MEDICAL POT OK IN SEATTLE, IN TROUBLE IN SPOKANE

The Largest Federal Crackdown in the 13-Year History of the State
Medical-Marijuana Law Has Sent Spokane's Once-Open Medical-Marijuana
Businesses Diving Deep Underground. Most of the 50-Some Dispensaries
Abruptly Closed. Those That Remain Are Mostly Word-Of-Mouth Secrets.

SPOKANE -- From the outside, the century-old Victorian home near
Gonzaga University looks quaint, with lilies and pansies blooming in
the front yard and lace curtains in the windows.

No clue is given that it's actually a medical-marijuana bakery and
dispensary. That's just fine with Kandi, a pastry chef who runs the
dispensary with her mother.

She flinches when she pulls back the lace curtains and sees a black
SUV out front. "I think, 'This is it. They're coming for us,' " she
said.

She asked that her last name not be used, and there's good cause for
fear. The largest federal crackdown in the 13-year history of the
state medical-marijuana law has sent Spokane's once-open
medical-marijuana businesses diving deep underground. Most of the
50-some dispensaries abruptly closed. Those that remain are mostly
word-of-mouth secrets.

Contrast that to Seattle, where the city's embrace of medical
marijuana encourages a flourishing business for storefront
dispensaries, bakers, growers and lawyers. An unofficial count, based
on Seattle business licenses and advertising websites, finds at least
75 storefront dispensaries open, and more appearing weekly.

Federal raids and indictments in Spokane, combined with a law muddled
by Gov. Chris Gregoire's veto of a key bill earlier this year, leave a
medical-marijuana law with two entirely different applications on
either side of the Cascade curtain.

The different approach by federal and state law enforcement may
reflect divergent political priorities or workload, east and west.

On both sides, the use of medical marijuana for suffering patients
remains wildly popular; a December poll, commissioned by the ACLU of
Washington, found four out of five voters in Eastern and Western
Washington alike support it.

In Spokane, patients' access to cannabis has reverted to a time before
storefront dispensaries outnumbered Starbucks five-to-one, as they
briefly did. For some pundits, the crackdown was a justified curb on
an industry that had grown too bold.

But it also complicates the lives of patients like Paul, a 53-year-old
financial analyst in Spokane, who said he uses cannabis to control his
weight loss from HIV. Dispensaries in Seattle report a growing number
of patients like him, who are too scared to get medical marijuana in
the 509 area code.

"It takes me a day to drive to Seattle and back, but if that's what I
have to do, I do it. It's too hot over here," he said.

Feds vs. medical pot

Lawmakers last session passed a landmark bill to license and regulate
the medical-marijuana dispensaries that had sprung up around the state
since 2009. Gregoire vetoed most of the bill in May, effectively
killing the legal basis under which dispensaries operated.

But a creative interpretation of remaining provisions of the bill --
which authorize new, 45-plant "collective gardens" -- allowed the
dispensaries to change their business model and remain open through
the spring.

By then, Spokane's marijuana activists were already on
edge.

A dispensary owner was convicted of drug trafficking in March in
Spokane County Superior Court, the first conviction of its kind in the
state.

Spokane police visited dispensaries, warning them they were illegal,
but owners rebuffed the police, said Sgt. Tom Hendren, who handles
drug investigations. "There was no fear of local law enforcement," he
said. "Most were willing to chance it."

Then, in early April, Spokane's U.S. attorney, Mike Ormsby, sent
dozens of threat letters to about 55 local dispensary owners and their
landlords, warning that the properties could be seized if the
storefronts weren't closed within 30 days.

Most quickly closed, including one in downtown Spokane run by Troy
Brower, a 42-year-old with a mane of blond dreadlocks. His landlord
issued an eviction. "I got out the shredder" and destroyed patient
records, he said.

Remainder raided

Before the 30 days passed, federal and state police raided the few
that remained open, seizing plants, cash and thousands of patient
records; a second round of raids soon followed.

In July, five dispensary operators were indicted and potentially face
mandatory minimum sentences of 10 years.

Ormsby declined to comment for this story because of the pending
charges, but in April he said the raids were a response to complaints
that nine dispensaries operated near schools. One, run by a man being
prosecuted, had a large billboard two blocks from an elementary school.

Ormsby's counterpart in Seattle, Jenny Durkan, hasn't launched raids,
a decision that may reflect different priorities or office workload.

But in a statement to The Seattle Times last week, Durkan issued her
sharpest warning to date.

She reiterated that her office won't prosecute legitimate patients,
their authorized caregivers or their doctors.

"Many others are operating well outside that zone," she said. "The
label 'medical marijuana' cannot be used as a shield to hide drug
dealing and other criminal behavior. No one should take false comfort
from lax local laws or marijuana-industry lawyers."

Since 2009, the Obama Justice Department has conducted at least 106
raids and prosecuted at least 43 people involved in medical marijuana,
according to Americans for Safe Access, a national advocacy group.

Those numbers are roughly equivalent to those during the George W.
Bush administration but are spread among more states, including
Montana, Nevada, Michigan and Colorado, said Kris Hermes, a spokesman
for the group.

"Obama is maintaining the course [of the Bush administration], doing
everything and maybe more in attacking medical marijuana by attacking
distributors," he said.

Just as Ormsby's letter dropped in April, a new edition of Spokane's
phone book appeared with 34 entries in the brand-new
"medical-marijuana" section. The display ads now read like a list of
the indicted.

Many dispensaries had business licenses from the city of Spokane --
listing such business purposes as "ambulatory health care services" --
and paid taxes, believing that it provided some protection.

Prosecution "test cases"

Douglas Phelps, an attorney for Jerry Laberdee, one of the indicted
dispensary owners, said he plans to raise that argument. The
prosecutions, he said, are "test cases."

"I think they're doing it to see what juries will convict on," Phelps
said.

Spokane has since stopped issuing business licenses to dispensaries,
and the City Council hasn't duplicated Seattle's laissez-faire
approach of treating dispensaries like other businesses and
de-emphasizing marijuana as a law-enforcement priority. Steve Corker,
a Spokane city councilman, said he is sympathetic to decriminalization
arguments, but upcoming elections for the council and mayor put the
issue "on the back burner."

"We're basically hoping there will be some better understanding
between the federal and state authorities on this issue," he said.

Lawmakers plan to reintroduce a medical-marijuana-regulation
bill.

But attention will likely shift toward Initiative 502, a
full-legalization initiative likely to be introduced in Olympia in
January. If the Legislature declines to pass it, it goes on the
November 2012 ballot, setting up a statewide debate about marijuana.

Weylin Colebank closed his storefront dispensary in North Spokane
after federal agents last spring seized marijuana, cash and his client
accounts, kept on QuickBooks accounting software.

He soon reopened in a dilapidated house off the North Division strip,
but without a sign or advertising and with bars on the windows.

"This all hurt the patients more than anything," said Colebank, 60.
"When the records were seized, they didn't know if they were going to
jail or not."

Colebank said he's not afraid. "I'm no drug dealer."

A maverick streak runs wide through the Eastern Washington marijuana
entrepreneurs. One dispensary operated out of a trailer, parked across
the street from a Pizza Hut. After the raids, protests featured one
activist -- later indicted -- holding a pot plant and packing a
handgun outside the federal courthouse.

Mike Fitzsimmons, an influential conservative talk-show host on KXLY
920-AM, said the activists "pushed the envelope" and should have known
a crackdown was coming.

"The people engaged in this ought to have been smart enough to know
that possession and production in the quantities they're talking about
aren't contemplated by the law, and certainly not the federal law,"
said Fitzsimmons, a proponent of legalization.

Colebank said he had 800 clients before the raids and paid about
$2,000 a month in city and state taxes. His business, Essence of
Mother Earth, is now quietly, slowly rebuilding.

"There's money there, and the city needs it, but they're afraid of the
feds," he said. "I'm trying to run this as a legitimate business."