As a candidate in 2008, Sen. Barack Obama emphatically stated that medical marijuana was an issue best left to the states. One of the first promises he made as president was that he was “not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws.” This was reiterated formally in the so-called Ogden memo of 2009, in which the Department of Justice instructed U.S. attorneys that federal enforcement should apply only to medical marijuana operations in clear violation of state law.

Obama has since “clarified” those promises, but it still makes no sense that Matthew R. Davies, a business school graduate who set out in 2009 to create a medical marijuana dispensary in full compliance with California law, is facing up to 15 years in prison — with a mandatory five-year sentence.

This is just one more puzzling incident in the history of a president who not only made these promises but has also admitted to heavy recreational use of marijuana himself in his youth. A second-term president with little to lose, why is Obama continuing his odd campaign on a state-approved industry?

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