Quote:
Originally Posted by Relentless
It will be much harder for the Federal government to act against the laws of the state when the justice department is already on record saying they will not, if the person in question is behaving in ways that are consistent with the laws of the state. If Alaska suddenly made it legal to smoke pot while driving, the Feds might react to something like that, but the chances of the Justice Department acting against its own directive and against the laws of Washington state to arrest a guy for smoking pot in his yard are pretty much nil.... and making those charges stick against claims of selective enforcement at the appellate level would likely be futile even if they wanted to do it. Blowjobs are still technically illegal in plenty of jurisdictions because there are arcane laws on the books saying you can't commit sodomy... they aren't about to try enforcing any of those laws either.
This isn't a casual comment made by a lone FBI agent or some rookie Police officer at a seminar, it's a formal policy statement by the entire agency of the Federal government charged with enforcing federal law.  |
And this statement wasnt from some rookie cop either:
This was in 2009
WASHINGTON ? Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday outlined a shift in the enforcement of federal drug laws, saying the administration would effectively end the Bush administration?s frequent raids on distributors of medical marijuana.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/us/19holder.html?_r=0
Yet the raids continued.
Then in 2012 Rolling Stone questioned him about it, he said:
"What I specifically said was that we were not going to prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical marijuana. I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana ? and the reason is, because it's against federal law. I can't nullify congressional law," Obama said.
"I can't ask the Justice Department to say, 'Ignore completely a federal law that's on the books.' What I can say is, 'Use your prosecutorial discretion and properly prioritize your resources to go after things that are really doing folks damage.' As a consequence, there haven't been prosecutions of users of marijuana for medical purposes," Obama said.
Obama also said in a late night TV appearance Tuesday on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, that he didn't expect Congress to change that law: "We're not going to be legalizating weed ? anytime soon."
http://www.politico.com/politico44/2...na-121598.html