AS IF COPS DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH PROBLEMS, the Drug Enforcement Administration is up against a new obstacle. A DEA press release paints this scene:

A patrol officer encounters a 16-year-old female accompanied by an 18-year- old male. Both state he is her “primary caregiver.” Both are found to be in possession of marijuana and he readily admits providing it to her on the ” recommendation” of a doctor at a local clinic for relief of “nausea.”

Make all the players in this little drama Californians, and the patrol officer is powerless to intervene. Thanks to a ballot initiative legalizing the ” medicinal” use of marijuana, California is now virtually unable to restrict marijuana use by people of any age. Proposition 215, which passed with little fanfare three weeks ago, also allows cultivation and possession by individuals who are not sick, provided they claim, as did the young man above, to be the “primary caregiver” of someone using marijuana to combat “any . . . illness for which marijuana provides relief.”