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Updates from September, 2009

• 

  Authorities Release Details of Raids on Medical Marijuana Dispensaries

  Richard James Rawlings 9:49 pm on 09/10/2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  

  SAN DIEGO (CNS) – Thirty-one people were arrested during raids at 14 medical marijuana dispensaries in San Diego County, effectively shutting down the storefronts, authorities announced today.

  The raids culminated a five-month state and federal undercover operation that targeted people illegally selling the drug at the so-called medical marijuana collaboratives, said District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis.

  No medical marijuana patients were arrested in the undercover sting on Wednesday, Dumanis said.

  "Let me be clear from the start. This investigation has nothing to do with legitimate medical marijuana patients or their caregivers," Dumanis told reporters.

  "The investigation to date shows these so-called businesses are not legal. They appear to be run by drug dealers who see an opening in the market in a way to make a fast buck."

  Twenty-three people were taken into custody in the city of San Diego, and eight in North County, authorities said.
  Dumanis said most of those arrested will be prosecuted in state court, with two people charged in federal court. An estimated 60 medical marijuana dispensaries are now operating in San Diego County, under the guise of helping people who are sick, Dumanis said.

  "We’re not fooled and the public shouldn’t be fooled either," the county’s top prosecutor said. "The state’s medical marijuana law and the Attorney General’s written guidelines about medical marijuana do not allow the selling of marijuana for profit … to anyone."

  More than $70,000 in cash was seized during the raids, according to Dumanis, who said more than $700,000 worth of marijuana was sold over the last six months at one San Diego location alone.

  People who need medical marijuana in the city of San Diego can grow up to 24 plants legally or have their caregiver grow up to 48 plants for them, said San Diego police Chief William Lansdowne.

  Patients must have a recommendation from their physician to use marijuana to treat their ailments, authorities said.
  "You don’t need a cooperative. You can grow it," Dumanis said, adding patients have a legitimate concern because the drug is difficult to get.

  In one small Pacific Beach neighborhood, there are five medical marijuana storefronts within a few blocks of each other, Dumanis said.

  "In fact, in that particular neighborhood of Pacific Beach, it’s easier to find some place to buy marijuana than it is to find a Starbucks to buy a latte," she said. The number of medical marijuana dispensaries went up recently, in the wake of San Diego County’s failed attempt to overturn the state’s 1996 medical marijuana law and U.S. Attorney Eric Holder’s directive that federal agents will only target medical marijuana storefronts when operators violate both state and federal laws.

  Story Created: Sep 10, 2009 at 6:44 PM PDT

  Story Updated: Sep 10, 2009 at 6:55 PM PDT

  URL: http://www.kusi.com/news/local/58700492.html

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• 

  DA says raid targeted illegal marijuana sales

  Richard James Rawlings 3:22 pm on 09/10/2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  By Angelica Martinez

  Union-Tribune Staff Writer

  12:44 p.m. September 10, 2009

  More than two dozen people operating marijuana dispensaries were arrested in countywide raids that also shut down 14 storefronts, authorities announced Thursday morning.

  District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said the search warrants served at dispensaries and some homes Wednesday “has nothing to do with legitimate medical marijuana patients or their caregivers.”

  She said the 14 storefronts targeted were “so-called medical marijuana businesses that appear to be run by drug dealers.”

  Officials declined to give details about the backgrounds of those arrested, but San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne said some of those in custody have prior drug arrests.

  Authorities said they are still tallying the amount of marijuana and money seized in the operation. At least $70,000 of cash was seized and six guns were taken into custody, officials said.

  Lansdowne said Wednesday’s search and seizures culminated a five-month investigation that started with residents’ complaints of the dispensaries.

  Neighbors cited noise, vandalism and other crimes associated with storefronts, Dumanis said.

  “There are now 60 storefronts operating and doing this under the guise of helping people who are sick,” she said.

  In an area of Pacific Beach, for instance, Dumanis said five such dispensaries are within blocks of each other. “It is easier to find marijuana there than to find a Starbucks for a latte,” she said.

  Lansdowne said the businesses targeted were chosen based on the number of residents’ complaints and the amount of activity happening at the businesses.

  According to the state’s medical marijuana laws and the Attorney General’s guidelines, it is illegal to profit from the sale or distribution of marijuana.

  The user has to have a recommendation for medical marijuana by a physician. That person, and or his or her caregiver, need to be verified members of a collective or cooperative in order to be compliant with medical marijuana laws.

  For example, authorities said dispensaries that merely require patients to complete a form that designates the business owner as the patient’s primary caregiver, then offer marijuana in exchange for “donations” are likely illegal and not compliant with medical marijuana laws.

  Lansdowne said some of the businesses in the city advertise they accept donations but they won’t give out the product without receiving a “donation.”

  Dumanis said patients or their designated caregivers who are lawfully recommended by a physician can cultivate plants on their property for their use.

  Deputy District Attorney Steve Walter said 23 people were arrested in San Diego and eight people were arrested in North County. Two men arrested face federal charges.

  Walter said he was not sure if the men prosecuted in federal court are in addition to the 31 arrested.

  The investigation is still ongoing, he said.

  Karen Hewitt, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, said one of the men faces three counts of federal charges including two counts for distributing a controlled substance and one count of manufacturing marijuana plants. He was arrested at the Green Kross Collective on Mission Boulevard near Lido Court in San Diego.

  The second man facing federal prosecution was arrested at the Movement in Action store on South Santa Fe Avenue near Alta Calle in Vista.

  He faces three counts of distributing a controlled substance, Hewitt said. If convicted of all counts, Hewitt said he faces up to five years in prison.

  Hewitt declined to say why the two men face federal charges but noted that it did not have to do with the amount of marijuana or cash seized.

  “It has more to do with the overall investigation and other federal investigations that I can’t get into,” she said.

  Angelica Martinez: (619) 293-1317

  URL: http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/sep/10/bn10pot124442/

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• 

  Marijuana farming rebounds in economic hard times

  Richard James Rawlings 8:34 am on 09/10/2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  The Canadian Press
  By ROGER ALFORD

  BARBOURVILLE, Ky. — Machete-wielding police officers have hacked their way through billions of dollars worth of marijuana in the country’s top pot-growing states to stave off a bumper crop sprouting in the tough economy.

  The number of plants seized has jumped this year in California, the nation’s top marijuana-growing state, while seizures continue to rise in Washington after nearly doubling the previous year. Growers in a three-state region of central Appalachia also appear to have reversed a decline in pot cultivation over the last two years.

  Officers in those areas, the nation’s biggest hotbeds for marijuana production, have chopped down plants with a combined street value of around $12 billion in the first eight months of this year. While national numbers aren’t yet available this year, officers around the country increased their haul from 7 million plants in 2007 to 8 million in 2008.

  "A lot of that, we theorize, is the economy," said Ed Shemelya, head of marijuana eradication for the Office of Drug Control Policy’s Appalachian High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. "Places in east Tennessee, eastern Kentucky and West Virginia are probably feeling the recession a lot more severely than the rest of the country and have probably been in that condition a lot longer than the rest of the country."

  Growers in Appalachia are often hard-luck entrepreneurs supplementing their income by growing marijuana, authorities say. Troopers thrashing through the thick mountain brush there typically find plots that could easily be tended by a single grower, while officers in the two western states have focused on larger fields run by Mexican cartels with immigrant labor.

  The demand for domestically grown marijuana is at a record high, in part because stricter border control has made it more difficult to import pot from Mexico, said Dave Keller, deputy director of the Appalachian High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. Keller said growers large and small across the country are trying to fill the void.

  The ailing economy isn’t stopping users from spending money on pot. In fact, Shemelya said the demand appears to be rising with the unemployment rate.

  "I’ve never seen any decline in demand for marijuana in bad economic times," he said. "If anything, it’s the opposite. People always seem to find money somewhere to buy drugs."

  The number of plants destroyed in California has increased over the last three years, said the assistant chief of the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, Kent Shaw. The total increased from 4.9 million plants in 2007 to 5.3 million in 2008. Already this year, Shaw said, California authorities have exceeded last year’s total.

  To the north, authorities in Washington have seen the numbers jump from 295,000 plants seized in 2007 to 580,000 in 2008. Lt. Rich Wiley, commander of the Washington State Patrol’s narcotics unit, said his officers have confiscated 540,000 so far this year and that he expects to meet or exceed last year’s numbers.

  In the heart of Appalachia, ground forces have cut more than 600,000 marijuana plants this summer in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, and they should end the year with a significantly higher total, Shemelya said. The plants’ street value of about $2,000 each creates an often irresistible draw in communities where long-standing poverty has been fed over the years by the shuttering of factories and coal mines.

  In Appalachia and the two western states, authorities said the amount of resources put into eradication efforts has been constant over the past several years.

  Judge Kelsey Friend, whose jurisdiction includes some of the most isolated mountain communities in Kentucky, said he believes a huge chunk of the Appalachian marijuana is grown by people so hard-pressed that they’re willing to risk freedom to improve their standard of living. The ill-gotten gains, Friend said, show up in the form of new pickup trucks, boats and even homes.

  However, only an estimated 20 to 40 per cent of the growers in the region manage to harvest and collect their payoff without being detected by modern day G-men assisted by spotters in helicopters.

  Last month, Trooper Mac McDonald descended a mountainside near Barbourville with a load of freshly cut marijuana bundled on his shoulder, sweat dripping from his brow. McDonald and his co-workers had trudged up mountains as steep as they were remote to search dense Chinese silvergrass and expansive patches of thorny blackberry briars to find the typically small, scattered plots.

  A crackdown begun six years ago had convinced many growers to give up, rather than contend with the helicopters constantly crisscrossing the region in the summer months, authorities said. But the number of growers appears to have picked up since the economy turned sour.

  The amount of marijuana confiscated in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia fell from more than 1.2 million plants in 2003 to just more than 700,000 in 2007. But in 2008, with the economy faltering, narcotics officers witnessed another marijuana boom in the mountains, and they again confiscated more than 1 million plants in the three states.

  "The economy or lack of economy has always driven the marijuana trade," Shemelya said. "It still is the cash cow as far as illicit drugs. It offers the greatest return on investment."

  URL: http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5i_3ZK9Xz9iTR7HkT1K3h6HPHIfWA

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