Pubdate: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 Source: Trentonian, The (NJ) Copyright: 2009 The Trentonian Contact: http://www.trentonian.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1006 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Marijuana - Medicinal) GOING TO POT Once New Jersey gets a "medical marijuana" regimen going, will cannabis become the updated version of the bottles of snake oil that itinerant mountebanks used to peddle as a cure for gout, warts and assorted other ailments? Medical marijuana is touted by advocates as a means of alleviating the discomforts of those suffering from various maladies ranging from seizures to muscle spasms to AIDS to glaucoma. So the concept does have something of the aura of a snake-oil panacea to it. Rather than an updated version of snake-oil peddlers, however, medical marijuana in New Jersey may signal another trend altogether if California's experience is any indication: DEA raids. But didn't the campaigning Barack Obama pledge to call off such federal raids in places with state medical marijuana laws? He did indeed. Yet the raids continue now that Obama is president, as the libertarian Reason magazine recently noted with chagrin. On Obama's White House watch, DEA raiders have hit licensed "medical" marijuana purveyors in South Lake Tahoe, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Playa Del Ray and San Francisco. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder says the Obama administration is not forsaking its promise. It is, he says, upholding the law. "The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law," he explains. One of the raids was said to involve certain "financial improprieties." It would appear, then -- at least from the California experience -- that medical marijuana may not necessarily entail, in every case, the pot-purveying Florence Nightingales that advocates depict. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake