After serving two years as interim DEA administrator, where she oversaw continued raids on medical marijuana providers and personally rejected an application for FDA-level research on marijuana, Michele Leonhart is scheduled for a confirmation hearing tomorrow before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

While her nomination has been widely opposed by drug policy reform groups – including MPP – it appears all but certain that Leonhart will be confirmed by the Senate.

President Bush first nominated Leonhart for this position in 2007. The Obama administration re-nominated her in February, even though she has overseen actions that contradict Obama administration directives and made comments that clearly counter reality. The most egregious:

• Despite last year’s Justice Department directive to respect state medical marijuana laws, the DEA under Leonhart’s leadership has repeatedly raided medical marijuana patients and providers who operate under state law. In July, for example, the DEA blatantly ignored a Mendocino County (CA) ordinance to regulate medical marijuana cultivation by raiding the very first grower to register with the sheriff. Joy Greenfield, 68, had paid more than $1,000 for a permit to cultivate 99 plants in a collective garden that had been inspected and approved by the local sheriff. Informed that Ms. Greenfield had the support of the sheriff, the DEA agent in charge responded by saying, “I don’t care what the sheriff says.”
• In January 2009, Leonhart rejected an application from University of Massachusetts professor Lyle Craker to conduct FDA-level research on marijuana in the hopes of getting it rescheduled. In doing so, she opposed recommendations from both a DEA administrative law judge and the American Medical Association.
• Last year Leonhart heralded increased drug violence in Mexico – which has claimed about 30,000 lives in four years – as a sign of success: “Our view is that the violence we have been seeing is a signpost of the success our very courageous Mexican counterparts are having,” she said. “The cartels are acting out like caged animals, because they are caged animals.”

Sources say Leonhart’s confirmation is virtually guaranteed, so our best hope is to make sure senators on the Judiciary Committee ask her tough questions. If your senator sits on the Judiciary Committee, you can urge them to press Leonhart on her plans for the future by clicking here.

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Federal raids on state-legal medical marijuana entities have continued under the Obama administration, despite repeated assurances that they would end.

But there has been one noticeable difference from how the raids were carried out under the Bush administration: officials are no longer publicizing them. Mike Riggs has the story in the Daily Caller:

[T]he DOJ has demonstrated one marked change now that it’s under Democratic control: The department has stopped publicizing medical marijuana raids, both by requesting that more cases be sealed under court order and by refusing to distribute press releases.

Late last week, DEA and FBI agents raided five medical marijuana dispensaries in Nevada. In July, DEA agents raided the home of 65-year-old Mendocino County, California, grower Joy Greenfield and confiscated plants, money, and her computer. Also in July, DEA agents raided the home of a couple in Michigan who were licensed by the state to use marijuana, as well as three medical marijuana dispensaries in San Diego. In January and  February of this year, the DEA raided two medical marijuana research labs in Colorado.

In all of the above cases, the DEA and the U.S. Attorneys’ offices issued no press releases and held no press conferences. The websites for DEA and the U.S. Attorneys’ offices in Detroit, Denver, Northern California, and Los Angeles (which also handles cases in Nevada) make no mention of the above dispensary raids, but do feature news releases for raids, arrests, and investigations involving harder drugs, as well marijuana trafficking, which is illegal in all states.

[…] But even if there hasn’t been any official change, Garrison Courtney, the head of communications for the DEA from 2005-2009, confirmed that his office regularly publicized dispensary busts. “When I was chief of public affairs, if it was a good case and a good bust, we put it out. There were some of the medical marijuana shops that had a ton of cash, a ton of weed, or a ton of guns, and we put it out. There wasn’t any policy against that.”

And yet, in the case of the Michigan couple, guns were found, but no press release was ever issued by the DEA or the U.S. Attorney.

Courtney added that “if you look at the DEA website, there are a lot of [Bush-era] news releases from San Francisco and Los Angeles. We were pretty aggressive in talking about the different dispensaries and the fact that they were operating in violation of federal law.”

Is this a case of officials trying to cover up their broken promises?

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On Wednesday, DEA agents raided Full Spectrum Laboratories, a lab in Denver, Colorado, that tests medical marijuana for dispensaries. Bob Winnicki, president of the lab, said the DEA issued a subpoena requesting that it turn over customer and patient records from the past six months. Winnicki said he wasn’t charged with a crime, but agents seized about $10,000 worth of marijuana, some of which was going to be made into capsules for people with multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.

Winnicki said his operation isn’t a dispensary, but rather a lab that tests marijuana for mold, fungus and pesticides, and tests the effectiveness of different strains of marijuana for treating various ailments for dispensaries and patients. He said he applied for a DEA license back in October to use standards needed to test the marijuana, but didn’t hear from them until Wednesday.

Though the circumstances involved are still unclear, there is no doubt that federal law enforcement agents have bigger fish to fry. While this company was trying to ensure that medical marijuana—the use of which has been sanctioned by the Obama administration—is safe for patients, Mexican drug cartels are operating in 230 cities across the country. If the DEA truly cares about public safety, this is the last place they should be spending their time—and a single dollar spent on any kind of prosecution of these individuals would be one of the most egregious misuses of government resources imaginable.

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One year after a SWAT team shot and killed two Labrador retrievers in a marijuana raid on an innocent small-town mayor’s family, the Prince George’s County, Md., sheriff responsible has announced his department did nothing wrong. [Read more →]

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The House committee that oversees the Department of Justice (DOJ) passed an amendment today that adds language to the committee’s report urging the DOJ to clarify its position on state-legal medical marijuana. The provision is a non-binding recommendation, but carries weight given the committee’s role in funding the department. [Read more →]

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