(02-07) 09:07 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

The White House won't say it explicitly. Neither will the Drug Enforcement Administration. Yet there is a whiff in the air that U.S. policy is about to change when it comes to medical marijuana.
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The message is clear, said UCLA professor Mark Kleiman, a former Justice Department official and an expert on crime and drug policy.

"It is no longer federal policy to beat up on hippies," said Kleiman.

Tell that to the DEA.

In California this past week, agents raided four dispensaries in Los Angeles and seized 500 pounds of pot.

"It's a little bit surprising, because I think current DEA management didn't get the message," said Kleiman. "The message is, this is no longer drug warrior time. We are not on a cultural crusade against pot-smoking."

California law permits the sale of marijuana for medical purposes, though it is still against federal law.

Thirteen states have laws permitting medicinal use of marijuana. California is unique among them for the presence of dispensaries, businesses that sell marijuana and even advertise their services. Legal under California law, such dispensaries are still illegal under federal law.

"Anyone possessing, distributing or cultivating marijuana for any reason is in violation of federal law," Sarah Pullen, a DEA spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said Thursday.

That may be the law, but it contradicts the medical marijuana position of the new president.

"The president believes that federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws, and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to fill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review their policies with that in mind," said White House spokesman Nick Shapiro, repeating past statements.

So on Friday, DEA officials in Washington declined to comment at all on the subject.

As a presidential candidate, Obama repeatedly promised a change in federal drug policy in situations where state laws allow use of medical marijuana.

"I think the basic concept of using medical marijuana for the same purposes and with the same controls as other drugs prescribed by doctors, I think that's entirely appropriate," Obama told the Mail Tribune of Medford, Ore., in March.

A year earlier at a campaign stop in New Hampshire, Obama said: "I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users."

At age 47, Obama is part of a generation that had plenty of exposure to pot.

In his memoir, "Dreams from My Father," he described time spent as a youth struggling with questions about his race and identity, and turning to drugs — including marijuana and cocaine — to "push questions of who I was out of my mind."

The new president is unlikely to make any official change in policy before he has a new DEA chief and drug czar in place.

Yet experts believe it is already clear the Obama administration will change the strategy, if not the law, on medical marijuana.

Philip Heymann, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration who is now a Harvard professor, said it's time for the agency to put more effort into fighting drugs more dangerous than marijuana.

"I do expect him to appoint an administrator who takes marijuana less seriously than is traditional for the DEA, as I think most Americans do," said Heymann.

Heymann said he expects the Obama administration will eventually instruct the DEA to emphatically scale back raids on dispensaries, and conduct such raids only in instances where investigators believe a business is abusing the dispensary system as a cover for other criminal behavior.

So last week's raids in California may be the last of their kind.

"The DEA's not likely to want to confront a new president," said Heymann. "It may simply be that they're behaving as they have traditionally, and they haven't anticipated the change Obama and his spokesman are signaling."

____

Associated Press writer Michael Blood in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Frazzled wrote:If I were a pathetic loser with no life this would be a big deal.

Nofasse 'Eadhunta wrote:'Hope?' What's 'hope?' Elaborate for me on this 'hope' you speak of.

BloodofOrks wrote:
Hope that the feds might finally wisen up and allow states to make their own laws.

BloodofOrks wrote:
That the government might finally wake up and realize they spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year fighting a war against a drug which is not harmful.

BloodofOrks wrote:
Hope that logic may be injected back into this debate rather than allowing fear-mongering and knee-jerk reactions to be the basis of US drug policy.

BloodofOrks wrote:
Maybe hope that the prison population might see a drop which could save us all a bit on our taxes.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:If you guys knew the number of cases of psychosis triggered by pot, and the complete stuffing up of people with mental illness (and alot of mentally ill people smoke it) you wouldn't be going near it with a 10 foot pole.

Sadly, working in psychiatry ATM and about 30% of my patients are acute psychosis second to drugs, usually pot, speed or meth (in that order)

In conclusion, there is evidence for an association between cannabis and psychosis. It is clear that cannabinoids can cause acute transient psychotic symptoms or an acute psychosis. Also it is clear that cannabis can exacerbate psychosis in individuals with an established psychotic disorder. However, whether cannabis causes a persistent de novo psychosis independent of any other risk factors is not supported by the existing literature. More likely, cannabis is a component cause that interacts with other factors (e.g., genetic risk) to induce psychosis.

While the gateway theory posits that each type of drug is associated with certain specific risk factors that cause the use of subsequent drugs, such as cigarettes or alcohol leading to marijuana, this study’s findings indicate that environmental aspects have stronger influence on which type of substance is used. That is, if it’s easier for a teen to get his hands on marijuana than beer, then he’ll be more likely to smoke pot. This evidence supports what’s known as the common liability model, an emerging theory that states the likelihood that someone will transition to the use of illegal drugs is determined not by the preceding use of a particular drug but instead by the user’s individual tendencies and environmental circumstances.

dogma wrote:Nah. There will just be another catch-all law enforced to arbitrarily imprison 'dangerous' individuals.

dogma wrote:

interstate pot bootlegging.
.