Marijuana Times recently reported on a Wisconsin Native American tribe that was raided by the DEA and local police — but not for psychoactive cannabis, but for hemp. If you pay any kind of attention to news about the war on drugs, you’ll know this wasn’t the first, nor will it be the last. A Mendocino County native tribe was targeted in recent raids from the county sheriff, even though their plants should be completely legal.
Despite a Department of Justice ruling from December 2014 that cannabis is legal to grow and sell on tribal land, some state and local authorities don’t seem to care about that. These “drug warriors” continue to raid tribal lands and eradicate their plants, destroying hours of their time and energy spent into cultivating them. In the case of the raids on tribal lands, states are disregarding federal ruling and invading and destroying plants – even if the plants are actually completely legal hemp.
Some U.S. cannabis activists and entrepreneurs are pressing on, even though they know they could be raided and shut down at any time. Even though they know the risks, The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe in South Dakota plans to open the first “marijuana resort” in the United States. Marijuana Times will cover more on this in an upcoming story in our Ganjapreneur series.
This is an extremely odd juxtaposition, as more and more states legalize medicinal and recreational cannabis, yet at the federal level cannabis is still a Schedule 1 illegal substance. In the case of tribal lands, cannabis is technically legal at the federal level, yet allegedly still illegal at the state and local level. This odd quagmire of conflicting laws and police actions then begs the question – why all the raids? How is this even possible?
For one thing, countless officials in positions of power continue to showcase their ignorance about cannabis/ hemp — including the DEA chief. We reported last week that the DEA met with reporters and answered questions, as this gem of a quote stood out like a sore thumb to anyone with even an elementary understanding of cannabis.
“If you talk about smoking the leaf of marijuana — it has never been shown to be safe or effective as a medicine.” the DEA chief told reporters.
Not only is his assertion that cannabis has never been shown to be safe or effective medicine demonstrably false, but no one smokes cannabis leaves. The buds of a cannabis plant are the flower, not the leaf. While some might cook with leaves, or make “cannabutter” out of them, as to not let any part of the plant go to waste, no one with any sense is smoking the actual leaf. Maybe the DEA chief needs someone to educate him and his drug warriors about what cannabis actually is and what it isn’t.
What are your thoughts on this? We want to hear what you think!
Read more:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-mendocino-county-tribe-pot-seizures-20150923-story.html
> “If you talk about smoking the leaf of marijuana — it has never been shown to be safe or effective as a medicine.” the DEA chief told reporters.
This guy is pretending to know nothing about marijuana because he wants you to think he is not using it. There are plenty of legislators who use marijuana RECREATIONALLY but when it comes time for a vote, they oppose even MEDICAL use for everyone else. This kind of duplicity is far more common than you might think: most government bureaucrats are shockingly phony and totally corrupt.
The police are destroying hemp because it is virtually indistinguishable from marijuana when viewed from the air, and could be used to conceal marijuana. By scaring everyone out of growing industrial hemp, it makes the job of searching for marijuana easier. In many areas the distribution of illegal drugs is almost completely controlled by police (or by a few distributors who give the police a cut of the action in exchange for protection.)
The object of prohibition is NOT to reduce the supply of illegal drugs — it is to perpetuate a covert monopoly on distribution. The CIA and the pentagon are the primary importers of illegal drugs. The role of the DEA is to coordinate attacks on their competition. The state and local police are tasked with managing or protecting distribution.
When police destroy industrial hemp, this is often a tip-off that the cops are involved in the distribution of marijuana. They don’t care what is legal and what is not – they only care about stopping their competition (or anything which makes the search for competitors more difficult.) The black market profits are irresistible to public officials, and this is why the war on drugs will never be won. The drug war has corrupted every branch of government beyond any hope of reform, and confronting the truth about this is our society’s greatest taboo.