The Terrifying Trio of U.S. Drug Enforcement: Drug Enforcement Administration Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart; Attorney General Eric Holder; and FBI Assistant Director Kevin Perkins
Kay Lazar and Shelley Murphy of the Boston Globe reports DEA targets doctors linked to medical marijuana, in the Masschusett's legal medical marijuana dispensaries in the final stages of the new licensing process.
US Drug Enforcement Administration investigators have visited the homes and offices of Massachusetts physicians involved with medical marijuana dispensaries and delivered an ultimatum: sever all ties to marijuana companies, or relinquish federal licenses to prescribe certain medications, according to several physicians and their attorneys. ...
The DEA’s action has left some doctors, whose livelihoods depend on being able to offer patients pain medications and other drugs, with little option but to resign from the marijuana companies, where some held prominent positions.
The Boston Globe interviewed at least three Doctors who had the muscle put on them by DEA investigators, who are used to intimidating doctors in Massachusetts over medications for A.D.H.D. which in the DEA's vast medical expertise, believes Massachusetts doctors over prescribe.
Something we are extra sensitive to here where we have so many world class hospitals, medical schools and medical communities. Some folks seem to think medicine was invented here, so we certainly do not need jack-booted thugs from the DEA inserting themselves between our doctors and patients eager for the broad range of medical relief offered by marijuana and other cannibus derivatives.
“Here are your options,” Dr. Samuel Mazza said he was told by Gregory Kelly, a DEA investigator from the agency’s New England Division office. “You either give up your [DEA] license or give up your position on the board . . . or you challenge it in court.”
"Say that's a nice practice you got here, Doc, "what a shame if something were to happen to it."
Massachusetts is one of 22 states have legalized medical marijuana since 2010.
Doctors, dentists, psychiatrists are required to have a DEA license to dispense controlled substances - a system that clearly needs to be changed as the DEA has shown this willingness to abuse this responsibility for ideological zeal.
One physician asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisal by the DEA.
“DEA agents can be quite direct when they want to make an impression on you,” the doctor said. ... “My terrified secretary asked what to do with them, and I said I’d see them in five minutes after I finished what I was engaged in,” the physician said.
When the DEA becomes so arrogant as to carry out plans to intimidate doctors into cow towing to the DEA ideological zeal we see its true colors. Intimidation, power, and authoritarian control to try to suppress state efforts and insert itself between doctors and patients in the practice of medicine.
When anti-abortion zealots try to do this we are indignant. But when the Democratic controlled DEA and DOJ inserts itself between doctors and patients we apparently think its great to have a police state looking out for our own good and telling doctors, patients, and scientists how we should think about medicine.
Young people have no problem spotting this hypocrisy and we read and hear reports that many are giving Rand Paul standing ovations when he says are nation's drug laws are stupid, and Democrats are even worse than Republicans in his regard.
Last week, Speaker John Boehner, widely known for this protection of the common man, (snark) allowed the vote where the US House of Representatives approved a measure that would prevent the DEA from raiding medical marijuana dispensaries in the states which have legalized it, but which the DEA continues to harass and arrest those licensed by states to grow or dispense marijuana. This unwelcome enforcement continues unabated despite Eric Holder's previous representations to states that the DOJ would not interfere with state plans. The Senate is now considering the same bill.
This is also DEA Director Michele Leonhart's way of telling A.G. Eric Holder and President Obama to "screw off" after Holder was reported to have asked her to back down on prosecuting legal marijuana dispensaries in the 21 states that have legalized it.
I've tried to give Attorney General Eric Holder every benefit of the doubt on this topic, however, after reading daily of totally ordinary and good American citizens having their lives destroyed by A.G. Eric Holder's DOJ, and Michele Leonhart's DEA, I can remain silent no longer. Innocent middle class citizens are confined to jail while not one of the corrupt finance and banking sector execs have gone to jail for their crimes. We do not need to be weatherpeople to know which way this wind is blowing.
Why would our administration be doing this? If President Obama thinks this is strategy to win approval from hard-line anti-drug Republican hardliners he has badly miscalculated. What is going on below the radar of most forming opinions of this is more complicated.
Holder was reported to have called Leonhart into his office for a "stern discussion." The result of that was for Michele Leonhart's Republican supporters, led by Rep. Frank Wolf in the House to publicly chastise A.G. Eric Holder and President Obama and telling them to "butt out" of trying to control the DEA. On May 23 I wrote VA Rep tells Obama to butt out of trying to control DEA chief. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) came to Leonhart's defense as described in Republican Congressman Accuses Obama Administration of ‘Nixonian’ Attempt to Control DEA Chief.
How incredibly revealing and sad it is that when we "sophisticated" politicos look at this story we blame the Republicans for that spiteful, recalcitrant Bush appointee hangover and convince ourselves that it would be silly to blame Democrats for what our own DEA is doing five and half years into a Democratic administration. Wake up Democrats.
Ironically here is Sam Liberty of Personal Liberty rising in indignation as he rallies his right wing readers to defend the DEA from Democratic Partisan meddling, in Lawmaker Decries Obama Administration’s ‘Nixonian’ Intimidation Of Public Employees
According to a report from The Huffington Post last week, Holder met with DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart on the heels of Congressional testimony she gave suggesting that the Obama Administration’s stance on marijuana isn’t consistent with the Nation’s laws. He quotes from a Huffington Post report:
She publicly distanced herself from Obama’s remarks about marijuana’s relative harmlessness. She griped about the Justice Department’s failure to try to block marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington state. She clings to a comically outdated view of drugs, refusing to acknowledge a difference between pot and crack cocaine. And this week, her agency picked a fight with Kentucky over the state’s purchase of industrial hemp seeds to begin a newly legalized agricultural test.
DEA Director Micelle Leonhart continued in her House testimony to undermine President Obama's and A.G. Eric Holder's proposal for sentencing reform by supporting the Republican's efforts to defeat it by saying,
“Our agents are fighting back against those messages,” Leonhart said. “Actually, it makes us fight harder.”
When Rep. Frank Wolf castigates Obama and Holder for "interference" he fails to mention that DEA Director Michele Leonhart was appointed by President Obama and works for him in the executive branch of government under Eric Holder's Department of Justice. Ultimately, however, responsibility falls on A.G. Eric Holder, and President Obama, who allow her to remain as their choice to head the DEA. She is now carrying out the Obama administration's drug policies. They've had many warnings this day was coming.
This is our DEA, Democrats.
This is our DEA under a Democratic President and Attorney General who appointed a Bush hangover, DEA Director Michele Leonhart, to enforce her draconian views on our citizens, scientific, and medical communities.
Note to Democrats: I'm beginning to worry that we can pretty much kiss goodbye any attempt to fire up our youth voters in last minute GOTV efforts in the fall, too many of the 20 somethings I know from my son's college network are pretty well disgusted with Democrats who seem intent on showing Americans that we can run the DOJ and DEA in even more heavy handed and regressive ways than the Republicans. My son is a good Democrat but many of his friends are becoming Libertarians based on this issue, which they understand well. it is no longer "safe" for a young person to praise Democrats in public in some circles.
Of course, we shouldn't expect DEA Director Michele Leonhart to ever resign. It certainly looks as if her plan to outlast Eric Holder and President Obama is working to her satisfaction.
Wake up Democrats!
We've been warned, we all know what's happening. It has our name on it now. We will be held accountable, and we will deserve what we get.
If we want to change this course the time was yesterday, but today, at the latest. If we wait for the tidal wave to hit, before we call for change, we will look pathetic, it will be too late, and it will not work, we will be left holding the bag, while Republicans call for reform, as Grover Norquist has this morning on sentencing reform, and Senator Mitch McConnell is on protecting Kentucky's hemp crop from heavy handed DEA meddling.
Forewarned is only forearmed if we do something about it. Eric Holder and President Obama need to demand DEA Director Michele Leonhart's resignation and appoint someone with a modern medical view of using a social service and mental health perspective to deal with drug problems not the war time military intervention - police enforcement we've been using for the war on American drug users for the last four decades making things worse with each passing day.
We may only have six more months of sufficient control of the Senate to replace Leonhart. I hope Eric Holder can be saved, but if it is too late for him as well, and our President needs a fall guy we need to act now, or the President and Democratic Party may be left holding this disgraceful bag. Public opinion has dramatically changed and we need to hurry up to catch up so we can appear to be leading.
