Though 34 percent of the U.S. population lives in one of the 19 states that have legalized medical marijuana, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) continues to raid medical marijuana dispensaries and homes of medical marijuana patients. Costing around $17,000 per raid, the government’s war on drugs is costing taxpayers.
According to a report from the medical marijuana patient advocacy group Americans For Safe Access (ASA), in the last five years the DEA and the Department of Justice have conducted 270 raids, which is more than half of the some 528 raids that have occurred throughout the last 17 years.
“Every war has casualties and a price tag. The war on medical cannabis is no different. The battle for safe access to medical cannabis is not just a battle of politics and laws; it is a war that is being waged in our neighborhoods, affecting millions of lives every year, and costing the US taxpayers hundreds of million dollars,” said Steph Sherer, executive director ASA.
As part of its “Peace for Patients” campaign, the ASA’s report on the cost of the federal war on medical marijuana says the federal government has spent nearly half a billion dollars so far in its crackdown on medical marijuana. About $300 million has been spent in medical marijuana-legalized states by the Obama administration, and in 2011 and 2012, 4 percent of the DEA’s budget was spent on medical marijuana cases.
A spokesman for the DEA told Mint Press News that the agency does not target individual medical marijuana patients and said the job of the agency is to enforce drug laws.
Obama has been called out by several marijuana advocacy groups, including ASA and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) for raiding more dispensaries than any other previous administration, but a new report says there is more to the story.
While Obama’s administration has called for more raids, a report by Keith Humphreys found that the use of marijuana also increased. Comparing number of arrests to number of users under the George W. Bush administration to Obama’s, Humphreys found that there has actually been a decrease in the “enforcement intensity.”
In a recent interview with Mint Press News, Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML agreed with the DEA’s statement that the agency doesn’t target medical marijuana patients.
“It’s generally true [medical marijuana] patients are not gone after,” he said, adding that there’s a lot of hyperbole against Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder since the DEA targets large-scale sellers and patients.
Still, groups like ASA say that medical marijuana patients continue to use marijuana in fear, and those who are arrested cost taxpayers a large sum, since about 1 million Americans use medical marijuana at the recommendation of their doctor.
Colorado resident Don Nord, 57, uses medical marijuana to help him with the pain he has as a result of his health problems, which includes the loss of a kidney due to cancer, phlebitis, blood clots, diabetes, and neuropathy in his feet. He also has pancreas and gall bladder issues.
Unable to afford the medicine his doctor recommended on his fixed income of $655 a month, Nord says he began cultivating marijuana to see if it would help. Nord’s home was raided by federal agents from the DEA in October 2003.
“I told them I was a registered medical marijuana patient, but they said they were federal agents and my certificate doesn’t mean anything to them,” Nord said.
Though he wasn’t arrested, the DEA confiscated the three marijuana plants Nord had been growing, five ounces of marijuana, a pipe, rolling papers, and growing equipment. Nord’s case was also thrown out by a judge who dismissed the charges against him, but many medical marijuana patients are not as lucky.
According to the ASA’s report, about two-thirds of medical marijuana defendants accept plea agreements because they are not allowed to tell a jury they are medical cannabis patients or that they were providing medical cannabis in accordance with their state law since they are often charged in federal courts.
Funny history
Until 1937, marijuana was legal in the U.S. When lawmakers decided the substance should be illegal, they heard objections from the American Medical Association (AMA).
Dr. William C. Woodward testified to Congress on behalf of the AMA. He said, “The American Medical Association knows of no evidence that marijuana is a dangerous drug,” adding that prohibition “loses sight of the fact that future investigation may show that there are substantial medical uses for cannabis.”
Woodward’s testimony was not convincing enough and marijuana became a prohibited substance.
Throughout the years marijuana has continued to be used by millions of Americans for both medical and recreational forms and many politicians, law enforcement officials and physicians have spoken in favor of legalization.
For example, in 1988, DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young said, “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man… It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance…”
Scott Day was a well-known medical marijuana patient in Montana who was indicted on federal drug trafficking charges in 2007 for growing 96 plants at his home, which he used to treat a rare terminal illness.
Since Day was not allowed to use marijuana after his home was raided, his doctor prescribed him an anxiety medication. Day had a fatal reaction to the drug and died of asphyxiation. Unlike legal pharmaceuticals, no one has ever died from a reaction to marijuana or overdosed.
Talking to Oregon’s Mail Tribune in March 2008, President Obama shared that he thought use of medical marijuana should be a doctor’s decision, just like how politicians allow doctors to prescribe other pharmaceuticals. “I’m not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue.”
Patricia Todd, an Alabama State Representative, has also advocated for the use of medical marijuana. “I have seen a lot of people at the end stage of a disease really uncomfortable and really die miserable. And it’s not just HIV. It’s cancer. Anyone who has had a loved one die of cancer can relate to this,” she said.
“I have had personal knowledge of this, watching someone who has been addicted to pain medication for years and years start to smoke or use marijuana in food products, like a brownie, that can eliminate their pain, increase their appetite and increase the quality of their life… It has gotten a lot of discussion in the state house, obviously a lot of media attention. Nationally, when you look at what other states are doing, every state is moving in that direction.”
Unfortunately, none of these testimonies have been able to change federal law in a way that’s beneficial to medical marijuana patients.
States vs. Uncle Sam
Not only has the federal government been working to discourage Americans from using medical marijuana, but the ASA reports that in 2011, U.S. Attorneys across the U.S. threatened elected officials in an attempt to keep them from passing laws easing restrictions on medical marijuana.
“Between February and May, federal prosecutors sent letters to elected state officials in California, Arizona, Hawaii, Washington, Montana, Colorado, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine — either implicitly or explicitly threatening criminal prosecution of elected officials and state employees if they implemented laws regulating the distribution of medical cannabis,” the report says.
California was the first state to legalize medical marijuana, doing so in 1996. The state has been one of the most heavily-raided, much to the dismay of state lawmakers.
“Many states have legalized medicinal marijuana. I believe the president and the Department of Justice ought to respect the will of these separate states… We are capable of self-government. We don’t need some federal gendarme to come and tell us what to do,” California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said.