Speakeasies and prohibition

Just wanted to know if you can give me some info on these two local speakeasies or breadcrumbs that will lead me in the direction I seek.

—JP

I really shouldn’t. These spots exist in a legal gray area (kinda like cannabis clubs back in the day). Dry snitching is almost worse than real snitching. However, if you look for “City of Trees Smokeout” or “Orbitz” on the Instagram, you could probably find the info you are after. I will remind you that these events are for MMJ patients only and you will need a valid letter of recommendation from your doctor plus a California ID. Good luck and have fun.

What’s up with the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration calling medical marijuana a joke? Is he off his meds?

—Jeff

He is not off his meds. He is just trying to adjust to the new paradigm while protecting his $2 billion (you heard me: Two. Billion. Dollars.) budget. ICYMI: At a press briefing last week, DEA head Chuck Rosenberg had this to say about medical cannabis: “What really bothers me is the notion that marijuana is also medicinal—because it’s not. We can have an intellectually honest debate about whether we should legalize something that is bad and dangerous, but don’t call it medicine—that is a joke.” A joke?! Really? How he can say these things whilst keeping his face from contorting is beyond me. Has anyone on his staff ever showed him even one of the hundreds of studies showing cannabis to be an effective medicine for a variety of ailments? All he has to do is go to Granny Storm Crow’s super-comprehensive list of cannabis studies (http://grannystormcrows
list2014.webs.com/) and he will see that his comments are ridiculous. Marijuana has been a good and safe medicine for thousands of years.

That he would continue try to go after marijuana users and the cannabis industry despite the fact that the U.S. government has a new law that is supposed to keep the DEA away from states that have legalized cannabis is despicable. (Last month, the DEA received a scathing rebuke from federal judge Stephen Breyer. He called its attempts to circumvent the new law “counterintuitive and opportunistic.”)

If I was in charge and had just been smacked down by a federal court and had just looked at the results of the DEA’s own 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment Summary wherein more than 1,000 law enforcement agencies listed marijuana as the lowest threat (6 percent of respondents said marijuana was a problem), maybe I would try to shift my priorities. The DEA is outmoded anyway. Drug abuse is a social-health issue, not a criminal issue. Prohibition creates crime. There’s a petition on Change.org to try to get Rosenberg replaced. I feel like we need a petition to replace the entire DEA.