Marijuana Protest During President Obama's Visit to L.A.
During Monday's Obamajam on the Westside marijuana advocates will be out in force to protest the U.S. Justice Department's crackdown on cannabis dispensaries in California.
The Weed Blog Weed advocates want Obama to hear them.
California NORML is staging a demonstration outside the downtown Federal Building, only a few blocks from where Occupy L.A. has been camped out at City Hall. It's unlikely the president, in town to raise money and hobnob with prominent Latinos, will even know the bud backers are even alive. They smolder anyway.
State NORML chief Dale Gieringer told the Weekly today:
We view the crackdown as a betrayal of Obama's campaign pledge that 'I'm not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue.'
Yes, the bud nation is smoking mad over the DOJ's pronouncement that pretty much all dispensaries in California, where medical marijuana is legal, are outlaws. Some have already been directed to shut down.
While this turn of events might appear to be a campaign ploy by Obama in an attempt to seem hard on crime in the face of an increasingly right-leaning pack of Republican challengers, the Huffington Post recently reported that the Attorneys General in California said the idea to crackdown was all their own.
While marijuana is a federal outlaw drug of the highest caliber (Schedule I), Gieringer told us he didn't think Obama would continue to wade into this controversy: "I wouldn't be surprised if the administration tried to distance itself from this action."
The protest happens Monday at noon outside the Federal Building at 255 E. Temple St. According to a NORML email blast:
There will be a press conference with Prop 215 co-author Anna Boyce, who will be demanding a meeting with the President at the U.S. Attorney's office.
We thinks the NORML demonstrators will have a better chance getting the nearby Occupiers to join them. From what we hear the Occupy encampment already has the smell of a Cypress Hill concert.
[@dennisjromero/djromero@laweekly.com]
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