![\"Marijuana](\"http:\/\/www.mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-content\/upload\/2012\/04\/marijuana-460x3071.jpg\" "\\"marijuana-460x307.jpg\\"")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Obama Justice and medical marijuana – Salon.com<\/a>: “President Obama gave an interview to Rolling Stone\u2018s Jann Wenner\u00a0this week and was asked about his administration\u2019s aggressive crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries, including ones located in states where medical marijuana is legal and which are licensed by the state; this policy is directly contrary to Obama\u2019s campaign pledge to not \u201cuse Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws about medical marijuana.\u201d Here\u2019s part of the President\u2019s answer:<\/p>\n I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana \u2013 and the reason is, because it\u2019s against federal law. I can\u2019t nullify congressional law. I can\u2019t ask the Justice Department to say, \u201cIgnore completely a federal law that\u2019s on the books\u201d . . . .<\/p>\n The only tension that\u2019s come up \u2013 and this gets hyped up a lot \u2013 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\u2019re telling them, \u201cThis is supposed to be against the law, but we want you to turn the other way.\u201d That\u2019s not something we\u2019re going to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n Aside from the fact that Obama\u2019s claim about the law is outright false \u2014 as Jon Walker conclusively documents, the law vests the Executive Branch with precisely the discretion he falsely claims he does not have to decide how drugs are classified \u2014 it\u2019s just extraordinary that Obama is affirming the \u201cprinciple\u201d that he can\u2019t have the DOJ \u201cturn the othe way\u201d in the face of lawbreaking. As an emailer just put it to me: \u201cInteresting how this principle holds for prosecuting [medical] marijuana producers in the war on drugs, but not for prosecuting US officials in the war on terror.\u00a0 Or telecommunications companies for illegal spying.\u00a0 Or Wall Street banks\u00a0for mortgage fraud.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s about as vivid an expression of the President\u2019s agenda, and his sense of justice, and the state of the Rule of Law in America, as one can imagine. The same person who directed the DOJ to shield torturers and illegal government eavesdroppers from criminal investigation, and who voted to retroactively immunize the nation\u2019s largest telecom giants when they got caught enabling criminal spying on Americans, and whose DOJ has failed to indict a single Wall Street executive in connection with the 2008 financial crisis or mortgage fraud scandal, suddenly discovers the imperatives of The Rule of Law when it comes to those, in accordance with state law, providing medical marijuana to sick people with a prescription.”<\/p>\n (Via <\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Obama Justice and medical marijuana – Salon.com: “President Obama gave an interview to Rolling Stone\u2018s Jann Wenner\u00a0this week and was asked about his administration\u2019s aggressive crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries, including ones located in states where medical marijuana is legal and which are licensed by the state; this policy is directly contrary to Obama\u2019s campaign … Continue reading Obama Justice and medical marijuana – Salon.com<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4RRl-2lA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9026"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9028,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9026\/revisions\/9028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattcastille.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}