MONTANANS SUFFER AS OBAMA RENEGES ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA PLEDGE

The Obama administration has been a disappointment in some ways, but
by far the worst of its actions concern medical marijuana. What the
federal government is doing now is nothing short of cruel and unfair,
not to mention a gross waste of taxpayer dollars. It began with
aggressive raids last March on legal Montana producers and providers
who had been working to help worthy patients, and now has escalated to
become a national scandal.

As a physician, I have issued more than 400 recommendations to
patients who have benefited greatly from the use of medical marijuana.
It seems to me that we are seeing the fruits either of colossal
ineptitude on the part of Obama's appointees or, much worse, an
unconscionable double-cross that essentially amounts to deliberate
entrapment by the government of good, law-abiding citizens.

Ogden memo

Consider that as a candidate in 2008, Obama promised to stop
prosecuting patients and their providers who functioned legally under
state medical marijuana laws. Once he took office, the Justice
Department followed up with the "Ogden memo," in which U.S. attorneys
were advised not to spend scarce resources on patients and providers
in "clear and unambiguous compliance" with state and local laws.

With these actions, the Obama administration itself invited a rapid
increase in medical marijuana use in Montana and elsewhere. This
included some problems, certainly, but states were responding, and
Montana was working to improve its law.

Meanwhile, some of the Montana providers I got to know sought to
operate with a high degree of professionalism. To ensure Obama's
required "clear and unambiguous compliance," they worked closely with
local law enforcement, gave them regular tours of their facilities and
used practices that they knew conformed to local law enforcement's
interpretation of the rules.

Yet suddenly, out of nowhere and with no warning, federal agencies
intruded, shutting down some of Montana's finest model operations,
thus implementing a radically altered "federal" approach to the issue.
Thousands of Montana patients instantly lost access to medical
marijuana - the safe medicine that had helped them more than the
riskier drugs for which they no longer had prescriptions.

Public's money wasted

Most shockingly, the federal government now is spending taxpayer
dollars to prosecute many of these good Montanans, seeking to spend
yet many more taxpayer dollars to imprison them for decades or longer.
And, at the same time, the government is planning to deny these
defendants the right to even mention in court their compliance with
state law or their open-door relations with local and state law
enforcement. So much for Obama's campaign promises and the "Ogden memo."

Good Montanans are now pleading guilty, no matter how professional,
honorable and legal in the eyes of state law enforcement they may have
been. While Congress is talking about sharply curtailing things like
Medicare and Social Security because we can't afford it, every
taxpayer is funding this immoral "bait-and-switch" that the Obama
administration itself perpetrated. It should make every Montanan who
believes in the U.S. Constitution sick.