Pragmatism over principle on pot
The Chicago Tribune’s John Byrne reports that the city’s new top cop, Garry McCarthy, says that he might want to give citations, instead of court summons, to people arrested for marijuana possession. This comes shortly after Toni Preckwinkle, the head of the Cook County Board, declared marijuana arrests an unduly expensive burden on the judicial system.
Missing here, of course, is the argument that pot arrests don’t just drain resources but are a needless use of police powers that, in Chicago at least, unfairly target African Americans. A purely budgetary argument implies that once Cook County’s finances turn around, the city will again make casual marijuana users appear in court.
Granted expanded surveillance and oversight powers after the September 11 attacks a decade ago, federal banking regulators have been quietly tightening the noose on California’s semi-legal medicinal cannabis industry. 
Legalizing it may be only a pipe dream for the advocates of California’s latest statewide ballot proposition.
Sparking up a bong may still be a federal crime and only quasi-legal under California’s loophole ridden marijuana laws, but soon, some medical marijuana patients will be able to look for the union label when they are buying a bag, lid or stash. 
Hoping to generate badly needed tax funds, the City of Oakland has approved, in concept, four industrial-sized indoor marijuana gardens capable of filling rolling papers and bongs all over the Bay Area. It also appears geared toward drawing a federal backlash.
In what is shaping up to be a confrontation with the Justice Department over federal prohibitions against marijuana, California voters will decide in November whether to legalize the substance for limited recreational use and tax it. In an effort to add legitimacy to the effort and to gain more leverage, workers at three medical marijuana dispensaries will announce today their intention to unionize. 
