POT SHOTS

DEA and County Officials Close Medical Marijuana Dispensaries in San
Diego, Say Raids Are a 'Warning'

In the past two years, the number of medical-marijuana dispensaries
in San Diego County has grown from zero to roughly two-dozen - most
of them located within San Diego city limits - with another dozen
medical-cannabis delivery services focused solely on bringing pot to
a person's home.

Only the L.A. area has experienced a similar increase in
medical-cannabis-related businesses in such a short period of time.
Unlike L.A., however, where local law enforcement have spoken out
against federal closure of medical marijuana dispensaries, the issue
has reached a tipping point in San Diego - earlier this month,
federal and local law-enforcement agents raided 13 dispensaries and
arrested 15 owners and employees. Five people have been charged with
the federal crimes of conspiracy to distribute and conspiracy to
manufacture marijuana; the remaining were arraigned in state court on
drug sales and possession charges.

Damon Mosler, head of the San Diego District Attorney's narcotics
unit, said on July 18 that the raids were a warning to dispensaries
that remain open. "The rest are on notice and certainly can expect to
see law enforcement if they remain open," he said. On July 21,
federal law enforcement officers went around to San Diego's remaining
dispensaries and told owners to either close shop or face arrest.

Distressed e-mails sent out during the San Diego raids claimed that
DEA officers were saying these raids were imminent all over the
state, but this could not be confirmed independently. Mosler said he
knew of one other county that was planning to take similar actions,
but couldn't comment beyond that.

"I know of only one other jurisdiction that may be ready to act as we
did," he said. "Some counties will not act and some will on a
different timeline."

For the past 18 months, dispensaries operated in San Diego with
relatively little law-enforcement contact and no political oversight.
Mosler said he watched more dispensaries open but didn't hear
anything from the San Diego Police Department. "County prosecutors
were wondering when they were going to start seeing reports from
police to prosecute these cases," he said.

Juliana Humphrey, an attorney and a member of the city's
medical-marijuana task force, said she gets calls from patients and
dispensary owners, asking for her advice. Dispensaries, she tells
them, "are not legal in any way, shape, or form."

Proposition 215, the decade-old voter-approved initiative that made
medical marijuana use legal with a doctor's recommendation, said
nothing about how a person should obtain marijuana. The law
encourages "state and federal governments" to come up with a plan
that would give patients safe and affordable access to marijuana.
Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, classified as a
"Schedule I" drug, meaning it has no medicinal value.

State Senate Bill 420, signed into law two years ago, sought to tie
up some of Prop. 215's loose ends - clarifying how much marijuana a
person could possess and requiring counties to create an
identification-card program to recognize legitimate patients - but
like its parent law, SB 420 said nothing about how someone should
obtain pot. A person can appoint a "primary caregiver" to grow
marijuana for them and then, according to the law, pay that person
"for actual expenses, including reasonable compensation." Some have
interpreted this as an OK for dispensaries. On its website, though,
California NORML warns that "dispensaries ... selling marijuana over
the counter accordingly do so at the tolerance of local authorities."

"Prop. 215 was not a 'full employment for marijuana growers' act,"
Humphrey said. "One person providing for 1,000 people is not what the
law envisioned" in defining a primary caregiver. "They have to have
some sort of relationship with their patients."

Humphrey said dispensaries have gotten by so far because law
enforcement chose not to go after them. "Some get lulled into a sense
of false security, but as others pop up, people start complaining and
cops feel they have to do something," she said.

Though San Diego was, in 2003, one of the first cities in California
to pass guidelines as to how much marijuana a person could possess
for legitimate medical use (the guidelines set rules for growing,
too), the city sits within a county governed by a Board of
Supervisors that has refused to implement the ID-card program and
last year launched an attack on Prop. 215. The supervisors are hoping
to kill the law by arguing that the federal government's ban on
marijuana trumps state law.

As for dispensaries, however, while six counties and 24 cities have
taken steps to regulate them, San Diego's done nothing. Even
conservative Kern County enacted dispensary guidelines earlier this
month. San Francisco last year put a moratorium on new dispensaries
and drew up rules that required dispensaries to apply for business
licenses and permits, pay related fees, and not be located near a school.

Bruce Mirken, spokesperson for the Marijuana Policy Project, said
cities and counties that fail to regulate dispensaries "are inviting trouble."

"Communities that have chosen to ignore them or try to not have them
at all are doing everybody a disservice because you either end up
with the 'Wild West' or with all the activity forced underground
where nobody can properly regulate it," Mirken said.

When asked about dispensaries' legality, Mirken pointed out that
they've never been challenged in state court. "Arguably, there's
enough vagueness in the law that one could make a case one way or
another about the legality of dispensaries," he said, "but there
certainly has been no definitive decision that state law bans them."

Claudia Little, 60, a nurse and medical-marijuana patient, says that
medical marijuana advocates have tried to meet with local officials
with little luck.

"The dispensary owners, a lot of them, really have been begging for
regulations," she said. One of those owners, Wayne Hudson, hired
lobbyist Nikki Symington to meet with public officials and ask for regulations.

When it comes to medical-marijuana dispensaries, Symington said,
"there will always be a gray area ... because we're caught between a
federal and state issue. But the gray area ... really gets cleaned up
when there are clear regulations."

Little and Symington had an appointment to meet with City Attorney
Mike Aguirre. A day before the raids, they got a call saying the
meeting was cancelled. "We had set up appointments; I had been
calling the mayor's office. I should have guessed," Symington said
about the raids. "Everybody sort of said to me, 'Well, we're having
internal discussions right now.'"

Mosler said the raids focused on dispensary operators and doctors who
the authorities believe were giving out questionable recommendations.

"We didn't want any patients brought into this," he said. "We're not
touching patients; we're not going to debate their ailment."

But, Mirken said, using raids to shut down dispensaries is an attack
on patients. "Patients need a safe, reliable source of medicine,
something that's been acknowledged by local public-health and
law-enforcement officials in communities around the state."

Neither Aguirre nor Police Chief William Lansdowne responded to
CityBeat's request for an interview. Mayor Jerry Sanders, through a
spokesperson, said that while he supports the use of medical
marijuana, he doesn't support for-profit dispensaries: "Under the
Compassionate Use Act, the state and federal governments are called
on to develop a plan for the safe and affordable distribution of
marijuana to all patients needing the drug," he said. "This includes
enhancing the access of patients and caregivers to medicinal
marijuana through collective, cooperative cultivation projects. This
does not include for-profit dispensaries."

Humphrey said there are alternatives to dispensaries. "The folks who
are sincere [about access to medical marijuana] should brainstorm," she said.

Roughly 70 medical-marijuana supporters attended last Tuesday's San
Diego City Council meeting to ask for an emergency hearing on the
dispensary issue. Council President Scott Peters, who's supported
medicinal marijuana use in the past, said the docket was full until
September, but he'd consider adding the matter to the agenda then.