On Tuesday the 15th the DEA, along with local law enforcement, raided over a dozen medical marijuana co-ops. It is unclear how many arrests were made, but at least one person is in custody and several employees were taken in for questioning. These raids occured on the heels of a series of similar actions in California, where DEA agents raided dispensaries and growers, confiscating their records and confiscating massive amounts of marijuana grown under the letter of state law.
The Feds have stated that all the businesses targeted were fronts for criminal activity including money laundering, and the illegal sale of drugs. Matthew Barnes, the DEA agent who led the raids in Seattle, claims they were using state law to "satisfy their own personal greed.” U.S. attorney Jenny Durkan says that, “People who are truly sick and their medical caregivers-- they're not going to be prosecuted. Pure commercial drug operations, using the guise of medical dispensaries-- they should be worried."
In 1998, Washington voted to allow medical marijuana, along with 15 other states and the District of Columbia. Marijuana has been grown and distributed to people who are suffering and have been approved to use it. Marijuana is still considered an illegal controlled substance by the federal government, so some have seen this series of events coming. But that still left the hundreds of doctor approved patients out in the cold when they found the doors to the access points for their medicine locked.
This seems like little more than the government trying to keep people scared. Obama’s administration publicly acknowledged that they would allow states to control marijuana laws, and yet here are DEA agents raiding pharmacies like crack dens. Even as public opinion shifts more and more towards legalization and regulation, the federal government continues to increase its prosecution of marijuana users. It is clear that the people are no longer behind wasting billions of dollars on enforcing antiquated marijuana laws when just legalizing the damn thing would save the federal government on the order of $7.7 billion a year. Not to mention the additional billions that would be brought in if it were taxed.
Drug wars are raging in Mexico, U.S. citizens are getting beheaded for fuck's sake, and the DEA has nothing better on its plate than busting dispensaries who source all of their cannabis locally, and contribute to their communities in all of the ways any other small business does.
If the dispensaries (which make up a small portion of those in the state) that were targeted were the sleaziest joints in the world, and were slanging drugs to unlicensed users and laundering money, they’d still be better than the cartels, gangs, and scumbags who are flooding the streets with crack and heroine, who will sleep soundly tonight knowing that the DEA has its head too far up its own ass chasing after weed co-ops to come after them.
Way I see it-- our government is too broke to be hemorrhaging money into a futile enterprise. If weed were legalized and taxed the revenue could be used for any number of valuable public projects, including but not limited too: supporting public education, providing healthcare to the poor, improving our infrastructure, paying off our insane debt, or even training our DEA agents to catch actual drug dealers.