In 1972, a Congressionally created commission called the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, whose members were appointed by then-President Richard Nixon, completed one of the most comprehensive reviews ever undertaken regarding marijuana and public policy.   Their report, "Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding," proclaimed that "from what is now known about the effects of marihuana, its use at the present level does not constitute a major threat to public health," and recommended Congress and state legislatures decriminalize the use and casual distribution of marijuana for personal use.
Since then, researchers have conducted thousands of studies regarding marijuana's health impacts.  None of these have revealed any findings dramatically different from those described by Nixon's 1972 Commission.

The government has known since prior to outlawing it that marijuana was beneficial. The medical profession back then protested making it illegal because it was so helpful in so many cases.

   Personally, I believe marijuana use should be legalized. It's less harmful than alcohol or tobacco. However, let's not pretend to  be naive.

    It is common knowledge that the medical marijuana initiative is being abused on a grand scale. My thinking that marijuana should be legalized does not make me blind to the fact that many of these "clubs" are in fact commercial enterprizes seeking to make personal profits by selling marijuana to just about anyone who wants it and not compassion driven organizations seeking to comfort the afflicted.

   Despite the fact I believe that it should be permissible to sell marijauna to adults for recreational purposes, I have little sympathy for people who complain about being targeted  for doing so when it is against the law.

   I agree the DEA should have other priorities but like everyone else it will pick the low hanging fruit. Make yourself easy to bust and you'll get busted even if more dangerous people evade the law.

  The real shame is that the flagrant abuses will make it more difficult to establish legitmate means for providing marijuana to those seriosly ill people who really do need it.

They have established beyond any doubt that they care nothing about people in chronic pain. If they aren't outright hostile.

It isn't just marijuana clubs they bust (profit making or no) they also bust pain clinics. People die when they do.

Patients are left scrambling to find something -- ANYTHING -- to stave off ... well. I know my friend (broken back) certainly thought of it when her pain clinic was shut down without notice and at least one man did commit suicide.

They claim no doctors will be intimidated by these raids. That legitimate pain patients will be able to get medication. I am not sure if they actually believe any human over 5 is stupid enough buy that.

It is hard as all get out to get relief for migraines, and thats not really chronic, just recurring. If doctors DO perscribe meds, sometimes pharmacies won't fill them. "sorry, were out"

  However, the widespread and well known existence of abuses certainly emboldens the DEA to go after whomever it chooses. The California system is a bad one and it makes it easier for the DEA to portray the "industry" generally as an artificial construct intende3d to evade the law.

   In Federal Court, the existence of state laws contradictory to federal law is arguably irrelevant unless one can use the state law to make the claim that the act was done without knowledge of or intent to violate the federal law. That's going to be a difficult theory to get past a judge with something related to selling marijuana where the federal prohibition is common knowledge. In some complex regulatory offense that theory is far more likely to fly than trying to convince a judge that the defendant has a reasonable argument as to mens rea based on the state law.

   Short of simply legalizing marijuana and regulating it in the manner of alcohol, the practical solution is to get Congress to reschedule marijuana to Schedule II and have it legally prescribed by physicians and dispensed by licensed pharmacists rather than these "clubs" with huge incentive (both profit and political) to shall we say cut corners.

While many doctors and medical marijuana dispensary operators follow the letter of the law in how much marijuana they can grow and dispense to patients, others have interpreted the law in much broader terms and administer the weed liberally.

Ultimately, doctors are the ones who make the decision whether medical marijuana is a fitting drug for any illness.

Local teens reportedly have found it easy to obtain the medical marijuana identification cards and use the drug recreationally.

Isn't what the DEA did something that Californians could and should consider a crime, although, by reasons of the federal constitution, they can't successfully criminalize it?

There are things that some people do that amount to crimes, but aren't obviously criminal.  And, when they do, some people find some ways to inform the crooks of their evil deeds.

So, in this case, perhaps, if it is morally wrong for the DEA to have done these things, why not put up a website and tell the public who did what?
Pictures would be nice, too, but of course, no threats of harm or malice.  And, I'd include the name of the judge or judges who approved the warrants and the officers who testified to get the warrants.

   I expressed no "puritan indignation" over anything. I merely observed that I have little sympathy for those who abuse a system and then attepmt to obscure that abuse by appeals to the well-intentioned sympathy of others.

   People who REALLY want to make marijuana available to those who truly need it for medical reasons should oppose the abuses not pretend they don't exist. A system that that effectively and efficiently provides the limited number of people who trulyneed marijana for relief from serious conditions could easily be attained. However, that goal is made more difficult to obtain by both those who mindlessly resist any effort to make marijuana available for legitmate therapeutic uses and those who "cleverly" expoit the current system to obtain marijuana for other purposes.

   I believe marijuana should be legal for recreational purposes, but I do not believe that eeither the cause of gerneral decriminalization or regulated therapeutic availability is furthered by the greedy people who game the system for profit or the people who just want to get high who game the system to get marijuana allegedly available for the seriously ill.