bust a pharmacist here or there. They have challenged some minor parts of a couple of retail drug companies.

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Obama again ducks questions on marijuana from American Internet public

Once again the President invites the public to submit questions to him and vote on the most urgent or important ones for him to answer in a live YouTube interview. Once again questions regarding marijuana legalization, the costs of marijuana prisoners, the use of marijuana in medicine, hemp, marijuana and taxes, marijuana and the economy, etc. received far more votes than any other topic. This question from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition was the second highest vote getter.
And once again the President's handlers make sure that the questions are not asked! Indeed, the White House deleted a question from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Open White House? Pathetic!

UPDATE:
John McWorter at the New York Daily News blasts Google and YouTube for not asking about marijuana, noting that New York City Police are making over 50,000 marijuana arrests per year -- even though marijuana possession was decriminalized as a violation with a maximum $100 fine in 1977.

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Holder and U.S. Attorney sued by Americans for Safe Access for violating 10th Amendment

On October 27, Americans for Safe Access filed suit against Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag of the Northern District of California as the representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice accusing it of acting in violation of the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution for threatening California cities that were implementing the California's medical marijuana laws.

The Tenth Amendment provides, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved the the States respectively, or to the people." Various powers prohibited to the States are set forth in Article I, section 10.

The Tenth Amendment has rarely been the ground for litigation and the Supreme Court has said little about its meaning and scope.

This could be another ground breaking case of constitutional interpretation arising from the conflict between the People of California and the U.S government around the use of marijuana for medical purposes. In the last big case, Raich, the government won, 6 to 3, a restatement of a very broad reach for national government power under the commerce clause.

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Does this sound like "due process of law?"

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that "No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. . ." Does this federal raid of a medical marijuana dispensary operating in compliance with the strict controls of the Colorado Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division in which property is taken and persons are seized sound like what you or an ordinary person would think is the "due process of law?"

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Gun rights and medical marijuana -- Update

Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock, noting that hunting season is starting soon, sent a strong letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder subtly suggesting how offensive and unworkable was the letter to Federal Firearms Licensees from the ATF declaring state medical marijuana laws null and void as far as the Federal gun laws go.

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Gun ownership by patients who use medical marijuana

A provision of the 1968 Gun Control Act prohibits drug addicts from possessing or receiving a firearm (18 U.S.C. 922 (g)(3)). Given the connection between serious drug addiction and criminal behavior such a provision is not unreasonable. Typically however, Congress went a little farther, applying the prohibition to any person "who is an unlawful user. . . of a controlled substance."

Of course, if you have a bona fide prescription for a controlled substance for a medical condition you are not "an unlawful user," and thus it is not a crime to possess or receive a firearm. So even if you use powerful narcotics legally, that does not affect your right to possess a firearm.

As of this time, sixteen states (and the District of Columbia) have enacted laws recognizing the medical use of marijuana.(The laws in D.C. and New Jersey are not yet operative.)

As a result of these state laws, there are hundreds of thousands of persons nationwide whose doctors have recommended to them that they use marijuana for medical purposes.

But Federal law still does not, and Federal health officials still do not, recognize the medical use of marijuana (except by four persons who receive marijuana from the federal government under the compassionate use program).

Should being a lawful patient using marijuana under State law require that one give up one's Constitutional right under the Second Amendment to possess a firearm for self-defense? As matter of logic, of course not. Under state law, you are a lawful user of marijuana under a doctor's supervision. You are not a drug addict. But according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) of the U.S. Department of Justice, the answer, sadly, is yes!

On September 21, 2011, ATF advised Federal Firearms Licensees by open letter that they must not sell firearms to any person who identifies himself or herself as a medical user of marijuana. John Adams of USA TODAY reported on this letter on September 29, 2011. MPP's Morgan Fox reported in March that the Supreme Court of Oregon came to the opposite conclusion! But the Supreme Court of Oregon's judgment does not apply to other states.

Once again obtuse Federal health and drug officials, now acting through ATF bureaucrats, are jeopardizing the liberties of Americans by setting aside their right to self defense, clarified by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Heller case in June 2008.

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Major New U.S. Efforts in Mexico -- Intelligence drones

The U.S. is flying intelligence gathering drones over Mexico, wiretapping Mexican suspects, and U.S. agents are carrying weapons contrary to official Mexican policy, The New York Times confirmed in a report March 16.

Yet U.S. agencies are not cooperating with each other - a chronic issue that is 40 years old -- but the DEA has time and resources to raid dozens of medical marijuana dispensaries in Montana and California.

Perhaps this is part of the public relations of the Obama Administration making up to Mexico's President Calderon who was humiliated by
leaked U.S. State Department cables posted by Wikileaks.

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