Fresno County Ca., Sheriff Margaret Mims wants more than money from the Obama administration, McClatchy Newspapers reports. She craves consistency, too, but that can be hard to come by. Meeting with hundreds of local, state and federal law enforcement officers during a high-profile week for the president's anti-drug agenda, Mims yesterday sought a clear, unalloyed statement that marijuana is illegal at the federal level and will stay that way. “From the federal government, we keep getting mixed messages,” Mims said.
The stern side was voiced yesterday by Michael Botticelli, the administration's nominee as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. (The Senate Judiciary Committee sent his name to the full Senate yesterday) Now acting drug czar, Botticelli assured the assembled law enforcement officers that marijuana would remain classified as a tightly regulated Schedule I drug. In 2013, then-Deputy Attorney General James Cole told officials to deploy their “limited investigative and prosecutorial resources” at the most significant threats. The implicit message was to let some usage slide. Attorney General Eric Holder, asked last year by Yahoo’s Katie Couric whether it's time to reclassify marijuana as being less dangerous than heroin, another Schedule I drug, said it is “certainly a question we need to ask ourselves.”