SOME SAN JOSE POT CLUBS SHUT DOWN IN PROTEST OF AGGRESSIVE POLICE RAIDS

Medical marijuana activists pleaded Tuesday for San Jose leaders to
stop drug raids they say have sent a jolt of fear through cannabis
providers and patients alike.

Drug agents in recent weeks have raided three local medical marijuana
providers. Several other collectives, including Harborside Health
Center, one of the area's largest and best-established, have simply
closed, fearing an imminent bust.

"How can you sit up there and take my rights away?" asked a tearful
Aisha Alexander, 36, who told the City Council she uses marijuana to
relieve breast cancer symptoms.

But city officials said they were powerless to act, noting that
although some San Jose officers have participated in the raids, they
were conducted by a county special enforcement team. The topic also
wasn't on the council's agenda, which prohibited any action.

"This is not something over which we have any authority or
jurisdiction," Mayor Chuck Reed told a crowd of dozens who spoke
during an open-comment period at the end of the council's afternoon meeting.

Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio, who last year initiated an ongoing
city process to consider limited zoning and taxation of medical
marijuana providers, asked the city manager to gather additional
information for the council.

The raids straddled a historic statewide vote last week in which
Californians rejected an initiative to legalize recreational
marijuana use. Voters in San Jose and several other cities, however,
approved local measures to tax and regulate the drug.

In addition to the recent raids, South Bay narcotics agents also ran
a sting operation dubbed Up in Smoke against medical marijuana
delivery services, arresting almost two dozen suspects officials
accused of "perverting" the state's medicinal marijuana law.

Santa Clara County Special Enforcement Team Commander Danielle Ayers
defended the raids in an interview, saying the marijuana sellers were
nothing more than profiteering drug peddlers and that their
activities were drawing complaints. She noted the number of marijuana
dispensaries has multiplied to 88 in the county, mostly in San Jose,
in just two years.

"The county chiefs got together and told us, 'This is a huge problem
in our community, there are 14, 15-year old kids buying marijuana,'"
Ayers said. "The problem is that they are making money, and they are
hiding it. There is money laundering going on."

But the operators and employees of the medical marijuana collectives
are in a panic, saying they're unsure of what local law enforcement
wants from them and are worried that their industry is under attack.

"Everyone's shaking in their boots," said David Genovese, executive
director of the San Jose Patients Group, which was raided Nov. 4. He
is also a founding member of the Medicinal Cannabis Collectives
Coalition, which promotes "sensible regulations" for providing
medical marijuana.

Genovese acknowledged that there are some shady operators -- which he
blames on city officials who've dragged their feet on regulations.
But he said raids of those striving to operate within the law has
left everyone fearful.

City zoning currently does not allow marijuana dispensaries. But
Genovese noted that more than 78 percent of San Jose voters just
approved Measure U, which called for a 10 percent tax on marijuana
providers to help with the city's chronic money shortages.

The city council next month will continue its discussion of marijuana
dispensary zoning.

"This is a modern witch-hunt to chase the 'green skinned" people out
of town," said Dave Hodges, who founded the San Jose Cannabis Buyers
Collective -- among the first of what are now dozens of dispensaries.

Harborside, one of the Bay area's best-funded, most high-profile
dispensaries, left a message on its door saying "recent police raids
of San Jose collectives, with no intervention of the City Council,
lead us to believe we are not welcome in this community."

In recently unsealed affidavits attached to two of the raids,
narcotics agents accused the dispensaries of selling pot for profit,
violating state guidelines that medical marijuana be distributed only
by non-profits.

In their investigation of Angel's Care, undercover agents who bought
marijuana with such names as "Orange Kush" and "Grapefruit Diesel"
argued in court documents that the operation sold pot for street
prices 12 or 13 times the cost of growing it.

"I believe that it is highly improbable Angel's Care Collective
generated no profit from projected annual sales of $5,880,000, with a
75 percent markup on their marijuana," wrote agent Dean Ackemann.

The thousands of "members" -- Angel's Care reported 6,500 -- had no
responsibilities or duties toward their cooperative/collective,
documents said, other then the right to purchase pot.

Genovese, however, insists that his nonprofit San Jose Patients Group
on the Alameda was no such place. He said his nine employees were
terrorized by agents pointing guns in their faces, screaming at them
and trashing the center.

Councilman Oliverio said he had "sympathy for the plight of medical
cannabis clubs that are operating under the state law," and he
questioned the agents' priorities.

"Law enforcement perspective overall is that they typically view
these things as bad," Oliverio said. "Tell me how medical cannabis is
worse than the epidemic of meth or alcoholism?"

Here are the South Bay medical marijuana providers that have been
shut down by police or have closed voluntarily in recent weeks. All
are in San Jose unless otherwise noted:

Angel's Care Collective (Santa Clara)

Harborside Health Center

Medi-Leaf

The Natural Herbal Pain Relief Center

New Age Healing Collective

San Jose Patients Group

The South Bay Healing Center