If you’re a longtime Whiteout Press reader, you know how the Obama Justice Department declared a war on medical marijuana facilities throughout the nearly two dozen states where it is legal on the state level, the county level and even the municipal level. According to President Obama however, those people aren’t in charge, he is. Even though the US federal government has its own decades-old and little known medical marijuana business with patients, pot and everything else. It’s hypocrisy at its worst.

Read the 2011 Whiteout Press article ‘Feds guilty of their own Crimes on Medical Marijuana’ for details.

HR 4660, Amendment 25 – the ‘Obama, leave medical marijuana patients alone’ Amendment

House Resolution 4660 was a boring government spending Bill, passed after midnight on May 30, during a holiday week. But it had all the drama of a mutiny. Barack Obama’s fellow Democrats didn’t just side with Republicans in a very public rebuke of the President, they led the charge against him. A majority of House Republicans sided with the Obama policy against medical marijuana, even where it’s legal. But enough, including Amendment co-sponsor Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), joined with the Democrats to pass the Resolution 219-189, with 23 Representatives Not Voting.

This victory is a special prize for medical marijuana advocates around the country. Currently, 22 states plus Washington DC have legalized medical marijuana for patients suffering from certain painful medical conditions. The most common types of patients found at a legal medical marijuana dispensary are AIDS victims, cancer patients and those permanently wounded by their tours at war fighting for their country. But that hasn’t stopped President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder from launching raid after raid after raid on medical marijuana clinics in the states where they’re legal.

The just-passed Rohrabacher Amendment doesn’t recognize medical marijuana on a national level. Instead, it forbids the Obama White House and all its federal law enforcement agencies like the DEA, FBI, NSA, etc., from doing anything to interfere with medical marijuana businesses in the 22 states and DC where it’s legal, or any future states that would make it legal. The law, if also passed by the US Senate, would legally handcuff the President and protect the local dispensaries and clinics from any further federal law enforcement action.

See the full Roll Call vote to see how your Representative voted

The tipping point

2012 Libertarian Party Presidential candidate Gary Johnson called the House vote, “a tipping point” in the fight to legalize medical marijuana and get the federal government to stop terrorizing patients. Speaking from his own Our America Initiative, Johnson said, “This vote, and more significantly, the clear and dramatic shift in public opinion toward medical marijuana are not accidents. I have long believed that, the more we raise this issue and talk about it in the public square, the more support we will see from the American people for common sense drug law reform.”

Johnson and his fellow Libertarians aren’t sitting back and celebrating however. They realize that this is just the starter’s pistol signaling the beginning of what will be a very hard-fought campaign to protect legal medical marijuana patients from their own government.

“To be sure, last week’s vote in the House of Representatives is huge – and historic,” the former New Mexico Governor tells fellow medical marijuana supporters, “But it was just one vote on one Amendment. For it to become law, the Senate must agree and the language must survive at least two more votes in Congress. The next few weeks are key, and the Our America Initiative will be mobilizing activists in every state to make the argument that the federal government has no right, nor any justification, to interfere with states whose voters and legislators have chosen to allow individuals and their doctors to include marijuana as a medical option.”

Senate Appropriations Committee

Our friend Brian Sonenstein at Just Say Now is also reaching out to supporters of medical marijuana, telling them that after more than a decade of legal and grassroots battling, they’re needed in the fight now more than ever.

“Thousands of patients, caregivers and advocates spoke out to push the Rohrabacher Amendment through the House and now we need your support to carry that momentum through to the Senate,” Sonenstein told supporters in a recent email, “As the Senate Appropriations Committee considers its own Commerce-Justice-Science Bill, some members have indicated they might be receptive to including this medical marijuana language as well. Last week, Barbara Mikulsky (D-MD), who Chairs the Committee said, ‘I’ve always supported the availability of medical marijuana…If a member offers an Amendment, we’ll see where we are.’”

One would think that the Medical Marijuana protection Amendment would have smooth sailing now that it’s passed in the GOP-controlled House and only has the Democrat-controlled Senate and a Democrat President to get through. It’s the Republicans that oppose the Amendment, while Democrats support it and President Obama has often said he supports medical marijuana on the state level as well, while at the same time orchestrating countless raids upon those very same clinics and patients. Nothing symbolizes support for medical marijuana like federal stormtroopers dumping cripples out of their wheel chairs at gun point so they can be bound with wrist-cutting zip-ties and taken to federal prison.

The scenario creates a rarely seen conflict pitting House and Senate Democrats against President Obama and his Republican allies. Would President Obama veto a bi-partisan Bill aimed specifically at him, forcing him and Eric Holder to leave medical marijuana clinics alone? We will probably find out soon. This Amendment has widespread support at a time when President Obama’s approval ratings are at their all-time low. And America’s grassroots activists are fired-up for a fight, pun intended.