Up In Smoke

Feeling nauseous from chemotherapy? Take a hit of weed.

Medical marijuana has been the butt of jokes for some time. The use of marijuana to offset the side effects of chemo is well known but only legal in a few jurisdictions.

But it seems the new Washington regime is sending a message there is a new sheriff in town and he is here to clean things up.

The Obama administration isn’t going to bust stores that are following state laws allowing the sale of marijuana when approved for use by a doctor. But the DOJ will go after stores being used as fronts for drug dealers, Attorney General Eric Holder said yesterday.

It’s been clear for a while that the Obama administration would depart from the Bush administration’s practices of using the DEA to bust marijuana dispensaries that officials said were following state law but violating federal law, which doesn’t recognize a medical use of marijuana.

So who has jurisdiction here? The feds and the DEA or the state of Cah-lee-for-neeah?

According to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder . . .

The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law, to the extent that people do that and try to use medical marijuana laws as a shield for activity that is not designed to comport with what the intention was of the state law. Those are the organizations, the people, that we will target. And that is consistent with what the president said during the campaign.

Sounds like "lawyer speak" to me.