Feds to Pot Shops: No One is Safe
In escalating campaign, US attorney says many dispensaries serving as fronts for "drug trafficking"
SACRAMENTO - No medical marijuana dispensary in California is safe from federal prosecution.
That was the message Friday from the state’s four U.S. attorneys, who announced a crackdown on what they described as widespread criminal activity in a $1 billion industry that includes dozens of medical marijuana stores in the Bay Area.
“People are using the cover of medical marijuana to make extraordinary amounts of money, in short, to engage in drug trafficking,” said Melinda Haag, the US Attorney for the Northern District of California, which includes the Bay Area as well as the marijuana growing capital of Mendocino County.
“One of the reasons we are here today is to try and put to rest the notion that large medical marijuana businesses can shelter themselves under state law and operate without fear of federal enforcement,” she said.
Friday’s highly choreographed announcement was the clearest indication that the federal government has declared war on the medical marijuana industry, putting the Obama administration directly in conflict with California law and the public policies of numerous cities, including Oakland and San Francisco.
Under Gov. Jerry Brown, California has continued to deemphasize marijuana prosecution. This year, Brown defunded the marijuana eradication program known as CAMP. Marijuana possession in small amounts is now punishable by the equivalent of a parking ticket. A bill before the state legislature would give district attorneys the option of charging marijuana growers with a misdemeanor.
Oakland was preparing to license four large-scale pot farms last fall before Haag issued a warning to the city that it could face prosecution. Oakland is set to expand its total number of dispensaries from four to eight this year.
State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who is sponsoring the legislation reducing penalties against growers, said in a statement that he was “bitterly disappointed in the Obama Administration for this unwarranted and destructive attack on medical marijuana and patients’ rights to medicine.”
Haag said her office recently sent out “dozens” of letters to landlords and dispensaries in California’s Northern District, ordering them shut down or face criminal prosecution and seizure of their property and profits. Sources identified three dispensaries in San Francisco’s Mission District — Mr. Nice Guy, Medithrive, and 208 Valencia Street Caregivers — and one dispensary in Fairfax, the 14-year old Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, as four of the targets.
Haag said that pot dispensaries that did not receive letters “should take no comfort.”
The first letters were aimed at “stores that sell marijuana and allow people to smoke marijuana near to schools parks and other places where children learn and play,” she said. Although her office does not have enough resources to prosecute every pot shop, she said this was just the first phase of the government’s effort.
“We will almost certainly be taking actions against others,” said Haag. “None are immune from the action by the federal government.”
She said federal prosecutors would not be targeting cancer patients who use medical marijuana or their caregivers.
Haag said the Internal Revenue Service is working with federal prosecutors. The IRS last week ruled that Oakland's Harborside Health Center, the largest dispensary in the Bay Area, owes millions of dollars in back taxes.
Haag said that cities licensing and taking fees from dispensaries, such as Oakland, should take heed of a recent court decision involving Long Beach, which held that licensing medical pot shops was against the law.
She said that cities like Oakland will “hopefully be making some changes as a result,” but said prosecution of city officials was not being considered.
Ben Wagner, the US Attorney for the Eastern District, which stretches from Sacramento to the Sierras, has launched 11 criminal prosecutions against people involved with medical marijuana operations.
The poster boy in Wagner’s effort is Yan Ebyam, the ambitious potrepreneur profiled by the Bay Citizen in March shortly before his arrest. Ebyam convinced down and out trucking and plumbing companies to turn their warehouses into some of the largest marijuana growing operations in Oakland.
Haag said many marijuana dispensaries are not primarily in the business of helping sick people. She said anyone could sit outside a shop and watch “seemingly young and healthy people jumping out of their cars running into the store and emerging with paper bags full of marijuana.”
Dozens of medical marijuana advocates marched outside Sacramento’s federal courthouse, where the press conference was held. Many said they felt betrayed by President Obama, who initially said the federal government would not target those complying with state medical marijuana laws.
Jeff Patterson, a medical marijuana user, held a sign with a picture of Obama saying: “No You Can’t.”
“Two years ago he said it was okay and he didn’t have a problem with it,” said Patterson. “He’s completely turned around.”
Dan Rush, boss of United Food and Commercial Workers Local No. 120, which represents cannabis workers said the move would simply drive the marijuana back underground, making it more dangerous for everyone.
“The commercialized industry is the only responsible industry,” said Rush. “The back door industry is a fertile training ground for thugs.”
Related
Frank Snapp
Pot is a drug that impairs. Bottom line. Most people who use the dispensaries are drug addicts, escapists, dissolute, whatever they think. Most of the claims of medical benefits of pot in any form are completely not supported by independently funded research, which shows, across the board, IMPAIRMENT. Do I believe that any escape drugs should result in purely punative penalties or in "penalties" at all? No, I do not. I believe that escape drugs should be legal and should be HEAVILY taxed at rates of around 50% or more with every penny of that money going into EDUCATION and TREATMENT (including transformation based therapies and inpatient treatment) of drug addled individuals. Of course, the claim of the article that medical marijuana dispensaries are essentially drug traffickers, is TRUE; but even if we had a pot dispensary on every block in the U.S., such dispensaries would still be a miniscule fraction the drug trafficker that our Central Intelligence Agency is. The CIA is the world's largest drug trafficker. The DEA was created in the 1970's to create mythic scenarios of drug kingpins, which never happen to be the CIA in its actual role as the overarching overlord of the majority of all large scale inebriating or escape drug distribution systems on the planet. The CIA makes TRILLIONS each year, off the books, laundered mainly through Wallstreet on escape drugs. You potheads, all your very predictable and dissolute justifying excuses taken into consideration, are doing MORE to prevent revolution than you realize. Keep lighting up. The CIA loves you. The billionaires, thieving from all of us and weakening labor worldwide with globalization, LOVE you. Keep it up. Or, maybe you could grow a spine.
Matthew Baker
You know what else people in power love to do? Divide and Conquer... More honey, less vinegar, please.
Frank Snapp
Yes, my exact point. The potheaded are divided and conquered from from their own highest and best thoughts, and therefore from revolution, which is lived daily. Revolution does not occur with a population obsessed with pleasure and escape. Read Jarman or Loewen to get a clue what is actually meant by divide and conquer when it is self reinforcing by the populace under duress, but allowing itself to be.
Matthew Baker
Oops. I forgot responding to people in these comments section is never a good idea...
I wish you all the best.
Matthew Baker
sections...
Michael Boyd
Rev 9:11 And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.
Rev. 20:1-3 And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more.
Michael Boyd
Who is the [O]b[a]mination of Desolation
Daniel spoke of this guy and we have to go back to Daniel to read about him; Daniel had a dream about 4 great beasts that were on the earth; the four winds of heaven, and he describes all four of them which are four nations that rule the whole world; Babylon, Medo-persian, Greek, and Rome. We want to focus our attention on this fourth beast which the abomination of desolation came out of. Therefore, the lion is Babylon, the bear is Medo-persia, the third beast is the leopard and the 4th beast is what it is called, the fourth beast. Daniel 7:8 tells us that a little horn had eyes like a man and spoke great things.
Matthew 24: 1-5 will tell us a lot about the end times and the Abomination of Desolation. The disciples had shown Jesus the temple [where he over turned the tables of the money lenders] and Jesus said the stones will not be left one on another. At the time Jesus spoke of this, the prophecy had not yet been fulfilled. But, in 70 AD the Roman emperor Titus destroyed Jerusalem down to the ground.
The disciples wanted to know from Jesus what time this prophecy shall be and what shall be the sign of thy coming. As we move on in our reading we see several signs in Matthew 24: 6-9. Rumors of wars, famines, pestilence, and earthquakes are some signs we see today. The gospel also informs us that these are the beginning of sorrows. These sorrows are leading up to the installment of the Abomination of Desolation and soon after this man lay desolation on the earth, Jesus will come (Matt. 24:29). Jesus told His disciples about the sign of His coming. Matthew 24th chapter will also show us the man of sin or the anti-Christ time will come to reign.
Matthew 24:15 "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)"
M L
Someday HBO will do a show about this. Showtime's Weeds went off the rails just as things were getting fun.
Suggested titles:
The Smokepranos
Boardwalk Healing Center
Hung with Hemp
True Blunt
In Treatment
...oh, wait!
nandro n
“People are using the cover of medical marijuana to make extraordinary amounts of money, in short, to engage in drug trafficking,”
Tell us something we don't know. Shut them down or fully legalize/tax them so that it is profitable as any small would be (i.e. not very).
I having nothing against people smoking pot and growing their own. I do have something against people weaseling through the disparity in state and Federal law and making fortunes by pretending to be providing a medical service....
Frank Snapp
Dear Nandro: You make excellent points, which reminds me that this "medical marijuana" false didactic, as you indicate, is an intentional distraction in our corporate media. It's not a rocket science thing when it comes to policy. If you mean to imply there are much more important stories out there, you are so right. I can think of three that barely receive any airtime but ought to be hammered away at on a daily basis in their diverse and aggregating manifestations: anthropogenic thermal maximum, related anthropogenic mass species extinctions and Fukushima Dai ichi nuclear emissions and fallout cataclysm. Of course, on the bright side of reportage never pursued even by erstwhile "independent" new rags (online or not, Bay Citizen included)are the ever expanding array of easily retrofitted, employed or deployed ecologically sustainable or biomimicry based technologies, or news from the world of horticulture or rare species stewardship. The Bay Citizen is an insufficient rag like any other. I consider it ZERO different from the mainstream presses owned by the most polluting, labor abusing and responsible for all world violence of all world large multinational corporations.
Michael Strickland
That picture of Ms. Haag is genuinely frightening. Good job, Zusha.
Billie Daman
You are right about that....
She has to be directly related to Judge Roy Bean.
Vincent Dudler
This two part plan is the only action the citizens of the US need to take to end federal marijuana prohibition:
1) EVERYONE that sees these links sign up at both sites and weigh in on the debate
- http://pvox.co/CdiFqY
- http://wh.gov/gDQ
2) Propagate those two links and ensure that everyone that sees them go to both those sites.
Too many people are blaming the President for enforcing the federal marijuana prohibition. Contact Congress (the LEGISLATIVE branch [that's the important one when it comes to law]) via the first link. Contact Obama (the EXECUTIVE branch [until Obama vetos a passed H.R. 2306 it's on Congress - but tell Obama anyway]) via the second link. It really is THAT easy. Participate in democracy!
h. brown
Agree with Strickland,
Does this woman's district include San Francisco? 4 US Attorneys joining arms to kill the engine of the medicinal pot industry? They don't want the businesses to get too big? Will they file suit against AT&T and Comcast tomorrow? I'm nearly doubting it.
Obama had so much promise and promised so much. Things are worse on every major front since he was elected from the economy to the wars to immigration to pollution and on down to legal marijuana. Hey, I voted for Gonzalez/Nader and maybe they should make another run at it?
Is that guy really quoting Jesus on your site?
Maybe he'll lead the charge to throw the money-changers out of the Temple?
Go Niners!
h.
Matthew Baker
Man, weird comments here.
Can we all just agree that, regardless of how one feels about the personal use of marijuana for whatever reason, this latest federal crackdown is a total waste of time and resources, especially given the current dire state of things? It seems like most people would agree on that, even if they aren't crazy about pot themselves. He's going to lose people who would vote for him, without gaining anyone who wouldn't.
I can't imagine who Obama thinks this is going to impress... Totally baffled.