Americans Get Pot From US Government

By NIGEL DUARA, Associated Press
from http://www.aol.com/

EUGENE, Ore. -- Sometime after midnight on a moonlit rural Oregon highway, a state trooper checking a car he had just pulled over found less than an ounce of pot on one passenger: A chatty 72-year-old woman blind in one eye.

She insisted the weed was legal and was approved by the U.S. government.

The trooper and his supervisor were doubtful. But after a series of calls to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the Drug Enforcement Agency and her physician, the troopers handed her back the card - and her pot.

For the past three decades, Uncle Sam has been providing a handful of patients with some of the highest grade marijuana around. The program grew out of a 1976 court settlement that created the country's first legal pot smoker.

Advocates for legalizing marijuana or treating it as a medicine say the program is a glaring contradiction in the nation's 40-year war on drugs - maintaining the federal ban on pot while at the same time supplying it.

Government officials say there is no contradiction. The program is no longer accepting new patients, and public health authorities have concluded that there was no scientific value to it, Steven Gust of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse told The Associated Press.

At one point, 14 people were getting government pot. Now, there are four left.

The government has only continued to supply the marijuana "for compassionate reasons," Gust said.
One of the recipients is Elvy Musikka, the chatty Oregon woman. A vocal marijuana advocate, Musikka relies on the pot to keep her glaucoma under control. She entered the program in 1988, and said that her experience with marijuana is proof that it works as a medicine.

They "won't acknowledge the fact that I do not have even one aspirin in this house," she said, leaning back on her couch, glass bong cradled in her hand. "I have no pain."

Marijuana is getting a look from states around the country considering calls to repeal decades-old marijuana prohibition laws. There are 16 states that have medical marijuana programs. In the three West Coast states, advocates are readying tax-and-sell or other legalization programs.

Marijuana was legal for much of U.S. history and was recognized as a medicine in 1850. Opposition to it began to gather and, by 1936, 48 states had passed laws regulating pot, fearing it could lead to addiction.
Anti-marijuana literature and films, like the infamous "Reefer Madness," helped fan those fears. Eventually, pot was classified among the most harmful of drugs, meaning it had no usefulness and a high potential for addiction.

In 1976, a federal judge ruled that the Food and Drug Administration must provide Robert Randall of Washington, D.C. with marijuana because of his glaucoma - no other drug could effectively combat his condition. Randall became the nation's first legal pot smoker since the drug's prohibition.

Eventually, the government created its program as part of a compromise over Randall's care in 1978, long before a single state passed a medical marijuana law. What followed were a series of petitions from people like Musikka to join the program.

President George H.W. Bush's administration, getting tough on crime and drugs, stopped accepting new patients in 1992. Many of the patients who had qualified had AIDS, and they were dying.

The AP asked the agency that administers the program, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for documents showing how much marijuana has been sent to patients since the first patient in 1976.

The agency supplied full data for 2005-2011, which showed that during that period the federal government distributed more than 100 pounds of high-grade marijuana to patients.

Agency officials said records related to the program before 2005 had been destroyed, but were able to provide scattered records for a couple of years in the early 2000s.

The four patients remaining in the program estimate they have received a total of 584 pounds from the federal government over the years. On the street, that would be worth more than $500,000.

All of the marijuana comes from the University of Mississippi, where it is grown, harvested and stored.
Dr. Mahmoud ElSohly, who directs the operation, said the marijuana was a small part of the crop the university has been growing since 1968 for all cannabis research in the U.S. Among the studies are the pharmaceutical uses for synthetic mimics of pot's psychoactive ingredient, THC.

ElSohly said the four patients are getting pot with about 3 percent THC. He said 3 percent is about the range patients have preferred in blind tests.

The marijuana is then sent from Mississippi to a tightly controlled North Carolina lab, where they are rolled into cigarettes. And every month, steel tins with white labels are sent to Florida and Iowa. Packed inside each is a half-pound of marijuana rolled into 300 perfectly-wrapped joints.

With Musikka living in Oregon, she is entitled to more legal pot than anyone in the nation because she's also enrolled in the state's medical marijuana program. Neither Iowa nor Florida has approved marijuana as a medicine, so the federal pot is the only legal access to the drug for the other three patients.

The three other people in the program range in ages and doses of marijuana provided to them, but all consider themselves an endangered species that, once extinct, can be brushed aside by a federal government that pretends they don't exist.

All four have become crusaders for the marijuana-legalization movement. They're rock stars at pro-marijuana conferences, sought-after speakers and recognizable celebrities in the movement.

Irv Rosenfeld, a financial adviser in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., has been in the program since November 1982. His condition produces painful bone tumors, but he said marijuana has replaced prescription painkillers.

Rosenfeld likes to tell this story: In the mid-1980s, the federal government asked his doctor for an update on how Rosenfeld was doing. It was an update the doctor didn't believe the government was truly interested in. He had earlier tried to get a copy of the previous update, and was told the government couldn't find it, Rosenfeld said.

So instead of filling out the form, the doctor responded with a simple sentence written in large, red letters: "It's working."

Former U.S. Surgeon General Calls for Marijuana Legalization

By the CNN Wire Staff
Ex-surgeon general: Legalize marijuana

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Joycelyn Elders tells CNN resources can be better spent
* She says the drug's illegality is criminalizing young people
* "It's not a toxic substance," she says
* California's Proposition 19 would legalize marijuana use in the state


(CNN) -- Former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders told CNN Sunday she supports legalizing marijuana.

The trend-setting state of California is voting next month on a ballot initiative to legalize pot, also known as Proposition 19. The measure would legalize recreational use in the state, though federal officials have said they would continue to enforce drug laws in California if the initiative is approved.

"What I think is horrible about all of this, is that we criminalize young people. And we use so many of our excellent resources ... for things that aren't really causing any problems," said Elders. "It's not a toxic substance."

Supporters of California's Prop. 19 say it would raise revenue and cut the cost of enforcement, while opponents point to drug's harmful side-effects.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter, obtained by CNN Friday, that federal agents would continue to enforce federal marijuana laws and warned Prop. 19, if passed, would be a major stumbling block to federal partnerships between state and local authorities around drug enforcement.

His letter was a response to an August letter from several former directors of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration urging the White House to block Prop. 19 if it's approved next month.

Elders stressed the drug is not physically addictive and pointed to the damaging impact of alcohol, which is legal.

"We have the highest number of people in the world being criminalized, many for non-violent crimes related to marijuana," said Elders. "We can use our resources so much better."

Netherlands to Close Prisons: Not Enough Criminals

by Bruce Mirken
from: http://blog.mpp.org/

For years prohibitionists, including our own Drug Enforcement Administration, have claimed — falsely — that the tolerant marijuana policies of the Netherlands have made that nation a nest of crime and drug abuse. They may have trouble wrapping their little brains around this:

The Dutch government is getting ready to close eight prisons because they don’t have enough criminals to fill them. Officials attribute the shortage of prisoners to a declining crime rate.

Just for fun, let’s compare the Netherlands to California. With a population of 16.6 million, the Dutch prison population is about 12,000. With its population of 36.7 million, California should have a bit more than double the Dutch prison population. California’s actual prison population is 171,000.

So, whose drug policies are keeping the streets safer?

Inside Mexico's Drug Tunnels

David Maung / AP

Entrance
Since 2001, US law enforcement has discovered more than 100 tunnels along the border with Mexico.

Click here to see the full gallery: Inside Mexico's Drug Tunnels

Marijuana found in another national park

ASSOCIATED PRESS Ash Mountain Helitack Supervisor Carrie Vernon attaches hazardous-material equipment to a helicopter for pesticide removal at a marijuana-growing site near Crystal Cave at Sequoia National Park, Calif. on Thursday.

Ben Conery (Contact)

The Drug Enforcement Administration Friday announced that it found 14,500 marijuana plants growing in a Colorado national park, the latest in a series of such finds in national parks that authorities say are linked to Mexican drug cartels.

Authorities say they have seen an increase in outdoor marijuana operations run by Mexican drug cartels. In the past several months, federal agents have found nearly $55 million worth of pot plants in national parks and on federal lands in California, Colorado and Idaho.

On Thursday, authorities closed a section of Sequoia National Park in California so they could destroy marijuana plants discovered near a cave filled with crystals that is a popular tourist stop. Most of the marijuana already had been harvested. Authorities estimated the plants were worth more than $36 million.

In June, federal authorities seized 2,250 marijuana plants from California's Point Reyes National Seashore and Golden Gate National Recreational Area. That same month, hikers in Idaho found a site with 12,545 pot plants.

In the most recent Colorado case, the marijuana was found in "the remote, rugged terrain" of Pike National Forest, which is about 60 miles southwest of Denver. The DEA said it is the largest outdoor marijuana-growing operation ever found in Colorado, with an estimated value of $5 million.

"The persons who were involved in this criminal activity had no regard for the damage caused to the forest and environment by the waste they left behind," said Jeffrey D. Sweetin, special agent in charge of the DEA's Denver office. "The public's safety is also at risk for those who recreate on our public lands due to these trafficking groups operating there."

Authorities say they learned of the marijuana site from a passer-by. DEA said Mexican migrant workers had been recruited to work at the site and harvest plants, which were between 4 feet and 6 feet high.

Authorities tracked down two men associated with the site and arrested them last week, but have released few details about them, including their names.

Mr. Sweetin said growing marijuana on public land in the United States has become attractive to drug cartels as increased border security has made it more difficult to smuggle large quantities of marijuana into the U.S.

And, he said, outdoor operations can be set up for relatively little money. Typically, the sites are tucked away relatively close to all-terrain-vehicle trails and campsites at the parks.

Stopping the proliferation of these sites has become a priority for the National Park Service, which dedicated $3.3 million this year to stop growers at parks in the West, including Yosemite, Sequoia and Redwood national parks.

"Before this, the [National Park Service] had set aside a modest fund for marijuana interdiction - about $150,000 a year over the past five years - and parks competed for this money," said Jeffrey Olson, a spokesman for the Park Service. "The bulk of it went to the Pacific West Region, where most of the marijuana grow sites have been found."

Authorities are concerned about the legal ramifications of such sites and the environmental consequences, which, they say, are severe.

"The impacts are numerous," said Gill Quintana, head of the U.S. Forest Service's Denver branch.

He said these include "damage to the lands due to clearing the areas to prepare the garden site, trash left behind, chemicals used to grow the crop [seeping] into the watershed, and the public-safety issues associated with the recreating public coming in contact with these organizations while they're operating on our national lands."

Earlier this month, investigators in California said they were looking for marijuana growers tied to a Mexican drug cartel that they suspect of igniting the La Brea fire that charred more than 88,000 acres of the Los Padres National Forest in the remote Santa Barbara County mountains northwest of Los Angeles.

The fire, which erupted Aug. 8, is thought to be the first major wildfire in the state caused by drug traffickers, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman said.

In a statement, the Forest Service said the blaze was sparked by a "cooking fire in a marijuana drug-trafficking operation ... believed to be run by a Mexican national drug organization. ... There is evidence that the unburned marijuana garden area has been occupied within the last several days."

No arrests have been made in that case.

Durango bike star crashes with marijuana bust in N.Y.

By Jason Blevins
The Denver Post

The marijuana haul from the Missy Giove bust all 400 pounds of it. Giove was used to making big money in bike racing. At the height of her career, she had a $450,000 sponsorship contract. (Courtesy of freemissy.com)

Missy Giove lived her life astounding those around her.

The iconic mountain biker, who resided in Durango for more than a decade, won 14 national titles and was the world champion downhill racer in 1994. She screamed down slopes on the edge of control, landing in either an ambulance or on the podium.

Her persona — she dangled a dried piranha around her neck and tucked her dead dog's ashes in her bra when she raced — and talent made her mountain biking's highest-paid athlete, earning her well over $2 million.

Then last month, six years after she formally retired from racing, federal agents busted the 37-year-old and an accomplice with 400 pounds of marijuana and $1 million in cash.

"Everyone in the circle of

Missy Giove was mountain biking's "first rock star." She faces drug-trafficking charges. (The Denver Post)

mountain biking is shocked by the news — not because she was arrested, because that was not surprising. She had numerous car wrecks and slight problems with authority," said Giove's longtime friend and former bike racer Craig Glaspell. "The fact she might be involved in some pretty heavy drug trafficking is the crazy thing. I mean, real crazy."

According to authorities, on June 16, a team of federal drug cops watched Giove meet a confidential informant at a hotel in Albany, N.Y., and drive away in a rented truck pulling her own trailer. Cops had already found 350 pounds of marijuana in the trailer. Giove drove the rig to the Wilton, N.Y., home of Eric Canori, 30, where police found another 50 pounds of the weed and $1 million packed into a duffel bag in a hallway closet.

Mountain biking "rock star"

Giove bailed out of jail on June 22 on a $250,000 bond, facing a possible $2 million fine and up to 40 years in prison if convicted. She could not be reached for comment.

Days after her arrest, her public defender, Tim Austin, alleged the drugs were planted in Giove's possession, possibly by police. Her next hearing is scheduled Tuesday.

While it was shocking to hear of Giove's arrest, her friends say it is not that surprising that "Missy the Missile" would be found at the top level of anything she was doing.

"When she was riding, she was willing to throw it all out there. She was either going to win or crash hard," said Scott Montgomery, who, as vice president of marketing for Cannondale in the mid-1990s, enlisted Giove to ride for his team. "She was mountain biking's first rock star. She transcended the sport. She was larger than life."

She was sponsored by Reebok. She appeared on MTV, Conan O'Brien's show and David Letterman's "Late Show." She drew thousands of fans to formerly obscure mountain-biking events.

She was unquestionably gifted on her bike and carefully fostered her Dennis Rodman-esque image.

"That got her a huge amount of publicity, attention and money," said Alison Dunlap, a professional mountain biker who raced cross country during Giove's downhill blitzkrieg. "She knew what she was doing."

But she didn't roll like a rock star. Yes, she trained part time in the south of France. But in Durango, she drove a modest car and lived in a yurt behind a friend's house. It was her father, who died three years ago, who secured big dollars for his daughter.

Montgomery remembers a "shrewd and tough" Ben Giove, working with executives at Cannondale and Volvo on her sponsorship contract. She earned $250,000 a year after her world title in '94. In 1997, Cannondale-Volvo upped Giove's year-long contract to $450,000.

"The next year, (Ben) came back even more aggressively, and we had to cut her," Montgomery said.

Toward the late '90s, mountain biking's luster began to wane — and with it racers' income.

Invested in dad's restaurant

"She was still making some good money, and I think she took a lot of her money and invested it in her father's restaurant," said Brent Foes, who still has posters of Giove hanging in his Pasadena, Calif., bike-making headquarters. "If she had invested properly, she probably wouldn't be in the situation she is now."

By 2002, Giove's litany of injuries was catching up to her. By her own tally — reported in various bike magazines during her heyday — Giove suffered 33 fractures, including cracked ribs; broken wrists, collarbones, legs, vertebrae, heels, knee caps; and a cracked sternum. She endured concussions regularly. During the 2001 World Cup races in Vail, she went airborne, twisted and landed on her head. The blow knocked her unconscious and caused her brain to bleed.

It was "the very worst I have ever seen her crash," said Glaspell, who raced with Giove on the professional circuit for almost a decade. "I don't think she was the same since then."

Giove retired from racing in 2003 and left Durango. But she didn't stop racing. While she lived in the East, most recently in Chesapeake, Va., she would show up at local races, handily beating all comers. She briefly worked peddling indoor bike-training equipment at cycling shows.

"She really didn't know what she wanted to do after racing. She once said she wanted to be a rapper and this and that," said Foes, who would occasionally help her out with a bike to keep her racing.

Staunch drug foe

The most shocking aspect of Giove's arrest, say people who knew her, was her longtime anti-drug stance. Back in the early 1990s, drugs were part of the counter-cultural scene that went with mountain biking.

"Missy was always the one who was giving people crap about it, saying, 'Don't drink, don't smoke, stay clean and stay focused,' " said Montgomery, who now manages Scott USA's bike division.

As a fledgling racer in her early 20s, Giove coached other young racers on how to eat healthy and stay strong, Glaspell said. She pushed natural diets and meditation and a strict training regimen.

"I never ever, ever saw Missy smoke pot, never saw her do any drugs. She was always into super heavy hippy homeopathic (stuff)," Glaspell said.

That leads many to wonder whether, if the charges are true, the adventurous thrill of drug-running appealed to Giove.

"You are one step away from going to federal prison. The challenge of getting away with it, making money at it, I am sure that is incredibly invigorating and thrilling," said fellow bike-racer Dunlap. "Maybe for Missy, when she was used to that kind of feeling when she was racing, not having it anymore was a like a withdrawal from a drug."

Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com

Obama Administration Likely To Review UMass Scientist's Bid To Grow Marijuana

Days before President Bush left office in January, his administration fired a parting shot at Professor Lyle Craker's eight-year quest to cultivate marijuana for medical research by abruptly denying him a federal license despite a nearly two-year old Drug Enforcement Administration law judge's recommendation that he receive one.

But the new administration led by President Obama, who has publicly backed the use of marijuana for medical purposes to stave off pain, might reverse the decision and keep Craker's license application from going up in smoke.

A source familiar with the case said the White House will likely demand that the decision be reviewed.

"Basically they want to do an autopsy of what occurred and have it go through a proper review," the source said.

Craker, who is based at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, is cautiously optimistic Obama will do to the denial of the marijuana license what he has done to other Bush administration decisions on such hot-button cultural issues as embryonic stem-cell research and the abortion "gag rule" affecting overseas family planning groups.

"Obama has indicated that he's for science over politics," Craker said in an interview. "And I certainly feel the situation we have currently is politics over science."

Just last week, Obama called for the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to "develop a strategy for restoring scientific integrity to government decision making."

"The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions," Obama wrote. "Public officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions."

On the issue of medicinal marijuana, Obama said at a November 2007 campaign stop in Iowa that he was open to allowing its use if it is what science and physicians suggest would be the best way to ease suffering.

"There's no difference between that and morphine when it comes to just giving people relief to pain," Obama said then.

Administration officials familiar with Craker's application for a DEA license to grow the plant would not comment on the case.

Last month, 16 House members wrote Attorney General Holder asking him to amend or withdraw the DEA's final order on Craker's application so the president's new head of DEA could review the application. They wrote that the administrative law judge's decision "left no doubt" that Craker is qualified to cultivate marijuana for research purposes.

The members, led by Rep. John Olver, D-Mass., said they were concerned the Bush administration's ruling violated the "spirit" of a Jan. 20 memorandum from White House Chief of Staff Emanuel that essentially froze all "11th hour" final orders. The memo distributed shortly after the inauguration asked agency officials to reconsider final rules and regulations that have been published in the Federal Register, but have yet to take effect.

Craker's battle with the Bush administration began in 2001, when he applied for a federal license to become a bulk manufacturer of marijuana and establish a privately funded facility at his university for DEA- and FDA-approved marijuana research.

His application posed a challenge to a decades-long monopoly enjoyed by the University of Mississippi as the country's only legal producer of marijuana for medical research, a program started in 1968 and overseen by the National Institute on Drug Abuse since 1974.

A longtime backer, Senate Appropriations ranking member Thad Cochran, funneled $3.5 million in earmarked funds to the university's National Center for Natural Products Research, which is housed in a building that bears his name, in the FY09 omnibus spending bill.

His press secretary said this week that, as an Ole Miss alumnus, Cochran is proud to have the center in his state, and that the decision on any other license is "up to DEA."

In 2007, a DEA administrative law judge issued a non-binding recommendation in favor of granting Craker a license, saying NIDA's Mississippi-grown supply provided to approved scientists was insufficient for the research marijuana merits. Despite letters of support from 45 House members and Massachusetts Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, then-DEA Administrator Karen Tandy and her successor, acting Administrator Michele Leonhart, made no decision on the license application for more than a year.

But less than a week before Bush left the Oval Office, Leonhart issued a final order denying Craker's application, aiming to close the books on a case that lasted nearly as long as Bush's tenure in office. She set Feb. 13 as the final order's effective date.

The timing led Craker and Allen Hopper, who heads a legal team provided by the American Civil Liberties Union, to assume the decision was politically motivated. Administrative law judges usually are nonpartisan "technocrats" who examine cases from legal and rational points of view, Hopper said.

"But when you get to [the] level of DEA administrator, that's a political appointment," he said.

The source familiar with the case agreed the decision was "entirely political."

"It just seems it was rushed on ideological grounds," this source said.

Craker said one reason Leonhart did not favor granting him a license was concern it would set off a rush of license applications from researchers seeking to grow their own.

"I think our case is dynamite in a logjam," Craker said. "Once something like this is broken, it's kind of hard to put it back together."

Since the final order, Hopper has filed a motion to reconsider and has asked for a hearing to present witnesses and evidence that can refute Leonhart's arguments.

Meanwhile, four days before the Feb. 13 effective date of the order denying a license to Craker, Leonhart, who is still DEA's acting chief but now reports to Obama, extended the date to April 1.

Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney, who fielded questions about marijuana licensing, said the date was pushed back because Craker's legal team asked for an extension to file supplemental evidence. She said it was not in response to Emanuel's Jan. 20 memo.

Much of the outcome hinges on the fact that Obama has not yet nominated someone to lead the DEA. Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., who co-signed the letter to Holder, remarked that the Obama administration has moved "incredibly slow" at filling this position.

But with a plunging economy and two wars, who can blame Obama for the lack of immediate attention to the drug issue? "I hate to tell you this -- it's not the most important issue that I'm concerned about," Farr said.

by Katie Sanders

BREAKING: White House will end medical marijuana raids!

DEA continues pot raids Obama opposes

President vowed to end policy

Stephen Dinan and Ben Conery, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Drug Enforcement Administration agents this week raided four medical marijuana shops in California, contrary to President Obama's campaign promises to stop the raids.

DEA Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart

The White House said it expects those kinds of raids to end once Mr. Obama nominates someone to take charge of DEA, which is still run by Bush administration holdovers.

“The president believes that federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws, and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to fill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review their policies with that in mind," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

Medical use of marijuana is legal under the law in California and a dozen other states, but the federal government under President Bush, bolstered by a 2005 Supreme Court ruling, argued that federal interests trumped state law.

Dogged by marijuana advocates throughout the campaign, Mr. Obama repeatedly said he was opposed to using the federal government to raid medical marijuana shops, particularly because it was an infringement on states' decisions.

“I'm not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue," Mr. Obama told the Mail Tribune newspaper in Oregon in March, during the Democratic primary campaign.

He told the newspaper the "basic concept of using medical marijuana for the same purposes and with the same controls as other drugs prescribed by doctors, I think that's entirely appropriate."

Mr. Obama is still filling key law enforcement posts. For now, DEA is run by acting Administrator Michele Leonhart, a Bush appointee.

Special Agent Sarah Pullen of the DEA's Los Angeles office said agents raided four marijuana dispensaries about noon Tuesday. Two were in Venice and one each was in Marina Del Rey and Playa Del Ray -- all in the Los Angeles area.

A man who answered the phone at Marina Caregivers in Marina Del Rey said his shop was the target of a raid but declined to elaborate, saying the shop was just trying to get back to operating.

Agent Pullen said the four raids seized $10,000 in cash and 224 kilograms of marijuana and marijuana-laced food, such as cookies. No one was arrested, she said, but the raid is part of an ongoing investigation seeking to trace the marijuana back to its suppliers or source.

She said agents have conducted 30 or 40 similar raids in the past several years, many of which resulted in prosecutions.

"It's clear that the DEA is showing no respect for President Obama's campaign promises," said Dan Bernath, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, which advocates for medical marijuana and for decriminalizing the drug.

California allows patients whose doctors prescribe marijuana to use the drug. The state has set up a registry to allow patients to obtain cards allowing them to possess, grow, transport and use marijuana.

Kris Hermes of Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group in California, called the raids an attempt to undermine state law and said they were apparently conducted without the knowledge of Los Angeles city or police officials.

He said the DEA has raided five medical marijuana dispensaries in the state since Mr. Obama was inaugurated and that the first took place on Jan. 22 in South Lake Tahoe.

"President Obama needs to keep a promise he made, not just in one campaign stop, but in multiple speeches that he would not be spending Justice Department funds on these kinds of raids," Mr. Hermes said. "We do want to give him a little bit of leeway, but at the same time we're expecting him to stop this egregious enforcement policy that is continuing into his presidency."

He said he is aware that Mr. Obama has not installed his own DEA chief but that new Attorney General "Eric Holder can still suspend these types of operations."

The Justice Department referred questions to the White House.

Click here for reprint permissions!
Copyright 2009 The Washington Times, LLC

New Worries About Meth Trends

After a dramatic decline over several years, the availability of methamphetamine -- a highly addictive stimulant "cooked" with chemicals from over-the-counter cold medications -- began to creep up in 2008.

(AP Photo)

Despite Dramatic Decline in Recent Years, Drug's Popularity Surged in 2008

By BRIAN WHITLEY

Jan. 25, 2009—

After a dramatic decline over several years, the availability of methamphetamine -- a highly addictive stimulant "cooked" with chemicals from over-the-counter cold medications -- began to creep up in 2008.

The reversal, reported by the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), worries law enforcement agencies. They've poured resources into treating an epidemic that crossed the country in recent years. Over 17,000 methamphetamine labs were discovered in 2004, tucked inside homes, barns, and vehicles. Among the dangerous byproducts: toxic waste, explosions, theft, and other crimes to support addiction.

"It's everywhere from soccer moms to someone who just got out of prison," says Sgt. Gary Higginbotham of the Jefferson County, Mo., sheriff's department, which led the nation in lab busts for the past several years.

In 2005, Congress passed restrictions on key ingredients ephedrine and pseudoephedrine found in cold and allergy medicines. It helped: during 2007, agents found just 5,910 labs. That year, Mexico banned all imports containing either chemical in an effort to curb exports by large-scale traffickers. The move helped create methamphetamine shortages in many parts of the country during 2007 and the first part of 2008, the NDIC states in its December report.

But several indicators suggest that since then, domestic production has increased to fill the void. Authorities say more small-time cooks are sidestepping federal regulations to obtain what they need to manufacture the drug.

The per-gram price of pure methamphetamine fell more than 30 percent, from $267.74 to $184.09, between the last quarter of 2007 and the third quarter of this year, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Lab seizures also quickened in many areas. In Michigan, for example, 127 sites were raided between January and July of 2008 after 101 of them turned up in all of 2007.

"Restrictions did their job for a while, but [methamphetamine producers] found a way to get around them," said Abraham Azzam, executive director of Michigan's High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a federal program that coordinates drug enforcement. "What we're seeing is a proliferation."

As a result of the federal restrictions passed in 2005, there are daily and monthly limits on how many grams of ephedrine-based products may be purchased. Employees check customers' identification and log the amounts into a store or chain-wide database to ensure compliance.

That law is now commonly bypassed through a technique called "smurfing." Small groups who know two or three cooks will travel from store to store, buying the maximum allowable amount of ingredients. Then they trade medications for finished methamphetamine or cash.

Sergeant Higginbotham says smurfing is particularly effective because different companies' databases aren't usually linked -- Walgreen's can't tell if someone just finished buying suspicious amounts of ephedrine at Target. And the profit is enormous: local smurfers are paid $50 for a $9 box of medication.

Sparsely populated Jefferson County hasn't experienced the same decline in lab seizures as other areas. Two hundred facilities were uncovered there in 2008. And while that's 50 fewer than a few years ago, it's still a very large number compared with the 359 seizures in all of Illinois in the same year.

One factor might be that other agencies -- less sensitive to the problem of smurfing than Jefferson County, didn't put the same resources into searching. "A lot of people weren't looking in the right places," Higginbotham says.

But it's not just small meth operations that are more active. Some larger producers south of the US border began to relocate here following the severe import restrictions announced by Mexico in 2007. Labs run by Mexican drug traffickers have trickled back into California's Central Valley, a mostly rural region that pumps large batches of methamphetamine to major cities for distribution.

"We're not surprised because we always realized it was a possibility it would return to this area," says Gordon Taylor, special agent in charge of the DEA field office in Fresno, Calif.

The valley hasn't seen more "superlabs," or facilities with capacities of at least 10 pounds per cooking cycle, Mr. Taylor says. Five such labs were seized in 2007, compared with four in 2008. But at one superlab bust in February, agents discovered evidence of smurfing on a very large scale. Abundant packaging from different types and brands of cold medication dotted a Stevenson, Calif., house where glassware suggested a remarkable 44 pounds of methamphetamine were churned out every day or two.

The most notable increase in the drug's production occurred among medium-sized labs producing 2 to 9 pounds per cooking cycle, Taylor says. Agents in his area found four in 2008 after turning up none in 2007.

The NDIC report projects these trends -- more and larger-scale smurfing operations, more small-time labs, and more labs moving north from Mexico -- to continue pushing up meth production. It also warns of Mexican producers circumventing import restrictions by smuggling ingredients from legal sources in South America. And it notes that an increasing amount of Ecstasy, another illegal stimulant, is being made with meth to make it more addictive.

Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures