Marijuana Blog

At about 9:30 a.m. yesterday, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided The High Hopes Farm, James Bowman’s medical marijuana operation outside Jacksonville, Oregon. The government brought earth-moving equipment to remove Bowman's crop. The farm was one of the biggest in Oregon.

Bowman, who is a longtime fixture in southern Oregon’s medical marijuana community, now faces the prospect of federal drug charges, but sources say he’s not supposed to be taken into custody.

Lori Duckworth, a medical marijuana activist who lives in Josephine County and works at a medical marijuana resource center in Medford, Oregon, said she was en route to Bowman’s operation to protest the federal government’s action.

“I am not on my way here to support James Bowman or High Hopes Farm,” she said. “I am here to protest if they seize any of the patients’ medicine.”

“These patients are now losing their medicine.”

Duckworth said she was not surprised by the crackdown on High Hopes.

“He was so large and so frank and so open about his operation that at some point he would be a target,” she said. 

The feds are probably hoping the raids send a message to others to close up shop.

Martin Hensley, a medical marijuana patient of Bowman’s who lives in Portland, was stunned.

“Are you serious,” said Hensley. “Lord, have mercy. I can’t believe it. What am I going to do?”

Hensley said he planned to get more marijuana from Bowman in November.

“It leaves me empty-handed,” he said.

But the federal government doesn’t care. The DEA, Attorney General Eric Holder, not even President Obama cares. The crackdown continues. The threats and raids continue and there will be no repercussions for President Obama because the GOP nominee is a complete idiot. Hopefully things will change in a second term.

Source: http://www.oregonlive.com

A Massachusetts laboratory has been closed amid allegations that tens of thousands of drug samples were mishandled. The Massachusetts governor released figures showing the manager conducted an "unusually high volume" of testing between 2004 and 2011, and now thousands of criminal convictions and pending cases remain in the balance.

Who knows how many other states have this same problem. The drug war has given too much power to too many people, one of the reasons it continues and one of the reasons it must be stopped. A lab technician shouldn’t be able to decide who goes to jail for a non-violent offense (or any offense, for that matter).

Obviously oversight is a key, but that misses the bigger picture. The war on drugs is handing a tremendous amount of power to individuals who abuse that power and were never ready to assume it in the first place.

Besides, the less labs have to focus on non-violent drug offenders, the more they can focus on important results, and the more efficient the oversight will be. Yet another way an end to the drug war will help society and even help the government that props it up.