Last week, MPP's Dan Bernath compared the DEA's continuing to raid state-legal medical marijuana providers and obstructing research to those of a chicken with its head cut off. Yesterday, that damn chicken continued to wreak havoc on California.

While new attorney general Eric Holder was being sworn into office in Washington, D.C., DEA agents armed with semi-automatic weapons were kicking in the doors of medical marijuana collectives in Los Angeles.

These raids looked a lot more like armed robberies than legitimate law enforcement actions. No arrests were made but agents reportedly stormed in, grabbed all the medical marijuana they could, and made off with whatever cash was in the registers.

The string of four operations was carried out with the kind of efficiency one would only expect from experienced criminals. Agents were able to seize the spoils and head off to rob – er… I mean, “raid” – the next facility before the victims even knew what hit them.

The LA Times reports that the DEA didn’t even bother to notify local law enforcement of their actions.

Local officials in Los Angeles, who are currently working on a plan to regulate medical marijuana facilities, have already taken a stand against these federal actions. It's time for President Obama and Attorney General Holder to listen to the Angelenos - and voters across the nation - who support medical marijuana and finally put an end to these attacks.

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This is a clip from CNBC of MPP's Aaron Houston debating former DEA administrator Asa Hutchinson.

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MPP's Bruce Mirken appeared on CNN Sunday night to discuss the news that a 23-year-old American male had been photographed using marijuana at a college party.

Bruce's interview occurs at about 6:40 on the video below. In it, he shoots down the "gateway" myth, demonstrates prohibition's many failures, and points out how absurd it is that of the 100 million Americans who have used marijuana, anybody should care that one of them is Michael Phelps.

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I'm a city boy, so this could be a rural legend, but I've heard that when you cut off a chicken's head, its body continues to run around, wildly and aimlessly.

I hope that's the case with the DEA right now, where holdovers from the previous administration are continuing their war on medical marijuana patients and scientific research as though Bush were still in the White House.

My colleague, Aaron Smith, mentioned last week that the DEA raided a medical marijuana dispensary in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., only two days after President Obama's inauguration. Obama, of course, had repeatedly stated on the campaign trail that he would not waste federal resources interfering with states that have medical marijuana laws.

Meanwhile, DEA is poised to deny a final request from a University of Massachusetts-Amherst professor to establish a secure marijuana research facility as early as Monday if President Obama doesn't intervene.

We're calling on Obama to rein in the ideologues at the DEA who are running roughshod over his stated policies and principles. It's understandable if he would rather focus on other matters in his first weeks in office. But his own subordinates have forced this conflict – not medical marijuana patients or activists.

With luck, the president will heed his own words, when he promised on Dec. 20 that he would ensure "facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology ... [e]ven when it's inconvenient."

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Yesterday, DEA agents – still under the direction of Bush appointees – raided Patient-to-Patient Collective, a South Lake Tahoe, California, medical marijuana dispensing collective which operated under voter-supported state laws.

President Obama pledged to end such raids throughout his campaign. However, four top positions at the DEA are still filled by Bush cronies, who are attempting to undercut the that pledge.

If you're like me and desperate for a change, use MPP's online form to contact President Obama and ask him to appoint new leadership to the DEA quickly, so they get the message loud and clear.

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Last night, CNBC aired its much-touted documentary, "Marijuana Inc." It was a decidedly mixed bag.

It was a portrait of an industry that is huge and thriving, despite the energetic efforts of assorted law enforcement agencies to "eradicate" it. No sane person could watch the program and come away thinking that present government efforts to curb marijuana production or use are working.  With California's Mendocino County as the focus, the crashing failure of the war on marijuana was on vivid display.

What was missing was context. Marijuana consumers, for example, were conspicuously absent. It's hard to imagine any business channel devoting an hour to, say, Apple Computer, without spending at least a few minutes on why so many consumers are fiercely loyal to their iMacs and iPods, and what needs they fill that other products don't. Instead we got lingering, almost pornographic shots of marijuana edibles at an Oakland dispensary but no sense of who the patients are who purchase these products -- much less of the vast volume of research showing marijuana's medicinal benefits. Bear in mind that much of that research was conducted just 20 minutes from where they were filming.

Another missing piece of context: Mendocino is a world-renowned producer of not one but two psychoactive drugs. Literally right alongside the illicit marijuana industry is a licensed, legal, regulated wine industry. And it's a large industry: The county tourism site lists 64 wineries in a county with just 88,000 people.

These wineries produce a drug that, compared to marijuana, is more addictive, massively more toxic, and orders of magnitude more likely to make users violent or aggressive. Yet this industry has virtually none of the problems -- violence, environmental damage, etc. -- that the show ascribed to the illegal marijuana trade. The producers literally had to drive by vineyards to reach some of the locations where they shot, so failure to acknowledge this essential piece of context seems to have required a conscious effort to look the other way.

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Tonight at 8:40 p.m. Eastern time, MPP director of government relations Aaron Houston will debate former Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson on "CNBC Reports." The debate airs right before the premier of CNBC's documentary about the marijuana business, "Marijuana Inc.: Inside America's Pot Industry." The live debate will only be shown once (the documentary will repeat at 1 a.m. Eastern), but will also be available on CNBC's Web site.

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Unfazed by three consecutive legal defeats, the California counties of San Bernardino and San Diego last week asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their legal challenge to the state’s 12-year-old medical marijuana law. The 47-page petition – drafted on the public’s dime – is a last ditch effort by the two embattled counties to continue their policy of arresting medical marijuana patients even when the patients are in full compliance with state law.

Their reasoning? Well, all marijuana is illegal under federal law and states do not have the authority to set their own marijuana policies – according to these two rogue counties anyway. Never mind the fact that not a single judge has sided with the counties and that the U.S. Supreme Court has recently denied review of another California ruling which held that local police should enforce state – not federal – law.

This ongoing lawsuit is clearly unpopular with California voters, who overwhelmingly support medical marijuana access. Indeed, scores of citizens have pled with both county boards of supervisors urging them to drop the challenge over the years, and 78% of San Diego voters thought the lawsuit was a waste of money before it was even filed. But these local politicians have apparently determined that fighting this uphill battle is a wise use of public funds, regardless of California’s unprecedented budget crisis.

It does look like the San Bernardino supervisors might be becoming wary of defending their legal challenge, as it appears they violated California’s open meetings law in order to avoid explaining themselves to the public.

San Bernardino's supervisors are no strangers to controversy. In fact, former supervisor and outspoken opponent of medical marijuana Bill Postmus is currently facing charges for methamphetamine possession.

Oh, the irony!

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Join Nydia as she answers your questions about marijuana.

Do you have questions about marijuana? E-mail them to SocialNetwork@mpp.org with the subject line "Ask Nydia" and we'll film an answer.

Have you signed up for our free national alerts? Visit www.mpp.org/subscribe to sign up!

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Dear President Obama:

Like millions of Americans, I choked up watching you take office Tuesday. And like hundreds of millions -- maybe billions -- around the world, I watched and listened to your inaugural address, riveted by the moment.

One line jumped out at me: "We will extend a hand," you said, "if you are willing to unclench your fist." Your words were directed at hostile governments around the world, but they also embody how hundreds of thousands of suffering Americans view their own government.

I'm speaking of people like my old friend Phil Alden in California and Rhonda O'Donnell in Rhode Island -- people who, with the recommendation of their doctor and the approval of their state governments -- have found that medical marijuana helps them cope with life-threatening illness. In Phil's case the illness is AIDS. In Rhonda's, it's multiple sclerosis.

Phil and Rhonda and hundreds of thousands like them live in daily fear of our government. They and any who help them obtain medical marijuana face the risk of federal arrest and prosecution for simply trying to live, for simply trying to maintain some dignity in the face of terrible illness.

You promised during the campaign to end our government's insane war on the sick, and you were right to do so. Now that you are president, let our own government be the first to unclench its fist.

Thank you.

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