Feeling a rant coming on.....

So I'm reading Holder's new statement on the Drug War and reducing prosecution. Sounds good right? Reduce mandatory sentencing, increase drug rehab, streamline our judiciary to handle violent crime instead of chasing nonviolent drug (in our case cannabis) around and ruining lives.


What a bunch of bullshit. As activists we should be pissed, not thankful for some blessed insight from who knows where in the fifth year of the current White house Administration. Pissed that we are once again being manipulated as a voting block.


What we were sold was a sympathetic ear in Obama's first election to not intrude on State Legal MMJ practices only to get a DEA memo from the same Attorney General Holder which created the largest crackdown on State Legal MMJ businesses of ANY White House Administration. This ain't by accident.


There's over 20 million tokers in America who vote. That's a fuck of a lot of votes when you figure Presidential elections can swing on 1 or 2 million votes. Obama's not dumb and played his liberal credentials, did the "I thought the point WAS to inhale" thing, gave the false promise of respecting State laws.....then.....wow. The polls in the most influential voting block of 30-40 year old women (husbands tend to follow wives as voters thusly you lose the 30-40 year old male also) turned against MMJ 6 weeks prior to the election. The candidate went silent. After being elected the Holder memo came out and the Administration shored up a crucial support segment.


Now...NOW we have two States fully legal, several more have gone forward with MMJ. The Administration losing youth support...hell..the guy is losing support period. So, time has come again to trot out those liberal stereotypical credentials without actually doing anything. Why you ask? Midterm elections of course. In 10 weeks we re-elect our congress and some senators. With a weakened Presidency Obama will lose allies in Congress unless he picks up some quick support. We're easy targets. If Obama and Holder really wanted to do something they could easily have rescinded or over ridden the Holder memo that created much of the ridiculous enforcement that is currently still going on. Did they rescind it or alter the direction within the DEA in any way? Um.....nope. It's still there.


Instead we get this pap smear 'we got a heart' manufactured prosecutorial shift. So let's get this right. The guys who do the busting are still gonna bust, but, the attorneys are going to send us to rehab instead of jail? Sounds pretty sneaky to me. So we still feed the DEA lots of $$ to catch folks, we still pay attorneys to figure out what to do with the case...now we add in a profitable treatment program that's court ordered whether needed or not.


"No jail? No problem! Just use our equivalently priced court ordered treatment center that we can order YOU to pay for."


No thanks, I'll take the free cell.


The other aspect of teaching prosecutors how to avoid mandatory sentences by rearranging case filings is idiocy and to no effect whatsoever. Federal and State Prosecutors may be our enemy as growers....but they're smart people. They already know how to use prosecutorial discretion and slight of hand to avoid mandatory sentencing for drug crimes. They do it every day for cripes sake. It's their favorite tool. It's used to get people to snitch. Threaten the big punishment...unless...well you know how that one plays out. If they don;t get you to play ball they HAVE to go with the heavy hit to carry out with the threat.


Here's what Holder misses on their end. (It's not that he doesn't know this, he's not stupid either, it's that the facts are uncomfortable when you need to manipulate voting blocks.) As long as enforcing drug laws is profitable for State and local government, our penitentiary system and now medical care system it will remain a top priority. What they've done is added another pig at the trough (drug rehab industry) while leaving the $$ on the table.


Thanks for nothing Mr Holder and Pres. Obama. Fooled some folks on this whole Drug War relaxing thing once before. Here's hoping a few of them have wised up.:bird: