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In an orchestrated strike Tuesday, DEA agents raided at least 14 medical marijuana dispensaries in the Seattle area, according to the locally based Cannabis Defense Coalition. The raids hit dispensaries in King, Pierce, and Thurston counties, including three operating inside the Seattle city limits.
photo courtesy
US Attorney Jenny Durkan said Tuesday afternoon the dispensaries were raided because they were suspected of violating Washington's medical marijuana laws, which do not explicitly provide for dispensaries. The state legislator had passed a bill to do that earlier this year, but Gov. Christine Gregroire (D) vetoed it, citing fears it would subject state employees to federal prosecution after being warned of just that by federal prosecutors."We will not prosecute truly ill people or their doctors who determine that marijuana is an appropriate medical treatment," Durkan said in a statement. "However, state laws of compassion were never intended to protect brash criminal conduct that masquerades as medical treatment."
Multiple arrests were reported, including at least 17 in Thurston County, but a final tally is not yet in.
The DEA Seattle office also issued a statement Tuesday: "The DEA will exercise its investigative authority to pursue criminal actions for any violation of federal law, when warranted. This includes investigating organizations or individuals that grow, manufacture, or distribute illegal drugs to include marijuana, and those who rent or maintain a property to facilitate drug trafficking."
The Justice Department's offensive against medical marijuana distribution has just broadened… again.
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Prohibition Sucks - The End!
Prohibition is actually an authoritarian war on the economy, the Constitution and every civic institution of our once great and free nation.
It's all about the market and cost/benefit analysis. Whether any particular drug is good, bad, or otherwise is irrelevant! As long as there is demand for any mind altering substance, there will be supply; the end! The only affect prohibiting it has is to drive the price up, increase the costs and profits, and where there is illegal profit to be made criminals and terrorists thrive.
The cost of criminalizing citizens who are using substances no more harmful than similar things that are perfectly legal like alcohol and tobacco, is not only hypocritical and futile, but also simply not worth the incredible damage it does.
Afghani farmers produce approx. 93% of the world's opium which is then, mostly, refined into street heroin then smuggled throughout Eastern and Western Europe.
Both the Taliban and the terrorists of al Qaeda derive their main income from the prohibition-inflated value of this very easily grown crop, which means that Prohibition is the "Goose that laid the golden egg" and the lifeblood of terrorists as well as drug cartels. Only those opposed, or willing to ignore this fact, want things the way they are.
Kindly Google: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW OF NARCOTICS-FUNDED TERRORIST GROUPS
Prohibition provides America's sworn enemies with financial "aid" and tactical "comforts". The Constitution of the United States of America defines treason as:
"Article III / Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
Support for prohibition is therefore an act of treason against the Constitution, and a dire threat to our nation's civic institutions. Each day we remain silent, we help to destroy the Constitution, fill the prisons with our children, and empower terrorists and criminals worldwide while wasting hundreds of billions of our own tax dollars. Prohibition bears many strong and startling similarities to Torquemada’s Inquisition or Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, it’s supporters are servants of tyranny and hate who’s sole purpose is to make the rest of us suffer their putrid legacy of incalculable waste and destruction.
Prohibition Prevents Regulation - Legalize, Regulate & Tax!
Those raids in the greater Seattle area
have had the effect of every dispensary in my county (80 some miles away from Seattle) shutting down in fear of being raided. I suspect this is also the case in all the other counties in WA, effectively making MMJ patients go back to buying it from illegal sources.
They claim they only raided those shops which were selling to people who didn't have licenses, I suspect that what was actually going on was the dispensaries, by now knowing all their regular customers by sight, had ceased asking regular customers to show their licenses when purchasing, and not that they were selling to new customers who didn't have a license (which was the stated reason for the raids).
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