Obama's War On Weed: White House Launches Crackdown On Medical Marijuana

SAN FRANCISCO -- Three years on, not a single Wall Street banker has been prosecuted after a financial crisis rooted in rampant fraud brought the global economy to its knees. President Obama's Department of Justice has more dangerous miscreants to worry about: medical marijuana shop owners.

The DoJ has launched an assault on medical pot dispensaries, vowing to shut down establishments licensed and regulated by state and local governments, in a reversal of an earlier policy, based on an Obama campaign promise to leave the shops alone as long as they followed state law.

And while major corporations have managed to get their federal tax bills down to zero, the IRS has determined that pot clinics can't deduct salaries, rent, the cost of bud or other operating expenses on their tax returns. If a business can't deduct those expenses, its tax bill almost always winds up exceeding even its profits.

Despite a previous DoJ memo that targeting medical marijuana is an inefficient use of time and resources, this past Friday morning, four California-based U.S. Attorneys and their staffs gathered in front of Sacramento's capitol building to announce an aggressive new crackdown on medical marijuana operations throughout the state -- this one aimed at the landlords who manage buildings in which dispensaries operate.

And California lawmakers think federal officials should focus their energy elsewhere. "They're wasting money they don't have," said State Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). "This is not the issue of the day. This doesn't create jobs. This does not keep the security of the nation intact. It doesn't clean the environment."