Even California potheads aren’t big fans of Attorney General Eric Holder this week.
While Holder was delivering the commencement speech at the University of California, Berkeley Saturday, several marijuana advocates overtook the campus to protest the Obama administration’s increased federal crackdown on the medical marijuana industry. The protestors greeted Holder with signs that read “Fight Crime, Not Cannabis” as his limousine arrived on campus, and even hired an airplane to fly above campus during the commencement ceremony bearing the banner, “Holder: End Rx Cannabis War #Peace4Patients.”
“There’s no doubt we got the A.G.’s attention,” Dale Gieringer, president of the California chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, told The Huffington Post. “He can’t come to Berkeley and not be reminded of his department’s bad faith with respect to medical marijuana.”
The protestors alleged that Holder broke his promise to them not to target states that had previously legalized marijuana usage for medicinal purposes, as California did via proposition back in 1996. Despite the Attorney General’s promises, however, the Justice Department has shut down medical marijuana dispensaries across the Golden State, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs in the Golden State.
Holder has yet to make a decision about how to handle the recent legalization of pot use for recreational use in Washington state and Colorado, despite telling the Associated Press that he will still “enforce federal law.” President Obama also told ABC News in December that the federal government wouldn’t go after those who use the drug recreationally in those two states.
According to a recent Pew Research Center study, a majority of Americans support legalizing marijuana.
