Obscanity: You'll know it when you see it

Renegade DEA finds new excuses « The Hemp Factor.

So the fun now is that the DEA is going to start claiming that dispensaries are in violation of state law in order to continue their raids. Never mind that in the most recent raid in San Francisco, in which the DEA claimed the dispensary was not in compliance with state law, local law enforcement was not even included in the decision to raid. What gives these federal bureaucrats the idea that they get to decide what complies with state laws? Don’t they realize that interferes with the state’s authority to enforce its OWN laws?

Attorney general signals shift in marijuana policy.

I wonder how this will affect people who are serving time for complying with state medical marijuana laws, e.g. Charles Lynch.

According to the government's sentencing recommendation for Lynch, which says the five-year mandatory minimum prison term is an appropriate one, Lynch had violated California state law because his "operation was rife with activities having more to do with business and casual drug distribution than anything medical."

Well, obviously. The federal government had refused to acknowledge any medicinal properties of cannabis in the first place, so obviously they were going to say he was operating in casual drug distribution. They also claimed that Lynch was distributing marijuana to children, failing to mention that the minors involved were teenaged cancer patients whose parents had initiated contact with Lynch because pharmaceutical appetite stimulants had proved ineffective.

Time shall tell, I guess.

Medical marijuana supporters fuming over Westside dispensary raids – Los Angeles Times.

Fuming? You’re damned right. Fuck them. Fuck them to FUCKING hell. This is the kind of fascist bullshit that should have STOPPED with the new administration. So President Obama, what are you going to do about the fact that people all over the country are suffering from addiction, dying, and being murdered over TRULY dangerous drugs, kids are popping their parents’ Vicodin and Xanax like Tic-Tacs, and the DEA’s henchmen are sticking to the cushy job of robbing legitimate tax-paying businesses and stealing medicine from the disabled?

I am truly disgusted, and you would be too if you knew how these raids are conducted. They are little more than armed robberies; a team of agents bust into the place with huge guns. Nobody is arrested, but all of the medication, money, and valuables are stolen while the employees and patients watch helplessly. The employees, who are patients themselves, are frequently placed in handcuffs so they can watch while everything is torn apart, and then are released once there’s nothing left for the agents to steal.

It’s nothing more than government-sanctioned piracy.

The DEA ought to be out there stopping criminals and breaking up drug cartels instead of playing the cowards and attacking innocent, LAWFUL tax-paying businesses that provide crucial services to people with disabilities and terminal illnesses.

This NEEDS to stop.

Facebook | Cheryl Hussein Jones’s Notes | If you could save a man from going to federal prison, would you?.

It should be noted that the judge in this case refused to allow evidence relating to medicinal marijuana, including the simple fact that Lynch was operating within state laws. As a result, the jury never knew that he was operating legally or that his 2,000 “customers” were in fact ill patients with legal prescriptions – including a 17-year old cancer patient whose parents brought him to Lynch when nothing else would help him with pain and nausea. There were countless sick patients who were willing to testify to their experience with Lynch, and the judge barred them from the courtroom.

This is an absolute travesty.

Bailout Provides More Mental Health Coverage – NYTimes.com:

WASHINGTON — More than one-third of all Americans will soon receive better insurance coverage for mental health treatments because of a new law that, for the first time, requires equal coverage of mental and physical illnesses. (Read more)

Op-Ed Columnist – McCain’s Radical Agenda – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com.
Of note:

The whole idea of the McCain plan is to get families out of employer-paid health coverage and into the health insurance marketplace, where naked competition is supposed to take care of all ills. (We’re seeing in the Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fiascos just how well the unfettered marketplace has been working.)

Americans for Safe Access is reporting that the DEA now claims the agent wearing the Blackwater shirt is not actually a Blackwater employee, but rather, merely a DEA agent. Not only that, but they’re also requesting censorship of the photo involved for the “safety” of that employee, who allegedly sometimes does undercover work. They asked the LA Times to blur the face of the agent in the Blackwater shirt. Since the LA Times has a policy of not altering photos, ASA reports, they removed the photo altogether.

Let’s get a few things straight… First of all, if you do undercover work, exactly how wise is it to be involved in a very public raid of a legal medicinal cannabis co-op? Shouldn’t undercover people STAY undercover, and not make themselves even more conspicuous by wearing extremely controversial and noticeable clothing in a situation where media and cameras are certain to be present? Or you know, by being involved at all in such a raid?

Second… do private security companies frequently offer their logo-bearing t-shirts to the public? And do DEA agents frequently wear logo-bearing t-shirts to raids? Do raids call for casual street attire? Wouldn’t the only logical logo for a DEA agent to be wearing during a raid be… oh, I don’t know, the DEA logo???? When’s the last time you saw a DEA raid in which the agents were wearing Abercrombie or Disney t-shirts? So this Blackwater shirt was just a coincidence? Sure. I believe that. Uh huh.

As if the recent raid on a Culver City medicinal marijuana cooperative by DEA agents wasn’t enough, it’s now become apparent that this raid was conducted not only by DEA agents, but also by Blackwater employees. Yes, that would be the same Blackwater that has government contracts for private security in Iraq, and the same Blackwater whose trigger-happy thugs killed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians for no particular reason. What’s next – will Blackwater agents start shooting medicinal marijuana patients too?

As I browsed pages while reading about this story, I came across this article about Blackwater’s broader functions in the present and in the future. Then I came across this chilling paragraph:

What could prove to be one of Blackwater’s most profitable and enduring enterprises is one of the company’s most secretive initiatives–a move into the world of privatized intelligence services. In April 2006, Prince quietly began building Total Intelligence Solutions, which boasts that it “brings CIA-style” services to the open market for Fortune 500 companies. Among its offerings are “surveillance and countersurveillance, deployed intelligence collection, and rapid safeguarding of employees or other key assets.”

Now, if you read the LA Times article you’ll find that while the DEA agents and Blackwater people ransacked people’s bedrooms and stole all of the marijuana and live plants on the premises (and uprooted their vegetable garden too), they did NOT arrest anybody. They did, however, crack open the ATM and help themselves to its contents. More importantly, they also seized medical records, which basically would include the names of all of the co-op’s customers. Why does this matter? Well, those patients are not breaking any California laws, but until the CA legislature passes a new employment protection bill, employers can still fire patients who test positive for marijuana use, even if they have a valid prescription, are not medicated while at work, and there has been no negative impact on job performance (although apparently it’s perfectly fine to come to work hopped up on Vicodin or Xanax or suffering a hangover from a massive drinking binge the night before). There are also other non-criminal ramifications of being a known cannabis user.

So what I’m thinking is that we’re seeing Blackwater doing its “CIA-style” intelligence gathering, with the generous and convenient help of the DEA. If you’re a patient who goes to Organica Collective, you can bet both dollars AND donuts that Blackwater has your information now, and will be keeping it on file for those Fortune 500 companies and selling it on the open market.

I think Organica employee Brian V. Birbiglia, a disabled former Marine who was handcuffed for more than four hours during the “raid,” said it best: “We follow the law,” he yelled, his face red and his eyes teary. “We might as well have just got robbed by a bunch of thugs downtown.”

Brian, I think you were closer to the truth than you imagined.