Obama and Eric Holder Are Still Lying About the Medical Marijuana Raids

by Scott Morgan
StoptheDrugWar.org
Jun. 13, 2012

On Thursday, Eric Holder lied to Congress about DOJ's escalating attacks against medical marijuana:

Mr. Holder said federal officials are not going after those who are staying within the confines of their states' medical marijuana laws, but said some have "come up with ways in which they are taking advantage of these state laws."

"We limit our enforcement efforts to those individuals, organizations that are acting out of conformity with state law," Mr. Holder told a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing. [Washington Times]

That statement is simply false, and flagrantly so. It's been widely reported in the press that federal prosecutors have threatened to arrest state officials merely for administering their own medical marijuana laws. One cannot claim that regulators performing their official duties are "acting out of conformity with state law". They are the state. You can't threaten them with arrest and then subsequently claim that enforcement is only directed at those who violate local laws.

Moreover, the feds have raided hundreds of dispensaries without making any effort at all to determine whether state laws are being violated. Most of the time, they're just confiscating money and medicine without even charging anyone. They keep saying the people they raid were breaking local laws, but they aren't proving that to be the case. When have they ever demonstrated that any of these businesses were violating state laws?

This whole just-enforcing-state-laws excuse is the same nonsense we were hearing from the President a month ago, and the Obama Administration's ability to comfortably repeat this crap owes much to the media's total failure to follow up on it.