Well-aimed pot raids hit traffickers, not the sick

Two numbers get to the heart of this week’s federal-local raids on Puget Sound marijuana merchants:

Pot operations reportedly busted, 19 – out of well over 100 “medical marijuana” outlets known to be operating in King, Pierce and Thurston counties.

Patients arrested, 0.

After the coordinated regional raids, U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan repeated what the Obama administration has been saying all along: The Justice Department doesn’t have the least interest in prosecuting genuinely sick people whose doctors have recommended the use of marijuana. Just the criminals.

Big-time profiteers typically claim they’re in the trade for the sake – cue the violins – of dying cancer victims and pain-racked patients.

But as Durkan said, “State laws of compassion were never intended to protect brash criminal conduct that masquerades as medical treatment.”

Some dispensary owners may not be in it for the money, but a whole lot are. Some of their customers are bona fide patients, but a whole lot are recreational users. The problem is, you can’t tell the difference. The industry is so rife with bogus “green cards” and traffickers posing as humanitarians that it all looks like a grand charade.

The raids carried out by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies were conspicuously judicious. Although all marijuana sales are illegal under both state and federal laws, investigators appear to have targeted only the most flagrant scofflaws.

According to the Seattle Times, probable cause for one search warrant included an allegation that the Seattle Cannabis Co-op had sold a police informant five pounds of marijuana for $11,000. Although that claim would have to be proved in court, it backs up the Drug Enforcement Agency’s assertion that it was aiming at serious criminals.

Anyone who supports the therapeutic use of cannabis shouldn’t have a problem with carefully targeted enforcement – no more than an honest pharmacist would resent sanctions against a quack who sells on the side. Separating the traffickers and drug-seekers from the nonprofit providers and patients is the only way to restore the legitimacy medical marijuana enjoyed before profit-driven dealers took over two years ago.

Many marijuana advocates view the medical angle as a means to mainstream the drug. Their complaints about enforcement turn quickly to legalization, not lifting the federal rules that prevent real pharmacies from dispensing cannabis under normal medical regulation.

There’s an honest case to be made for decriminalization, but medical marijuana is a different conversation. Some very sick people clearly benefit from cannabis as a last-resort drug. They shouldn’t have to serve as human camouflage for traffickers and partyers.