In an act that tempts one to ask, "What were you smoking?", the Drug Enforcement Administration has confirmed that it participated in a series of raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in the Seattle, Washington area—doing so even though Washington state has decriminalized the drug for over a year.

But there is a rub. The same rub that exists for every state that has legalized pot. Marijuana is still illegal under federal law, meaning that states' efforts, like the ones put forth by Colorado and Washington, to legalize pot have gone forward despite the fact that federal agencies like the DEA might continue to enforce federal law anyway, trapping medical marijuana dispensaries in the middle of a schizoid policy.

One of the dispensaries raided on Wednesday morning was in Olympia, the state's capital. According to NBC News, agents arrived at the dispensary with guns drawn, and seized business records and roughly $25,000 worth of marijuana intended for cancer patients and medicinal card holders. "It's humiliating," Casey Lee, an employee at the clinic, told NBC. "They don't get to see the cancer patients."