WELL-AIMED POT RAIDS HIT TRAFFICKERS, NOT THE SICK

Two numbers get to the heart of this week's federal-local raids on
Puget Sound marijuana merchants:

Pot operations reportedly busted, 19 - out of well over 100 "medical
marijuana" outlets known to be operating in King, Pierce and Thurston counties.

Patients arrested, 0.

After the coordinated regional raids, U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan
repeated what the Obama administration has been saying all along: The
Justice Department doesn't have the least interest in prosecuting
genuinely sick people whose doctors have recommended the use of
marijuana. Just the criminals.

Big-time profiteers typically claim they're in the trade for the sake
- - cue the violins - of dying cancer victims and pain-racked patients.

But as Durkan said, "State laws of compassion were never intended to
protect brash criminal conduct that masquerades as medical treatment."

Some dispensary owners may not be in it for the money, but a whole
lot are. Some of their customers are bona fide patients, but a whole
lot are recreational users. The problem is, you can't tell the
difference. The industry is so rife with bogus "green cards" and
traffickers posing as humanitarians that it all looks like a grand charade.

The raids carried out by federal, state and local law enforcement
agencies were conspicuously judicious. Although all marijuana sales
are illegal under both state and federal laws, investigators appear
to have targeted only the most flagrant scofflaws.

According to the Seattle Times, probable cause for one search warrant
included an allegation that the Seattle Cannabis Co-op had sold a
police informant five pounds of marijuana for $11,000. Although that
claim would have to be proved in court, it backs up the Drug
Enforcement Agency's assertion that it was aiming at serious criminals.

Anyone who supports the therapeutic use of cannabis shouldn't have a
problem with carefully targeted enforcement no more than an honest
pharmacist would resent sanctions against a quack who sells on the
side. Separating the traffickers and drug-seekers from the nonprofit
providers and patients is the only way to restore the legitimacy
medical marijuana enjoyed before profit-driven dealers took over two years ago.

Many marijuana advocates view the medical angle as a means to
mainstream the drug. Their complaints about enforcement turn quickly
to legalization, not lifting the federal rules that prevent real
pharmacies from dispensing cannabis under normal medical regulation.

There's an honest case to be made for decriminalization, but medical
marijuana is a different conversation. Some very sick people clearly
benefit from cannabis as a last-resort drug. They shouldn't have to
serve as human camouflage for traffickers and partyers.