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Bush Administration's Two-Faced States' Rights Position

By Jeralyn, Section Crime Policy
Posted on Sun Oct 12, 2003 at 05:30:50 PM EST
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President Bush and the Justice Department claim to be for states' rights-- except when states don't agree with them. One example: medical marijuana.

Oregon's citizens voted to legalize medical marijuana. Travis Paulson, who lives with his 84 year old mother, got the required license and grew the plant in his back yard. Until the feds came to his house one day, dressed in black like "Ninja warriors" and stopped him. It was the second such raid in Oregon this year.

So what about states' rights?

"The legal scuffling doesn't sit well with Oregon House Rep. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene. The Bush administration is "very quick to say they believe in states' rights, except for (these issues) and anything else they don't agree with," he said. "When the federal administration differs with state law in any state, they are applying their enforcement procedures to gain compliance."

When asked about the raids and the feds' policy towards medical marijuana activities that are legal in the state in which they occur, Brian Blake, spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, gave this doublespeak:

Federal drug agents, he said, are not targeting Oregonians who grow medical marijuana but are going after what he called "the marijuana threat." And medical marijuana, he said, "is part of the marijuana threat."

Paulson was growing more than the allowed number of plants. But,

Paulson is a licensed cardholder under the state's medical marijuana program and is a "caregiver" for six other adults, meaning he can furnish their marijuana.

Among the licensed cardholders Paulson supplies with marijuana is Lebanon resident Cornelius Davis, who had cancer in his esophagus removed in 1998. He smokes marijuana to ease his pain and increase his appetite.

Since it's not legal to buy marijuna, how is he supposed to supply seven people without growing it on his own? Plus, that seems to be a bogus issue, since the grower in the earlier bust was not growing more than the allowed number of plants.

In that raid, local authorities determined that the resident was abiding by state law, but the federal agent confiscated the plants.

[Thanks to How Appealing for the link]

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