Is Obama Planning to Allow More Medical Marijuana Raids?

In the aftermath of a couple very questionable DEA raids of medical marijuana providers, not to mention the nomination of notorious drug warrior Michele Leonhart to head the DEA, we're forced to question once again whether President Obama intends to abide by his pledge to tolerate medical marijuana in states that have legalized its use.

I'll be the first to tell you that the medical marijuana situation has improved considerably since Obama took office. The aggressive anti-pot posturing of the previous administration has largely subsided, and the DEA's hideous practice of raiding medical marijuana facilities has certainly declined. But in light of recent events, the future of federal medical marijuana policy is anything but certain.

Mike Riggs has a story in The Daily Caller today that isn't going to make anyone feel better about the situation:

But the White House and the Justice Department both told TheDC that Holder’s memo does not give dispensaries carte blanche to grow or sell marijuana, and that recent raids don’t conflict with what Obama expressed while campaigning.

“I wouldn’t say the memo ‘discourages’ certain raids,” a DOJ offical told TheDC. Rather, “it talks about prioritizing resources most efficiently.” And both the White House and the DOJ argued that the gist of the Holder memo was that the DEA would “not focus its limited resources on individual patients with cancer or other serious diseases.”

Admittedly, the Holder Memo does suck if you actually read it. Alas, we find ourselves confronted with the exact sort of shameless backtracking that the memo was so deliberately crafted to allow for.

Whether Obama is breaking the various vague promises he's made with regards to medical marijuana policy is debatable depending how one interprets events up to this point. But there's no doubt that he's positioning himself to horribly piss off the large majority of Americans who've long opposed federal harassment of patients and providers. To whatever extent to ugliness of Bush era medical marijuana policy is behind us, Obama would be wise to keep it that way.