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Guns Drugs and Money

I can't believe my taxes make this possible...

DEA Raids Medical Marijuana Growers
Martha Mendoza, Associated Press National Writer

Federal agents raided a marijuana farm Thursday and arrested the owners, who grow the pot for a medical users club, surprising community members and local law enforcement.
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The Corrals helped write the provision in California's Proposition 215 which allows patients and their caregivers to cultivate their own medicine. Their farm has been featured in national media and they work with local authorities to grow and distribute their pot to people with doctors' recommendations to use marijuana.
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The raid was a surprise to local medical marijuana growers and advocates, as well as the Santa Cruz County sheriff and even DEA officials in the agency's closest office, in San Jose.
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Doesn't all this sound a bit WRONG?!

For the DEA to bypass local law enforcement and arrest people for what is legal under California law is outrageous. There's a huge problem when the federal government has to go behind local law enforcement's back to carry out arrests. They've got the guns, but we've got the numbers. I've always been in favor of legalization of marijuana for medical use. I've spoken to local doctors who say they would prescribe it if it were available because nothing works as well, it's cheap, and there's even a study that says THC has anti-cancer properties - that report funded by the NIH was shelved by the U.S. government and the DEA when it became apparent the rats treated with THC were healthier than the control group (not smoked but injested I believe... smoke is bad for you no matter what). Scientists working in Madrid found THC cannabinoids had anti-tumor effects and published their findings in the March 2000 issue of Nature. Why haven't you heard of that before? Why haven't you indeed...

Here's a great link: War on Drugs Clock $27billion and counting...

Just for comparison sake, in 1998 the United Nations Development Programme estimated that the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all, and clean water and safe sewers for all is roughly $40 billion a year--or less than 4% of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people in the world. Or about the same cost as our annual drug war. Think about that.

Comments (1)

lisa:

did any of the news reports say why that farm was raided? i heard about it on this morning's news, but i don't recall hearing why it happened. i do agree that it was wrong for the dea to raid the place behind the local police's back, especially when everything was totally legal.

i don't understand why this country refuses to help the people who are in poverty, wouldn't that be better than spending all that money on a drug war that we're losing? okay, we do need to fight the drug war, but there has to be some way to re-allocate the money in the budget so we can fight the "good fight" and help clean up this country. man, why do we tell other countries what to do when we can't even clean up our own place?

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on September 6, 2002 12:27 AM.

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