Many likely don't know about it because America's core of political stenographers don't talk about it much.
Which is sort of odd as this issue is extremely important to the US Federal Government.
While one arm of the US Federal Government is busily making up Grade-A reefer-mad horseshit), your Federal Government is using the IRS to wage a war against medical marijuana dispensaries.
Those who care about this can make the jump.
This about the US Federal Government using a tax code to harass and drive legal medical marijuana dispensaries out of business, largely because people who work in these agencies are propaganda-soaked ideologues who truly feel marijuana is the biggest goddamned threat this country has ever seen.
They are invariably mean-spirited assholes of the First ORder, nothing else really explains their assholishness on this topic.
There is no salient reason why marijuana is STILL illegal other then the interests of republicans and the federal government, which seems largely made up of republican talking points.
"The 280E provision which requires certain businesses to pay taxes on their gross income, as opposed to their net income, is aimed at shutting down illicit drug operations, not state-legal medical marijuana dispensaries," said Kris Hermes, spokesman for the medical marijuana defense group Americans for Safe Access." Nonetheless, the Obama Administration is using Section 280E to push these local and state licensed facilities out of business."
The provision can be used to great effect. Oakland's Harborside Health Center was hit with a $2 million IRS assessment in 2011 after the tax agency employed Section 280E against. Harborside is fighting that assessment, even as it continues to try to fend off federal prosecutors' attempts to shut it down by seizing the properties it leases. Similarly, when the feds raided Richard Lee's Oaksterdam University that same year, it wasn't just DEA, but also IRS agents who stormed the premises. Lee said it was because of a 280E-related audit.
The attacks on Harborside and Oaksterdam were part of an IRS campaign of aggressive audits using 280E to deny legitimate business expenses, such as rent, payroll, and all other necessary business expenses. These denials result in astronomical back tax bills for the affected dispensaries, threatening their viability -- and patients' access to their medicine.
"Should the IRS campaign be successful; it will throw millions of patients back in to the hands of street dealers; eliminate tens of thousands of well paying jobs, destroy hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenue; enrich the criminal underground; and endanger the safety of communities in the 17 medical cannabis states," said Harborside's Steve DeAngelo as he announced the 280E Reform Project to begin to fight back.
The US Federal Government appears to have a HUGE interest in maintaining the black market for marijuana, over and above the various lobbying groups for sheriffs and law enforcement (who enjoy the easy work of harassing marijuana culture). I think it boils down to how the Federal Government uses the Controlled Substances Act as a crowbar against the 9th and 10th amendments: The PEOPLE vote marijuana into legality state by state because the PEOPLE DEMAND IT but the Feds scream 'supremacy of the CSA" and use this to wage a war against the will of the PEOPLE.
Obama and Holder are pressing this and could stop it, if they so desired.
Do NOT holder your breath.
They have things exactly how they want them.
I like how they don't give a rat-fuck about sick people, or the Will of the People, and it really is extra-points for supporting criminal cartels in Mexico. The Cartels should send them a thank you card.
The American People are trying to send the cartels a pink slip and the Obama Administration is going out of its way to support their business, because that is exactly what happens when you kill legal avenues to marijuana.
It is a totally dumbfuck maneuver.
And the Right says Obama is anti-business...