Obama Justice: Prosecuting Medical Marijuana "Not a Good Use" of Feds' Time

Change Bob Newland can believe in: medical marijuana lives!

Federal drug agents won't pursue pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers in states that allow medical marijuana, under new legal guidelines to be issued Monday by the Obama administration.

Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state law [Devlin Barrett, "Feds to Issue New Medical Marijuana Policy," AP via Yahoo News, 2009.10.19].

Bob, when you get done with probation next year, consider putting a big Red Cross on the side of your wagon.

What do you think, everyone: is it time for my neighbor Gerry to bring out the medical marijuana legislation again? If we go that route, let's add an amendment to legalize industrial hemp (think cash crop, farm friends!).

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Update 11:20 CDT: Read the memo yourself, straight from the U.S. Department of Justice blog.

Credit Card Reform Act Kills No Jobs Yet

...Rounds Preaches Fear Instead of Forming Plan B

The Credit CARD Act of 2009, passed by Congress back in May, took effect seven days ago. The giant sucking sound you don't hear is jobs draining out of the Sioux Falls metro-usurial area. Anyone at Premier Bankcard sending out résumés yet? Anyone?

Governor Mike Rounds insisted that the law would kill thousands of South Dakota jobs. Governor Rounds' needle is still stuck in that groove. He argues that limits on fees on low-limit cards will drive the industry to increase fees on transactions. Another commentator echoes my own mild fear that we credit-card deadbeats may lose our bonus points and rebates. Governor Rounds thus predicts that credit card companies will lose customers and thus fire up to 3,000 good South Dakotans.

It is perhaps noteworthy that Governor Rounds was previously citing 5,000 as the number of jobs we could lose. Keep rounding down, Mike....

But 5,000, 3,000, whatever the number, I actually think 3,000 fewer South Dakotans profiting from usury would be an improvement in our quality of life. And if those job losses do ever happen, maybe the state can help those people transition to a more honest, satisfying work that actually produces something useful: growing industrial hemp!

Discover the Unexpected... in North Dakota's Hemp Fields!

Tonight's Madison Daily Leader runs an AP story about North Dakota issuing its first hemp production licenses. The assistant majority leader of the North Dakota House, Republican farmer Dave Monson, is one of the first licensees wishing to follow in the plow-tracks of famous hemp growers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. North Dakota's ag commissioner, Roger Johnson, is working to get the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to ease the tight federal restrictions on hemp production, which include a $2,293 registration fee, which is nonrefundable even if the DEA comes back and says, "Thanks for registering, but now we're not going to approve your application."

Now you might think I'm about to make wisecracks about the strangely calming effect we South Dakotans will enjoy from the next stiff north wind, but there's no joke here. Our neighbors to the north are onto a really good idea. They're not growing pot; they want to grow industrial hemp, which was an important cash crop in the United States until the early 20th century. You can't smoke it -- well, you can, but you'll probably get no more buzz than you will from lighting up and inhaling a page of the Daily Leader. However, you can use industrial hemp to make all sorts of useful products: furniture, clothing, board sheathing (stronger than wood products, thanks to longer fibers), paper (Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper), carpet, rope (o.k., so maybe you don't have a lot of rope around the house), even paint and biodiesel (something you'll want more of around the house when oil heads back toward $80 a barrel). North Dakota recognizes that industrial hemp could allow farmers to diversify with a crop that, according to Canada's federal ag agency, "thrives without herbicide... reinvigorates the soil... and requires less water than cotton" (quoted by Jean M. Rawson, specialist in agricultural policy, "Hemp as an Agricultural Commodity," Congressional Research Service, updated 7/8/2005). Hemp also can produce four times as much paper per acre as trees, and unlike trees, hemp is an annual crop. Wow -- has North Dakota found a way to save family farms, expand its exports, protect local soil and water quality, and fight deforestation all in one shot?

A quick text search of the bills proposed in the current session of the South Dakota legislature finds no measures to legalize industrial hemp. Sigh. Maybe the next stiff north wind will bring an infectious whiff of North Dakota creativity.