The Informant

The DEA can still raid medical marijuana operations.

In California, especially in the Bay Area, where most neighborhoods have a medical marijuana dispensary along with the local corner store and dry cleaner’s, it’s easy to forget: this stuff’s illegal!

Yes, Oakland put things into high gear last night when the city council passed a measure allowing large-scale cultivation within city bounds. Much as Mendocino County has made medical marijuana cultivation a state-regulated activity. Earlier this year, the county expanded the allowable number of plants per producer. As of June, producers can register with the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department and purchase up to 99 zip ties (one per plant) that indicate the medical marijuana they grow, up to that amount, is certified and meets local laws. What the law doesn’t and can’t guarantee is protection from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

According to the Ukiah Daily Journal, the very first applicant to this program was raided by the DEA as her application pended.

Now groups like the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws are using this raid to highlight why they oppose President Obama’s nomination of Michele Leonhart to head the agency.

Leonhart is the current acting DEA director and NORML says that raids like the Mendocino one show that she’s not committed to following Attorney General Eric Holder’s directive to essentially ignore state-sanctioned growers and distributors of medical marijuana.

It seems, however, that DEA officers are acting on different orders. Last summer, numerous reports of raids surfaced. And one trial currently underway in San Diego seems to indicate that Holder’s directive won’t help growers or providers who end up in court. There, a federal district judge ruled that the lawyer for an arrested dispensary operator couldn’t argue entrapment–that law enforcement essentially said that he could do something and then arrested him for doing it.

So just a reminder: medical marijuana is still illegal, as far as the federal government is concerned. And unless something radical happens between now and November, recreational marijuana will likely get the same, if not more attention from the federal government should Proposition 19 pass.