Next Stop for the DEA - Santa Barbara

The Feds have warned dispensary landlords in Santa Barbara that a crackdown is coming:

According to local attorney Joe Allen, who sat in on at least one of the several meetings between federal officials and landowners on August 5 and 6 at the Santa Barbara District Attorney's office, "In very clear terms, they said this is the last warning: The government is going to shut all of these clubs down and the government is going to prosecute anyone involved."

The visits, which Santa Barbara District Attorney Christie Stanley coyly refused to confirm or deny, leave in their wake a questionable future for the eight or so medical marijuana shops that operate in Santa Barbara and the thousands of patients who visit them each week to seek relief from a wide variety of conditions.

This article also brings up another aspect of these crackdown that illustrates the far-reaching and varied effects of this policy:

One of those who has already received his eviction order is Josh Braun. His dispensary, the third locally when it opened in 2005, had been operating on the 3500 block of State Street, nestled among restaurants, a coffee shop, and a gardening store. But after his landlord's lawyers met with federal authorities last week, his days of operating Hortipharm Caregivers are numbered. His doors will close by September. "I've got 20 employees with salary and health benefits-most of them with families-who are going to be out of work in a crappy economy," explained Braun recently before adding with marked frustration, "And for what? Because the feds don't want to respect the people of California?"

That's pretty accurate. The feds don't respect the people of any of the states that have made medical marijuana legal. They only respect one thing, an unwavering belief that despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary, they're doing something that needs to be done to protect us. What we are witnessing is an exercise in mass denial that will be looked upon with extreme wonderment within a generation's time.