In a case that has implications for Colorado and other medical marijuana states, Montana legislator Diane Sands has come under investigation by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, but she doesn’t know why. She suspects the investigation is related to her advocacy of liberalized marijuana laws.
Congressman Jared Polis and drug-policy reform advocate Ethan Nadelmann argued Wednesday night in Vail that one of the most compelling reasons to legalize marijuana in the United States is to eliminate a major funding source for deadly Mexican drug cartels. Both Colorado Attorney General John Suthers and recently retired DEA agent Anthony Coulson sharply disagreed.
Would you like some irony with that baggie of medical marijuana? Well, like it or not, you’re getting some. Medical marijuana has been legal for a decade or so in various U.S. states but it wasn’t until the Ogden memo of 2009 that it really took off. Today, another memo from the same agency has marijuana providers and regulators looking over their shoulders.
A few days after the Drug Enforcement Administration ruled that marijuana has no medicinal use, and a month or so after a prestigious international commission concluded the drug war was a colossal failure, The Denver Post documented the ongoing drug war with a story about Mexican tour bus operators busted for bringing tens of millions of dollars of pot to Denver. That same day, July 11, Time Magazine led its weekly print issue with this quote, “The carnage will end only when drugs are legalized.”
When federal agents led a raid on medical marijuana businesses in Montana last week, questions were raised as to whether these businesses were raided because they were suspected of selling out of the proverbial back door to people without medical marijuana permits–or whether they were raided simply for being medical marijuana businesses.
The mayor, the police chief and a city councilman in the small New Mexico border town of Columbus were arrested on drug trafficking and firearm charges Thursday.
What happened to the 224 luscious weed plants that Highlands Ranch pot farmer Chris Bartkowicz lavished money and attention on and that landed him in a federal clink? Local police are required to keep confiscated plants until if and when…
Colorado’s medical marijuana chronicles went federal this weekend when the state’s top drug cop, DEA special agent Jeff Sweetin, seemed to directly defy the Attorney General and the Obama administration by raiding a Highlands Ranch home a day after owner Chris Bartkowicz spoke to KUSA-TV 9News about his major basement marijuana grow operation. Bartkowicz showed 9News his medical-marijuana license and the documentation for the people to whom he serves as a caregiver. He said he was “living the dream.”
Sweetin and his agents were apparently embarrassed.
Earlier in April, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration claimed in a TV news broadcast that campaigns to legalize marijuana in Denver and throughout the state had increased organized crime in Colorado.
The agency received harsh criticism from legalization
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The federal Drug Enforcement Administration is claiming that proposals to legalize marijuana in Colorado are causing an increase in organized crime, but the agency says it doesn’t have any hard data to back up such statements.
Now proponents who
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