Nearly a year after
federal prosecutors started targeting California medical marijuana
shops, they took their fight to Los Angeles on Tuesday after city
officials struggled to halt a proliferation of dispensaries.

The U.S. attorney

Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana
advocacy group, is calling for rallies in 15 cities and eight states on
Thursday to protest Department of Justice attacks on the MMJ industry,
ASA said Wednesday.

Protesters will gather at Obama’s Tucson office, 4639 E. 1st Street,
at 5 p.m. today to presumably wave signs, shout and generally chastise
the Choomer in Chief for shutting down some very respectable and
successful businesses in MMJ states in recent years. Rallies are also
planned for Phoenix, Denver, Seattle, San Diego, Oakland and Washington,
D.C.

"Over the past three years, the DOJ has conducted more than 200
SWAT-style federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) raids on
legitimate medical marijuana businesses in at least 6 states – at twice
the rate under the Bush Administration – and indicted more than 70
related to medical marijuana," the ASA said in a news release.

So bring a sign to wave and tell the prez what you think. Mr. Smith plans to attend. See you there.

When Obama’s supporters come to volunteer this evening, they will be
greeted by a crowd holding political signs. It’s not an Occupy protest
or a Republican rally – it’s a rally in support of medical marijuana access,
organized by voters who feel left out of the electoral debate. From
Washington, D.C. to Washington State, from New York City to Denver,
Colorado, patients and their supporters will be asking, how can I vote
against my health in November?

My organization, Americans for Safe Access, has been engaging voters since July with our Camp WakeUpObama campaign,
helping to give a voice to patients and their families. Today campers
mark the end of summer with nationwide rallies outside of Obama’s
campaign offices, because we’re not being invited inside. Things would
be different if the President would apply his campaign slogan,
"Forward," to our cause: stopping the raids and prosecutions of
state-permitted institutions, and moving public health policy forward by
ending the conflict between state and federal law.

I can’t ignore the fact that many responses to Camp WakeUpObama have
been critical and to those of you who disapprove I ask, what else are
patients supposed to do? In asking President Obama to fulfill his stated
policy of respecting state compassionate use laws, we are not asking
him to do anything unpopular: 80% of Americans support safe access to medical cannabis, 74% are against the stepped-up raids and prosecutions and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson is polling at 7% in Colorado campaigning on this issue. Even two-thirds
of Republicans support state medical cannabis laws. With the public on
our side, why should patients and our loved ones be silent?

Camp WakeUpObama is not about encouraging people to vote for Romney
or any other challenger, but about expressing our own points of view.
When I wrote
during the Democratic National Convention that pro-marijuana candidate
Gary Johnson’s poll numbers could make him a spoiler in the crucial
swing state of Colorado, I wasn’t criticizing third-party supporters, I
was showing Democrats the proof that their standard-bearer’s
wrong-headed cannabis crackdown is costing the party votes. I never
thought that Mitt Romney’s campaign would be emailing reporters our talking points or that his vice-presidential nominee would publicly support
state decisions on marijuana law. Though a lot has happened in the past
few months, it’s not too late for Obama to seize the issue.

Many of us want to be supporters of the President, to be a part of
his movement. Obama has done great things for other patients but for my
medical needs, which include cannabis, treatment has become only less
affordable and more limited. When we listened to DNC speakers praise
health care reforms for helping family members receive organ
transplants, it was a painful reminder that our community had just
buried Norman Smith,
a man denied a transplant because of his doctor-recommended medical
marijuana therapy. It was saddening to hear speaker after speaker talk
about Obama expanding access to health care, when the same man ordered
the destruction of our access to vital medicine. And it was frustrating
to watch Obama’s now-infamous
Harold and Kumar video, in which he asked fictional stoners for support
while turning his back on real-life medical marijuana patients.

In four years, Obama’s DEA has taken action against far more medical
marijuana facilities than during the eight years of Bush. Despite
promises to govern according to science rather than politics, his
administration is going to court to contend that marijuana has "no accepted medical use." And all of these raids, prosecutions, threatening letters, and asset forfeitures have occurred while Obama’s Attorney General
denies following an anti-medical cannabis policy. At least George W.
Bush and John Ashcroft admitted they were waging a war on us.

Camp WakeUpObama brings forward the voices of those who feel
conflicted about voting for someone who is prosecuting members of their
community and closing down their trusted sources of medicine. I’m not a
one-issue voter, but I should be able to vote for someone who cares
about my health. I know that ordinary patients can make a difference –
after all, it was the $20 donor who elected Obama.

It’s 46 days before the election, and the President is having a good week.
But support for Gary Johnson and the closeness of the race make Obama’s
unpopular medical cannabis crackdown an unnecessary roadblock to his
reelection.

So today medical marijuana patients rally to wake up Obama and wake
up his supporters. We want the President to apply his campaign slogan
"forward" to medical cannabis: it is popular, it is good medicine, and
it is good policy.

Americans for Safe Access has coordinated nationwide protests today to "remind Obama of his broken campaign promises regarding medical marijuana in places where it is legal at the state level." The press release states:

In solidarity with the over 1 million medical marijuana
patients across the nation, activists will be pushing the message that
patients as well as their families and friends are voters too, and that
this is a vital issue for them when they go to the polls in November.
Obama is the current POTUS and can stop this unprecedented federal
crackdown even before the election.

Many protests are planned at Obama For America headquarters,
while here in Oregon, they are planned for the federal courthouses in
Medford, Eugene and Pendleton. Oregonians are protesting the raids that
have occurred in the last three weeks, in particular: Kannabosm, the 45th Parallel and High Hopes Farm.

Oregon protests are scheduled as follows:

Eugene, OR United States District Court
12pm @ Wayne L Morse U.S. Courthouse
405 East Eighth Ave.

Medford, OR United States District Court
2pm @ James A Redden U.S. Courthouse
310 West Sixth St.

Pendleton, OR United States District Court
12pm @ John F. Kilkenny United States Post Office and Courthouse
104 S.W. Dorion

Medical marijuana policy reform advocates will gather across the
country on Thursday to protest President Barack Obama’s aggressive
crackdown on the substance.

Americans for Safe Access, a national group promoting the advancement of cannabis for therapeutic use and research, announced in a release
Wednesday that the demonstrations will take place at select Obama
campaign offices and other locations in at least 15 cities in eight
states, as well as Washington D.C. These states — Arizona, California,
Colorado, Montana, Missouri, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington — have
all legalized marijuana for medical use, but the substance continues to
be classified as an illegal drug at the federal level, causing
widespread confusion and frequent legal repercussions for patients and
purveyors.

ASA says the events are part of its "Camp WakeUpObama" campaign, an
effort to highlight what the organization sees as dishonest or
unfulfilled promises made by Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder
regarding the prioritization of marijuana enforcement.

In 2008, then-candidate Obama claimed
he wouldn’t use the Justice Department to circumvent state laws on
medical marijuana. In 2010, however, Holder said that federal
authorities would continue to prosecute individuals for marijuana
possession, regardless of its legalized status on the state level. And
in 2011, the Justice Department issued another memo promising to crack down on pot shops in medical marijuana states.

And crack down they have. According to ASA’s latest calculations, the
Drug Enforcement Administration has conducted upwards of 200 SWAT-style
raids on medical marijuana facilities that are ostensibly legitimate
businesses, according to state law.

While the clampdown on dispensaries, particularly in states like California and Colorado,
has come at tremendous legal and financial costs to shop owners and
employees, ASA says the point of their protests is to give medical
marijuana patients a voice.

"President Obama must tell the more than one million patients in this
country how he intends to move this issue forward in his next
administration," said Steph Sherer, ASA’s executive director. "We are
sick and tired of being told to vote against our health. … Thursday’s
rallies are aimed at conveying that patients and their families are
voters who may be influenced this November by the president’s broken
promises on this issue."

Read more on Thursday’s ASA events here.

A referendum seeking to
overturn the city law banning medical marijuana dispensaries has
qualified for the ballot in the election next March, the Los Angeles
City Clerk’s office announced Monday.

Clerk June Lagmay said the more than 27,000 signatures
required to qualify were submitted and the City Council now has 20 days
in which to repeal the measure, modify it or schedule it for the
election.

Kris Hermes of Americans for Safe Access, which worked to
qualify the referendum, said he hoped the city would adopt a compromise
allowing more than 100 dispensaries that had applied for permits before
an interim control ordinance took effect.

"That is a reasonable compromise until the state Supreme Court
resolves the issue," Hermes said. "And, that way, the city can avoid
the costs associated with an election."

Councilman Jose Huizar, who authored the ban on the
dispensaries, said the city has tried to work with the medical marijuana
community, without success.

The
state

"We’re letting the city council know that they can’t just come
in and trump the will of the people, and that when they do things
that are very unpopular, the people can stand up and say stop,"
says Don Duncan, California director of Americans for Safe Access.
 

The people did say stop this September in response to
Los Angeles City Council’s ban on medical marijuana
dispensaries. Fifty thousand Angelenos signed a petition,
successfully
blocking the ban that was supposed to go into effect on Sept.
6, 2012.

"After the city council adopted the ban, patients, collective
operators and organized labor all got together and organized a
referendum campaign," says Duncan, "we were able to actually block
the implementation of the ban before it even took effect and so
that’s a tremendous victory for patients."

Duncan sat down with ReasonTV’s Tracy Oppenheimer to discuss the
battle for medical marijuana, which he says isn’t over yet. Voters
have to either overturn the ban via the ballot box this spring, or
come up with their own ordinance through the voter initiative
process.

Duncan notes that there is massive support for medical marijuana
with 77 percent of Californians supporting the regulation and
control of medical cannabis. Unfortunately this support may not be
enough.

"The city attorney is committed to the fact that medical
cannabis is illegal, and so we expect some sort of enforcement
action from the city attorney that will probably involve civil
measures, but that’s almost certainly going to be coupled with some
law enforcement activity," says Duncan, "unfortunately that means
some people who are trying to do right, and are trying to take care
of sick people and obey the law are going to get caught up in that
dragnet.

Thursday was supposed to mark the end of medical marijuana
dispensaries in Los Angeles, after the city council approved a ban on
them this summer. But patients and advocates have managed to halt the
ban, and some dispensary operators are suing the city.

For
years, Los Angeles has been a mecca for medical marijuana dispensaries.
Anyone with a doctor’s recommendation could stop in at chic storefronts
offering cannabis-laced desserts or at the more underground clinics,
labeled only with a green cross. Hundreds, maybe 1,000 of these pot
shops popped up around L.A.

City officials
tried to get a handle on the proliferation, with endless meetings,
community hearings, police raids and lawsuits. Finally, the council
decided "enough is enough," says City Councilman Jose Huizar, who wrote a
bill outlawing all dispensaries. The council overwhelmingly passed the ban in July.

"It
was getting way out of control," Huizar says. "A thousand dispensaries?
Some neighborhoods have two per block, and young people have access.
They go around the corner, they smoke it. Crime increases around these
dispensaries, the traffic, the robberies."

Huizar’s
bill didn’t outlaw medical marijuana, but it did call for a so-called
"gentle ban," which would allow only three or fewer patients or their
caregivers to grow their own.

At one pot
clinic in L.A.’s Franklin Heights neighborhood, Egyptian meditation
music mingles with the scents of indica, sativa and hybrid marijuana
strains. Sitting in the front office is Marc O’Hara, the executive
director of Patient Care Alliance Los Angeles. He scoffs at the idea
that a gentle ban would provide access to medical marijuana.

"It’s inconceivable to think that three
homebound patients suffering from spasticity, cancer, autism could
somehow pull together the wherewithal to produce medicine with the
potency and the medicinal effect of what’s grown by the best cultivators
on the planet," O’Hara says.

His group is
suing the city over its handling of medical marijuana clinics. His
colleague Tiffany Wright, who says she’s a cannabis patient, says the
city’s ban would drive legitimate users underground.

"I
feel like we’re almost being forced back into the dark ages," she says.
"Nobody that I know who’s a card-carrying patient wants to get their
medicine from some suspect in a dark alley, that could potentially be
contaminated with mold and pesticides, with no knowledge of who grew it
or where it’s been grown."

Facing an outright
ban on medical marijuana shops, activists, dispensary operators and the
union representing pot shop workers started a campaign, collecting tens
of thousands of signatures calling for a ballot measure repealing the
ban.

Activist Don Duncan, who heads the
California chapter of Americans for Safe Access, says they had no choice
because the city’s policies have never been clear. Until now, he says,
police have raided clinics at random and the city council has floundered
with various policies.

"I look back and shake my head and think, ‘What in the world has been going on in this city since 2005?’ " Duncan says.

"We’re
not saying no regulation, just a free for all