"The war on drugs is now 30, 40 years old. There have been a lot of unintended consequences. There's been a decimation of certain communities, in particular communities of color."
-- Eric Holder, 2013
The Attorney General is responsible for the Department of Justice, which is in turn in charge of the FBI and DEA. Also, the FBI does not handle most drug related federal offences. That is the DEA. Get your agencies right!
Anyway, this would be the Attorney General bending the law. Legally, they are supposed to arrest you for smoking Marijuana. However... if the Attorney General bends the rules, and "fails" to arrest you on the charge, then the law is as good as broken. An official order from the Attorney General can stop the DEA from prosecuting Drug users, even without any changes to law.
And thus, the power of the executive branch. They can't change the laws, but Eric Holder is in a position to change the enforcement of laws. That is about as good as he can do, a future Attorney General / President may roll things back.
To Eric Holder, the Drug War is an anti-African American symbol. So it seems like he's doing what he can to stop it. He probably will crackdown on the obvious illegally operated Pot centers in California, but he's probably going to ease up the Drug War as much as he can.
"The war on drugs is now 30, 40 years old. There have been a lot of unintended consequences. There's been a decimation of certain communities, in particular communities of color." -- Eric Holder, 2013
The Attorney General is responsible for the Department of Justice, which is in turn in charge of the FBI and DEA. Also, the FBI does not handle most drug related federal offences. That is the DEA. Get your agencies right!
Anyway, this would be the Attorney General bending the law. Legally, they are supposed to arrest you for smoking Marijuana. However... if the Attorney General bends the rules, and "fails" to arrest you on the charge, then the law is as good as broken. An official order from the Attorney General can stop the DEA from prosecuting Drug users, even without any changes to law.
And thus, the power of the executive branch. They can't change the laws, but Eric Holder is in a position to change the enforcement of laws. That is about as good as he can do, a future Attorney General / President may roll things back.
To Eric Holder, the Drug War is an anti-African American symbol. So it seems like he's doing what he can to stop it. He probably will crackdown on the obvious illegally operated Pot centers in California, but he's probably going to ease up the Drug War as much as he can.