Buzzby

Weed Watch: Feds Try Stealing Xmas From Medi-Pot Dispensers, Hemp Growers
Jordan Smith | Austin Chronicle | 12/30/2005

DEA agents have been doing their very best impression of the Grinch this month by carrying out a string of raids at medi-pot dispensaries in San Diego and San Francisco, Calif. On Dec. 12, a contingent of agents simultaneously executed 13 warrants in San Diego County, seizing dozens of pounds of marijuana, computer equipment, and patient files from the store front operations that provide sick and dying medi-mari patients who use the drug in accordance with the state's Compassionate Use Act. Then, on Dec. 20, agents struck again, in an early-morning raid at the San Francisco home of Steve and Cathy Smith who run the HopeNet medi-pot dispensary, which, in part, subsidizes the cost of medi-pot for low-income patients. Agents seized 126 plants, cash, computers, and, possibly, patient files from the Smith's home, said Hilary McQuie with the medi-pot patients advocacy group Americans for Safe Access. News of the raid sparked a protest outside the HopeNet office, where approximately 100 patients stood in the rain staring down DEA agents who sat in their cars for several hours before leaving. Although the patients thought that meant victory, the agents returned at about 6pm, after the patients left, to raid the dispensary, said McQuie, after hitting HopeNet's warehouse facility where agents seized another 500 plants.

"I am totally in shock and bewildered," Steve Smith told the San Jose Mercury-News. "I don't know how I am going to take care of my patients. Some are dying right now."

Interestingly, the feds have yet to file criminal charges against any of the people involved with the San Diego or San Francisco operations. The December raids in California are the most high-profile busts the feds have undertaken since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this summer that the government, under the Commerce Clause, may pursue medicinal marijuana patients, and their suppliers, for violating the Controlled Substances Act, which bans the use of marijuana. In Gonzales v. Raich, a majority of the court opined that because marijuana is illegal under federal law, even California's wholly intrastate medi-pot industry may actually have some collateral effect – either positive or negative – on the illegal trafficking of pot across state lines, thus allowing the feds to stick their noses into what would otherwise be considered state business. In the years before Angel Raich filed suit against the government in an effort to ban their interference, the feds had been on a veritable rampage of medi-pot raids. While Raich was pending that activity slowed.

Since the June decision, things have been relatively quiet – at least until last week. To McQuie, the raids feel like attempts at federal intimidation. "But it's not working," she said, noting that many of the dispensaries shut down by the San Diego action were open for business the very next day. "There is a need," she said. "If they close one [dispensary], another will open. So [this strategy] isn't going to work."

While federal drug cops in California have been busy taking medi-pot away from sick people, feds in South Dakota last week continued their quest to deny a group of American Indians on the Pine Ridge Reservation the ability to grow and sell industrial hemp. On Dec. 12, lawyers for Alex White Plume and members of his Lakota Nation family argued that the family should have a chance to challenge the DEA's assertion that they must first obtain government permission to grow industrial hemp on the family's reservation land. From 1999 to 2002, the White Plumes planted their crop and each year federal narcos came onto the land and destroyed the plants, before the DEA in 2002 sought, and in late 2004 won, an injunction against the family, barring the White Plumes from planting hemp without DEA approval. According to the government, hemp – which contains only trace amounts of tetrahydrocannibinol, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, and as such is not grown or sold as a consumable drug – is equal to marijuana and is thus prohibited under the Controlled Substances Act. As such, according to the DEA, the White Plumes are barred from growing industrial hemp, which is commonly used in food, body care products, and numerous consumer textile products.

Ironically, hemp farming was perfectly legal in the U.S. until the 1970s (when changes to the CSA made continued cultivation untenable), and the feds actually encouraged hemp farming during World War II. As it stands, the U.S. is now the only "developed" nation without an "established" hemp crop, according to a report released this spring by the Congressional Research Service. So far, the DEA's skewed view of what constitutes a "drug" is the only real obstacle standing between farmers and hemp seeds. According to the DEA, hemp farming would somehow increase the "covert production" of narcotic marijuana, which in turn would hinder their (otherwise successful?) War on Drugs.

Ostensibly, the DEA allows for controlled hemp farming – but only by permit, and the agency has awarded a total of one (which has since expired) to growers in Hawaii – and has yet to rule on several permit requests, including a 6-year-old application filed by a North Dakota researcher. As such, the White Plumes' lawyers argue, the DEA's insistence that the Lakota need permission to continue their Pine Ridge operation is simply ludicrous – a contention obviously not lost on members of the three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is currently considering the White Plumes' appeal. Indeed, as it stands, products made from hemp are perfectly legal, but, because of the DEA and the CSA, hemp products manufactured in the U.S. are made from hemp that is legally imported from Canada and Europe. "It seems a little asinine to me" that hemp can be imported to, but not grown in the U.S., Judge Arlen Beam commented during oral arguments in St. Louis. "It doesn't make a lot of sense," he continued, that the government would think the Native American economy is "better enhanced" by casino gambling, than by "productively utilizing the land" by growing a sustainable commodity like hemp. Indeed, the White Plumes' recent attempts to grow hemp were part of a multiyear contract with two U.S. hemp companies, which would've brought the White Plume family approximately $180,000 in income – quadrupling the family's current income on the Pine Ridge reservation where the unemployment rate hovers around 60%.

None of that is relevant, however, argued Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Salter. "The reality is that hemp is marijuana," Salter said. And the White Plumes "never asked for permission." But the White Plumes say they simply don't need the DEA's permission to farm hemp on their land. The power to farm whatever crop they can was granted by two treaties, including the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, between the Lakota and the U.S. government, long before the DEA was even a twinkle in the federal eye. The Lakota have actually been farming hemp since the time of those treaties, argue the White Plumes' lawyers, and as such, the feds have no power to stop them now. In granting an injunction last year, attorney David Frankel argues, the court "completely ignored relevant Indian law, the treaties, [and] the Constitution."

A decision in the case is expected early next year.

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jaman

This whole thing is all fuc.t up ! I normally have shied away from discussion of the whole medical marijuana thing . But this whole thing is getting huge and the bubbles about to burst . I feel that medical marijuana use is good , but I think the feds are saying that there is allot of illegal marijuana trafficking going on at these dispensaries ( and there right ) and since the address of these dispensaries is easily obtained by anybody ., its real easy for the feds to find the dispensaries and the warehouses . I'm for legalization of marijuana as a whole , not just because you are sick . Do you have to be sick to by Booze , NO , do you have to be sick to by a Sig , NO . Medical marijuana is not a step towards total legalization . If prescription medicines were only a doorway to complete over the counter sails , we would have valium - Zanex - Vicedin and other prescription drugs available to us without the need to obtain a prescription . As long as there is such a huge so called illegal ( Illegal/underground . meaning people using/buying/selling marijuana that are not sick ) consumption , the feds will always be raiding these dispensaries for reasons concerning illegal marijuana trafficking , NOT MEDICAL MARIJUANA PATIENTS . So , we need to stay on track with the complete legalization of marijuana as a whole If medical marijuana is really here to stay , I feel you eventually will be buying it from your pharmacist , not some guy running a dispensary pocketing loads of cash .
I find it interesting in the previous article that Buzz posted that the feds so aggressively stopped the Indians from growing industrial hemp , which confirms my ideas that this is really why they keep marijuana illegal as a whole , FEAR OF HEMP PRODUCTION , hemp can also be used to fuel your car , get it ?

I know for a fact that some of the dispensaries will let you in with an expired medical marijuana card ( these cards expire after one year , then you have to pay the dock again and be re evaluated ) and some that will let you in with no card at all if a buddy tells them that your cool , so , you see , it does get illegal .

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freedom to grow , freedom to smoke .

Mr. President , please relieve us of our dependency on foreign oil !

Legalize hemp production !

Buzzby

Medical marijuana, besides being a good thing for sick people, is a way to debunk the "Reefer Madness" being promoted by the DEA/ONDCP/NIDA. If millions of medical marijuana patients are using it, not going crazy, not becoming crack or heroin addicts, not getting too spaced out to take care of themselves, their families, and their jobs, it's a demonstration that what the prohibitionists have been saying about marijuana is total bullsh*t.

It would be far better if the 14,000,000 - 27,000,000 marijuana users in this country would get up off their collective ass and start supporting the legalization movement. This movement subsists on a paltry $12,000,000 a year. With that much money, it's impossible to mount a counter-propaganda campaign against the prohibitionists who are spending $120,000,000 on those anti-pot TV spots alone. Since only 60,000 people out of all those millions have bothered to join the three major pro-legalization organizations, we have no choice but to try and get our message out to the public by less effective means: promoting medical marijuana, which has the approval of 80% of the people surveyed.

If American marijuana users contributed 1% of what they spend on weed and accessories to the legalization movement, it would have $400,000,000 to spend on educating the public, countering the ONDCP propaganda machine, and lobbying our representatives. But they're only putting in 0.02%, and most of that comes from two billionaires, so the average user is contributing far less than 0.02% of their marijuana expenditures.

I consider medical marijuana to be the best PR tool that the legalization movement can afford. If marijuana users would loosen up their wallets and do their part we could afford more effective tools.

National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)

Marijuana Policy Project (MPP)

Drug Policy Alliance (DPA)

freethemind

Medical marijuana made legal just like all the other drugs then it could be controled but the LEOs would not make any money along with a few other people.
As for hemp on american Indain land the Feds have no right there after all that is Indain land not Federal land.

urania3

Congress is granted the power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes" by the Constitution.

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Why is it that we cannot face the simple truth? Religion is at best unsubstantiated superstition. (Massimo Pigliucci)