POT CLUBS UNDER ATTACK

Why Raid Pot Clubs Now

By midafternoon on Thursday, October 25, 10 people had gathered in a
storefront in West Hollywood to bake pot brownies and fill 400 sandwich
bags with weed. If all went according to plan, about two pounds of
marijuana would be distributed the next morning to members of the Los
Angeles Cannabis Resource Co-op, just as the group had been doing three
times every week for the past five years.

Founded in 1996, the LACRC had grown to include 960 members who relied on
marijuana for medical purposes, including relief from the nausea associated
with AIDS and cancer treatments. Pot keeps meds down and appetites up. It
relieves the pain and spasticity of multiple sclerosis. It reduces
intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients. It's easy to grow and less
expensive than pharmaceuticals. One of the side effects is a pleasant buzz
- - a similar effect to what one might feel on codeine or other pain relievers.

The center had operated with immunity because of Proposition 215. Passed in
1996 by California voters, it allowed doctors to recommend and seriously
ill residents to use (and grow) medical marijuana. The federal government
took a different view. Drugs not prescribed by a physician are illegal and
therefore a threat akin to terrorists. That's one conclusion that can be
drawn from what occurred at the LACRC six weeks after September 11, with
the World Trade Center still smoldering and the country on edge because of
an anthrax scare.

Around 5 P.M., an officer from the Drug Enforcement Administration rang the
bell at the co-op. Behind him stood 29 other agents, most armed with
pistols. Their unmarked sedans clogged the street. Anyone passing by the
nondescript building on Santa Monica Boulevard might have assumed a drug
kingpin lived inside.

When he heard the bell, Scott Imler, the center's 43-year-old director,
looked up at the security monitor in his office. He noticed a crowd. Then
he spotted the letters DEA on the back of a jacket. He raced to the front
door, but it was too late. The security guard, a volunteer with AIDS who
had been assigned to check ID cards and prescriptions, forgot to look at
his own monitor before opening the door. Who else would it be but a patient
or volunteer? Two agents pinned him against a wall as the others swarmed
into the building, their guns bolstered. They herded everyone into the
lounge, including Imler, who uses cannabis to control his epileptic
seizures and cluster headaches. One agent asked him for his keys to the
building while others raised the delivery door and backed two rental trucks
into position.

As Imler and the others waited, the agents searched the offices. According
to its warrant, the government suspected the LACRC of three federal crimes:
manufacture of marijuana for sale, maintaining a drug house and money
laundering.

In the basement, agents chopped up the center's 400 plants and loaded the
debris into rental trucks. They also carried out 56 grow lights and an
array of power tools. Timers used to regulate the water intake of the
plants couldn't be removed from the walls, so the agents smashed them. They
removed the processing units from five computers used to track patients and
carted away 60 boxes of dispensary chits - the records of every pot
prescription the center had ever filled. When a cabinet filled with medical
records proved too heavy to move, the agents dumped its contents
haphazardly into more boxes.

Shortly after the raid began, the LACRC's attorney, John Duran (who also
serves on the West Hollywood city council), arrived. Agents claimed the
center was a "federal crime scene" and that Duran would have to wait
outside. He asked if he could phone his clients. He was told no.

He waited for nearly six hours. At 11 PM, the agents piled into their cars,
started the trucks and left en masse. They had with them almost the entire
contents of the LACRC'S offices, excluding furniture. They made no arrests.

The next morning, more than 150 people showed up at the center to fill
their prescriptions. Either by design or accident, the feds had overlooked
a six-ounce bag of pot in the dispensary. That was just enough for everyone
present to get a one-gram dose, and then the LACRC was out of business.

Scott Imler had anticipated the raid long before the agents arrived. At one
time, the movement to legalize medical marijuana had been gaining
momenturn. Besides California, eight states (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado,
Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington) allow patients to smoke weed
under controlled circumstances. Voters in Washington, D.C. also approved a
referendum, though Congress squashed it. But last year the U.S. Supreme
Court decided that states could not legalize marijuana for any purpose,
regardless of what voters thought. The court ruled that the federal
Controlled Substances Act, which makes marijuana the legal equivalent of
heroin and cocaine, trumps any local measure. So much for states' rights.
The ruling coincided with the arrival of Bush appointees John Ashcroft as
attorney general and Asa Hutchinson as director of the DEA. Both men
support the drug war without exception.

Federal agents had been harassing other pot clubs before September 11, but
the attacks forced them to suspend their campaign -- for two weeks. On
September 28, DEA agents took thousands of records from a medical research
center in El Dorado County.

The California Medical Association denounced the raid, saying it threatened
the confidential physician-patient relationship. It wondered why federal
agents were "tossing doctor's offices" in a time of national crisis. On
that same day, agents raided the LACRC's gardens in Ventura County,
removing 342 plants and cultivation equipment.

So on October 25, Imler was more saddened than surprised to see the DEA at
his door. The agency admits it targeted the LACRC because the center had
generated too much publicity, which flew in the face of the official line
that marijuana use has to be stamped out. "In light of the Supreme Court
ruling, it became incumbent upon us to establish federal law with regard to
this cannabis buyers club, which was basically being flaunted," said a DEA
spokesman.

In fact, the LACRC is a model of civic responsibility and of the American
way of revolutionary change. Imler, a former high school teacher, tested
the waters in 1992 by pushing an ordinance in Santa Cruz County that
legalized medical marijuana there. Over the next four years, he worked to
get the issue on the state ballot. Before the LACRC opened its doors to
patients, Imler and his board met with the Los Angeles County sheriff and
the West Hollywood City Council to coordinate how it would be integrated
with the legal and health care systems. Everyone seemed content with the
arrangement - except the White House.

To prevent anyone from abusing the system, the club created ID cards for
patients who could produce valid doctors' prescriptions. Since the raid,
Imler has spent most of his time reconstructing the LACRC'S records. He
also takes regular calls from local deputies attempting to confirm that a
person found with pot is a member of the club.

Captain Lynda Castro, who oversees the West Hollywood office of the LA
Sheriff's Department, condemned the DEA raid and defends the way her office
monitors the club. She relates an anecdote about a co-op member whose
neighbor turned him in for growing a potted marijuana plant on his stoop.
Her officers impounded the weed. But once they had received certification
from the LACRC (including a copy of the prescription), a deputy gave the
man and his plant a ride home.

Had the Justice Department been involved, the man might still be in jail.
Federal authorities have been mired in paranoia since Richard Nixon
launched the drug war in 1971. Even the General Accounting Office, the
investigative arm of Congress generally viewed as an independent watchdog,
appears to be entrenched. Last summer an official from the GAO told Imler
that his agency had been directed by Congress (specifically, the Government
Reform Subcommittee on Criminal justice Drug Policy and Human Resources) to
review medical marijuana facilities. Paul Jones, director of the GAO team,
says its main interest was how the club makes sure pot goes to prescribed
users. When the four investigators arrived, however, Imler says they seemed
interested only in examining the basement grow room and in learning more
about the club's Ventura County gardens. An hour after they left, a judge
signed a warrant authorizing a raid on the Ventura gardens, which took
place the following day. Jones says there is no connection between the
events: "We don't show our information until the report is done, and then
only to the requester in Congress." The GAO's report is expected in August.

Imler says the LACRC has not grown or distributed marijuana since the
October raid. Patients must grow their own or find a dealer. With its
stubborn and senseless marijuana policy, the White House has provided a
stimulus package for the illegal drug trade.

Following the raid, a grand jury reviewed the two truckloads of material
seized from the LACRC. As of presstime, there's been no word about its
conclusions. Pot clubs in the Bay Area hid their medical records in
anticipation of more raids. San Francisco officials declared the city a
sanctuary for medical marijuana, and the district attorney made it clear
his office and other city agencies would not be assisting in any raids.
These measures, however, could not protect the clubs. On February 12, hours
before DEA director Hutchinson gave a speech at the Commonwealth Club in
San Francisco in which he claimed "science has told us so far there is no
medical benefit to smoking marijuana" (a disingenuous claim given that the
government refuses to allow researchers access to marijuana so they can
test the drug's effectiveness), his agents raided the Sixth Street Harm
Reduction Center along with several of its alleged suppliers, including one
in British Columbia. The agency arrested four people, including the
center's executive director, and seized 8300 plants.

Just as in Los Angeles, agents ransacked the center, which fills
prescriptions for about 200 patients each day, and loaded a rental truck
with plants and other evidence. The center was able to locate other sources
of marijuana and reopened within hours. Protestors, including four city
supervisors, later disrupted Hutchinson's speech, yelling "liar," blowing
kazoos outside and chanting "Go away, DEA." Tom Ammiano, president of the
board of supervisors, stood before the crowd and called the Drug
Enforcement Administration "obnoxious" and "grandstanding," adding, "I
don't want somebody in my house who isn't invited."

In Washington, D.C. that same day, Attorney General Ashcroft issued the
federal government's latest warning that another attack on the U.S. could
be imminent. The government then distributed the names and photographs of
15 suspects. The DEA acknowledges that "there are other events going on in
the world that are of a crisis nature" but says "the citizens of the United
States expect us to continue to do our job." Otherwise, of course, the
terrorists win.