Steph Shearer tells the story about the hope Obama gave for positive change on this front, and disappointment of drastic negative bait-and-switch changes so clearly.

Regarding Obama campaigning in 2008: "I went to sleep that night excited about a new direction for this country that would include me as a recognized medical cannabis patient."

Now in 2012: "In fewer than fours years of President Obama, we have seen more raids on dispensaries than during the Bush Administration's entire eight-year tenure. The Obama Administration has taken property from landlords, threatened local officials, forced the release of patient records, used the Internal Revenue Service to bankrupt legitimate dispensaries, told banks to purge medical cannabis clients, evicted patients from low-income housing and denied a petition to recognize the well-established medical value of cannabis."

This is perfidy of the first-order.  The rallies, the political pressure, and the petitions he has either ignored or pooh-poohed.  I'm not a one-issue voter and hate the prospect of Romney in the WH, but while bending the arc of the universe toward justice on many other issues, why did Obama choose to bend it backward in this case, and what are we who care about this issue supposed to do with our vote?

Some reserve hope that he will make changes once he gets a second term, but I think of Lucy, Charlie Brown, and the football, and how the best indicator of future performance is past performance....

I like him in SO MANY WAYS, and just want him to do the right thing here.  Instead he (and most democrats, actually) appears to be kowtowing again and again to corporate sponsors in the pharmaceuticals industry, in oil, in alcohol and tobacco, in law enforcement, and others, who give hundreds of millions to keep things as they are.  The MMJ industry doesn't have that kind of money--they're not even allowed to put their money in banks!--and in today's post-Citizens-United decision, doesn't have access to their inner ear.  In the meantime, Americans for Safe Access is losing access because of this perfidy.


pax hominibus, agape to all, joel