Drug Enforcement Administration

"Miracle" Cannabis Oil: May Treat Cancer, But Money and the Law Stand in the Way of Finding Out

DEA Moves to Ban Synthetic Marijuana; Real Weed Is Still Illegal

Real marijuana appears to have significant health benefits. Fake marijuana does not -- and in fact, the chemically sprayed herbs labeled as "K2" and "Spice" could possibly kill you. For a long time, possibly healing real cannabis was illegal and the dangerous and worthless fake marijuana was perfec ... More >>

Oaksterdam Raid: Journalist Is Only Person Charged One Year Later

Our friends over at SFist today posted a reminder that it's been one year since federal agents -- mostly the IRS, though DEA and US Marshals were on scene -- raided the campus of Oakland marijuana grow college Oaksterdam University and the offices and apartment of its founder, cannabis legalization ... More >>

Clogging the Courts With Technological Nonsense

Let's take a quick romp through a few recent examples of tech jackassery in the legal system: First, the Supreme Court has declined to review the case of Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Brainerd, Minn., woman who is one of the more notable victims of the Recording Industry Association of America's insane ... More >>

Congress' New Marijuana Champions Introduce Legalization Bill

Like the changing of the seasons and the movement of the moon and sun, so too is the march of time marked by the annual show of members of Congress introducing marijuana legalization bills.These bills go nowhere -- there's no way to force a bill to be heard by a committee -- but since they were intr ... More >>

SF Weekly Letters

Marijuana Dispensary Mocks U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag With Dr. Seuss-Like Cartoon (Video)

By most measures, Harborside Health Center's fight with the federal Justice Department is going well. The nation's largest medical cannabis dispensary went untouched for nearly a year during the recent federal crackdown that began Oct. 2011. Even now, it's been nearly seven months since U.S. Attorne ... More >>

Marijuana Still Has No Medical Value, Court Says

The United States Court of Appeals delivered pot smokers some bad news today, ruling that marijuana is a dangerous and highly addictive drug with no medical value. In a 2-1 decision on the medical marijuana reclassification case, Americans for Safe Access v. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Co ... More >>

Feds Admit There's No Proof Mexican Drug Cartels Link to California Marijuana Grows

A while back, a medical cannabis grower told us this story: Needing help on his pot farm, a young entrepreneur drove down Cesar Chavez Avenue, convinced some day laborers to become season-long laborers, and headed north. All went well until the helicopters overhead turned into boots on the ground, a ... More >>

SF Weekly Letters

Mendocino Fights Feds on Medical Marijuana Subpoena

A year ago, the federal Justice Department took aim at legal medical marijuana in Mendocino County. The feds warned that the county's novel cannabis plant licensing program, which generated cash and kept sheriffs patrolling the rural area, violated federal law and needed to go; otherwise county offi ... More >>

SF Weekly Letters

Marijuana's Victory in Colorado, Washington Means California Will Follow Soon

An end to America's experiment with marijuana prohibition is in sight, after voters in Colorado and Washington approved re-legalizing the plant Tuesday. In California, where voters said "no" to adult-legal marijuana in 2010, the decisive passages of Amendment 64 in Colorado (54 percent yes to 4 ... More >>

Unlike in 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder Stays Silent on Marijuana Legalization

Scapegoats were readily available when California voters missed their chance to live in the first state in the Union to legalize marijuana for adults in 2010. While some blamed the medical marijuana supporters who opposed Proposition 19 -- which led some in some pre-election polls, at 52 percen ... More >>

Feds Play Circular "Game of Gotcha" With Marijuana Prohibition

Burden Not on DEA To Prove Marijuana Is Dangerous; Judges Asked to Heed Research, Science.Keeping marijuana under the government's list of most-controlled, most-dangerous substances is easy for the Drug Enforcement Administration -- all the federal drug warriors have to do is deny researchers access ... More >>

The Cops Want Your Valium

The SFPD is onto you again, but this time the cops are coming for your drugs -- prescription drugs, that is.This weekend local police will turn a blind eye to your pill-popping habits in an effort to stop the spread of prescription drug abuse.All you have to do is drop all your unused, unwanted, or ... More >>

Marijuana Elimination Program Is Smaller but Still Helicoptering in Pot Country

The Campaign Against Marijuana Planting is dead.Long live the Cannabis Eradication Reclamation Team.Last year, rumors that the drug war -- or at least California's role it in -- was over, when Gov. Jerry Brown eliminated state funding for the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting. CAMP, as it was know ... More >>

Want to Open a Medical Marijuana Dispensary in S.F.? The DEA Is Onto You

We're no police theorist, but the goals of a law enforcement action are simple: to prevent, to intervene, or otherwise dissuade behavior deemed illegal.If this is the case, the federal Justice Department's crackdown on California's medical marijuana industry is only partway there; about a dozen Bay ... More >>

Medical Marijuana Advocates to Argue DEA in Federal Court

Is marijuana a medicine, or is it a vitality-sucking, life-destroying devil weed? Cannabis advocates and law enforcement don't exactly see eye-to-eye on this crucial point -- but for the first time, a judge will be called in to decide.A federal court of appeals in Washington, D.C., late last week ag ... More >>

Obama's Oakland Visit: Marijuana Lovers Promise To Be There

President Barack Obama's reelection campaign picked office space in downtown Oakland (of which there is plenty available) to house its Bay Area headquarters. The East Bay city has put in the work, and on Monday, Oakland will receive a presidential visitor for the first time in recent memory, when Ob ... More >>

S.F. Relaxation Guru Explains the Difference Between Bath Salts and Face-Eating Bath Salts

Ever since the crazy Miami face-eater shook the nation with his flesh-eating fetish, there's been some confusion over the use of bath salts. Police say Rudy Eugene was probably high on the street drug known as bath salts when he chewed off the face of a homeless man last month. We can only imagine t ... More >>

Hemp Farming Still Illegal, Obama Provides Convenient Scapegoat

If and when Tea Party hero Sen. Rand Paul visits San Francisco and goes shopping, he'll find friendly faces in the aisles of Rainbow Grocery more quickly than he will any Safeway (especially the Castro location). In addition to the destruction of all government, the Kentucky Republican has legislate ... More >>

Fire, Not Obama Crackdown, Shuts Mission Medical Marijuana Dispensary

Prior to the four-alarm fire next door, the coffee shop behind the nameless awning and signless storefront at 208 Valencia St. was notable not for what was behind the white door opposite the barista -- a pot club -- but for the dispensary's flaunting of federal law.Exactly how 208 Valencia Caregiver ... More >>

The Summer Movie Rises: Twenty Films to Watch Out For

Smoking Medical Marijuana Helps MS Patients, Study Says

A common critique of medical cannabis is that there's no way anything "smoked" can be beneficial to someone of ill health. This simple and convenient theory -- smoking (tobacco) is bad, therefore anything that can be smoked must also be bad -- was recently repeated by former White House drug czar Jo ... More >>

Thizzin' Sensation: DEA Calls Mac Dre's Label an Ecstasy Front, But Insiders Are Skeptical

Bay Area Rap Mogul Stretch on the DEA Tying Mac Dre's Label to an Ecstasy Bust

[Editor's note: This week's music feature looks at a recent DEA drug bust that claimed a substantial connection between late Vallejo rap legend Mac Dre's record label and a large-scale Ecstasy trafficking ring, of which 25 alleged members were arrested last month. One source for our story was East B ... More >>

California Congressmen Push Spending Cuts on Federal Marijuana Enforcement

Budget hawks incensed over San Francisco's supposedly profligate spending ought to spend a few minutes at Congress, observing the dollar requests submitted by federal departments.Take the $28.2 billion, 111,998-employee federal Department of Justice, for example. The country's 12,000 employees in Un ... More >>

Obama Explains Medical Marijuana Crackdown -- Sort Of

Mystery accompanied the federal Justice Department's crackdown on California's state-legal medical marijuana industry since Oct. 7, when prosecutors formally declared their war on weed. Who was behind the feds deciding it was time to shut down hundreds of California dispensaries -- rogue prosecutors ... More >>

Mac Dre's Old Record Label Affiliates Arrested in Drug Bust After Federal Thizzvestigation

As the late Mac Dre explained, Thizz Face is "a look on your face like you smelled some piss."This expression is similar to "a look on your face when you are arrested as part of a nationwide DEA drug-trafficking sweep."So we expect there were plenty of Thizz Faces to go around last Thursday when the ... More >>

Oaksterdam University Pledges to Re-open After Federal Raid on Marijuana Leader

What many saw as the inevitable hit Oaksterdam founder Richard Lee on Monday, when federal agents came knocking at the home and businesses of the man who has become the marijuana movement's de-facto figurehead.After Lee revived a moribund part of downtown Oakland with a school dedicated to the pot t ... More >>

Oaksterdam University Raided by Feds (Video)

​Medical marijuana activists are gathered around Oaksterdam University in downtown Oakland as federal authorities raid the state's first-ever cannabis training facility. Officials with the Drug Enforcement Agency, walking in and out of the school at 16th and Broadway, would not talk to the press. ... More >>

"Casa de Mi Padre": Tastefully Parodies Spanish Telenovelas

Feds Dismiss Medical Marijuana Lawsuits Without Hearings "Because They Know They're Wrong"

​Medical Marijuana Fight May End Up At Supreme Court ... By The Time We Are All Really Old.San Francisco attorney Matthew Kumin was defeated this week, when his lawsuit that challenged the feds' recent crackdown on state-legal medical marijuana dispensaries was dismissed by a federal judge in Sacr ... More >>

San Leandro Doctor Busted for Writing Illegal Vicodin Prescriptions to Undercover Agents

​A San Leandro doctor has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from his decision to write illicit Vicodin prescriptions to undercover Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents posing as patients addicted to the painkiller.Alameda County prosecutors say that Dr. Naim Katiby, 62, a San Ramon resident with ... More >>

Ron Paul Won't Legalize Marijuana -- Because He Can't

​As if the promise to dismantle most of the Washington-based government wasn't enough, Texas Congressman Ron Paul has also made waves in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination with his maverick stance on drug policy.During his 30 years in the House of Representatives, Paul has authored ... More >>

Is Medical Marijuana a Low Priority for Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, Gov. Jerry Brown?

Blindsided as he was during a "bloodbath" of a House Judicial Committee hearing, in which U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was hung out to dry over the teeny-tiny issue of injecting American-made weaponry into the Mexican cartel wars, you could forgive the Justice Department head for mincing his wo ... More >>

Gavin Newsom, SF Supes Blast Feds' War on Medical Marijuana

Drug warrior in words only?​Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom shared a Los Angeles stage on Thursday with GOP presidential candidate Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico who wants to end marijuana prohibition and free all nonviolent marijuana offenders from jail.While it's unlikely Newsom would sac ... More >>

Obama's War on Weed: President Attacks Medical Marijuana

Obama's Medical Marijuana Crackdown: Two S.F. Pot Clubs to Close

And Divinity Tree, and Green Door Sacramento, and maybe Medithrive​Lombard Street is in the city's oft-posh Marina District, but that stretch of US-101 that leads from the Golden Gate Bridge down through Van Ness Avenue includes seedy motels as well as high-end boutiques. It might have also contai ... More >>

Unemployed Still? Cannabis Jobs Fair at Cow Palace This Weekend

​This being election season means it's also jobs season. Jobs are on the lips of every politician worth his or her soft money -- from Barack Obama's jobs plan to Mayor Ed Lee's own Wilsonesque 17-point jobs plan (in some ways eerily similar to the 17-point jobs plan offered in June by mayoral oppo ... More >>

Feds: Drug Cartels Are Here, and They're Taking Our Jobs

Gone the way of UAW​The Drug War is going the way of the "evildoers," according to a federal report released last week. Two years ago, foreign drug cartels were in 230 American cities. Today, the cartels -- from Mexico, East Asia, and, presumably, Canada -- have infiltrated more than 1,000 America ... More >>

Another Poll Shows Majority Support Legalizing Pot

Yes​Ho-hum. Another day, another poll showing a majority of Americans are sick of the War on Drugs and favor marijuana legalization.Of 1,003 Americans nationwide contacted by Canadian firm Angus Reid Public Opinion, 55 percent said they support the legalization of marijuana while 40 percent were o ... More >>

Obama's Drug Czar Report Debunks Medical Marijuana, Feds Are on a Pot-Hating Roll

They have one thing in common, anyway​The rule of three -- you can't escape it. Not in religion, not in anatomy, not even in Barack Obama's War on Drugs.First, there was the June memo from the Justice Department in which the White House decided the 16 states with medical cannabis laws be damned. T ... More >>

Justice Department "Clarifies" Stance on Medical Marijuana: It's Illegal And They Will Arrest You

They gonna getcha​President Barack Obama's stance on medical cannabis has been a wee nebulous: as candidate, Obama said the drug war was a failure and that doctors prescribing pot as a treatment was "appropriate"; as president, Obama's Justice Department said chasing after pot growers and users wa ... More >>

New Bill Would Stop Federal Enforcement of Marijuana

Not feeling it​Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) defines the word "maverick." His stance on hemp farming and his position against the Federal Reserve earned the 2012 presidential hopeful the moniker long before the Republican establishment hijacked the label in 2008. The hero of political independent ... More >>

Congressman Jared Polis Wants to Hear Your "War on Drugs" Horror Story

Lay it on him​Not every drug user's encounter with police is bad. SF Weekly readers might recall the story when the San Francisco Police Department returned several pounds of marijuana to a medical grower last year. But for every story like that, there's a Clark Freshman -- the UC Hastings law pro ... More >>

Medical Marijuana Patients Sue Federal Government

Stoners aren't the only ones who are slow to react ​We all know that the wheels of government move slowly -- but nine years slowly? That pace is too lazy for Americans for Safe Access, which just wants answers. So it's going to court to force the federal government to get some response.At issue is ... More >>

Blowing Smoke: Obama Promises One Thing, Does Another on Medical Marijuana

Castro Pot Bust Goes Awry and a Law Professor Threatens to Sue