OWNER BRAGS OF LARGE MEDICAL-POT OPERATION, JAILED IN DEA
RAID

Federal drug-enforcement agents Friday raided the home of a Highlands
Ranch man who a day earlier bragged in a 9News report about the large
and profitable medical-marijuana-growing operation in his basement.

Along with the raid, Jeffrey Sweetin, the Drug Enforcement
Administration's special agent in charge of the Denver office, sent a
message to anyone involved in Colorado's increasingly profitable
medical-marijuana industry.

"It's still a violation of federal law," Sweetin said. "It's not
medicine. We're still going to continue to investigate and arrest people."

Agents at the scene Friday evening said the marijuana grower, Chris
Bartkowicz, had been taken into custody. Jeff Dorschner, a spokesman
for the U.S. attorney's office in Denver, said the grower would be
held over the long Presidents Day weekend before a decision on charges
is made Tuesday.

"The U.S. attorney's office will review the evidence the DEA collected
before we make a determination whether we will prosecute," Dorschner
said.

DEA agents converged on the house Friday afternoon and, before leaving
several hours later, removed dozens of marijuana plants in black
plastic trash bags as well as numerous high-powered growing lights.

On Thursday night, 9News promoted a story about Bartkowicz's
operation, and on Friday morning, Bartkowicz was featured in a 9News
story posted to its website and published in The Denver Post. The
story was to air on television Friday night. He told the station he
serves as a caregiver to a number of medical-marijuana patients and
hoped to turn a profit this year in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"I'm definitely living the dream now," Bartkowicz told
9News.

One block from school

That story - coupled with the proximity of Bartkowicz's home to Sand
Creek Elementary School, a block away - drew the attention of DEA agents.

A memo in October from Deputy U.S. Attorney General David Ogden said
federal agents should not target people in "clear and unambiguous
compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of
marijuana." The memo led many in Colorado's medical-marijuana
community to believe that federal agents would no longer raid
medical-marijuana dispensaries or growers.

But Sweetin said the memo does nothing to change federal law, which
makes marijuana illegal, and instead mostly addresses treatment of
medical-marijuana patients and small-scale growers.

"Prosecution of commercial enterprises that unlawfully market and sell
marijuana for profit continues to be an enforcement priority of the
department," the memo states.

Guidelines included in the memo to distinguish between lawful
medical-marijuana operations and unlawful ones include whether the
operations produce more plants or generate more money than state laws
intend. Sweetin said those guidelines put much of Colorado's
medical-marijuana industry in the crosshairs and that he has been
gathering information on dispensary owners and their operations for
months.

Risking arrest, jail time "Technically, every dispensary in the state
is in blatant violation of federal law," he said. "The time is coming
when we go into a dispensary, we find out what their profit is, we
seize the building and we arrest everybody. They're violating federal
law; they're at risk of arrest and imprisonment."

Matt Brown, executive director of the pro-dispensary Coloradans for
Medical Marijuana Regulation, said Sweetin's statements are troubling.
Brown argued that the federal memo's hands-off order covers everyone
in compliance with their state's medical-marijuana laws, a group Brown
said includes dispensaries in Colorado. Brown said Friday's raid
highlights the need for lawmakers to create clear rules for how
dispensaries should operate.

"All we're trying to do is follow the rules," he said.

Bartkowicz had talked to 9News about his efforts to keep a low profile
and said he didn't think his neighbors knew about what he was doing
inside his house. But several neighbors said Friday that they had
suspicions after seeing activity late at night at the house and other
puzzling activities.

"I think it's awful," neighbor Linda Palmer said of the marijuana-growing
operation. "There's an elementary school right there."