MENDOCINO POT RAID CAUSES STIR AMONG CALIFORNIA'S MEDICAL MARIJUANA ADVOCATES

REDWOOD VALLEY The U.S. drug agents' vehicles rumbled past vineyards
and cattle ranches, traversed winding roads through oak woodlands and
cleared a gate marked with a sign: "Member, Mendocino Farm Bureau."

Camouflaged and heavily armed, Drug Enforcement Administration
officers brought a battering ram to the door of Matthew Cohen and a
chain saw to cut down his 99 marijuana plants earlier this month.

The raid on Cohen's Northstone Organics garden, which boasted of "farm
direct" marijuana deliveries to medical users, has stoked a fierce
debate over whether federal authorities sought to nullify California's
most renowned local regulatory program for medical marijuana
cultivation.

In Mendocino County and beyond, Cohen, 34, was applauded as a leader
who worked with local officials to initiate a program in which the
sheriff issues $50 per-plant zip ties, with serial numbers, to enforce
99-plant limits for growers with dispensary contracts or documentation
that they serve medical marijuana patients.

In a county infamous for black market marijuana growing and
trafficking and distrust of the government nearly 100 local pot
farmers signed up for the oversight program in two years. They paid
more than $8,000 in annual fees each to let the sheriff inspect their
gardens, count their plants and enforce environmental standards and
rules for fencing and security.

Other Northern California counties were looking to emulate the
Mendocino County model. Now those efforts are in doubt. And locals
fear the raid may send Mendocino's pot culture scurrying back to its
illicit past.

"It's paranoia season up here right now," said Fran Harris, who with
her husband, James Taylor Jones, runs a tie-dyed clothing store in the
town of Laytonville and grows marijuana for medical users under the
county-supervised program. "Matt (Cohen) may have been targeted to
send a message. He was trying to promote doing it the right way. And
the federal message is there is no right way."

Cohen, who helped organize a Mendocino medical marijuana trade
association called MendoGrown, was the public face for local pot
regulation. He was profiled in documentaries such as the PBS show
"Frontline" and a special on Australian television.

Dale Gieringer, California director of the National Organization for
Reform of Marijuana Laws, said Mendocino's licensing and supervision
of marijuana farmers was "the flagship program for outdoor regulation
in the whole country, and probably the world."

But on Oct. 7, California's four U.S. attorneys declared a crackdown
on the state's medical marijuana market.

San Francisco U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag said the government would
target "significant drug traffickers ... involved in the commercial
cultivation and distribution of marijuana." That day, authorities
unveiled charges against a North Hollywood dispensary accused of
shipping hundreds of pounds of weed a month to New York and
Pennsylvania and a Los Angeles lawyer who was said to have raked in
millions of dollars from pot gardens supplying marijuana stores.

"We are making this announcement ... to put to rest the notion that
large medical marijuana businesses can shelter themselves under state
law and operate without fear of federal enforcement," Haag said.

The unexpected target

Marijuana activists didn't expect the next target would be Cohen, a
philosophy major who dropped out of the University of Colorado and
became part of the California medical cannabis movement.

He established himself among advocates by growing free pot and buying
groceries for an Oakland woman with a brain tumor and seizures, Angel
Raich. Cohen signed on as one of two "John Doe" caregivers in a case
Raich took to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004. It ended with the high
court affirming a federal ban on marijuana as medicine.

In Mendocino County, Cohen founded Northstone Organics, a farm and
delivery service that supplied medical marijuana users in nine Bay
Area counties and Los Angeles.

Cohen, who is critical of retail-style marijuana dispensaries, claimed
to offer a true nonprofit model under state law. And he promised
"sun-grown medical cannabis delivered discreetly to your door."

Federal authorities are scornful of pot deliveries. On Oct. 13, Cohen
was indiscreetly greeted with a battering ram at his door.

"You don't have to knock it down. I'll open it," the tall, pony-tailed
Cohen said he shouted to DEA agents. "And please don't shoot the dogs."

Cohen said officers handcuffed him and his wife, Courtenay, 31,
demanding to know where he kept guns and cash. He said he had no
weapons and just $5. They were restrained for hours as agents cut down
and packed up his harvest-ready marijuana plants, Cohen said.

When he argued he was licensed by the county, Cohen said, one of the
DEA agents told him the Mendocino program was "a sham."

DEA Special Agent Casey McEnry in San Francisco confirmed the raid
occurred but declined to give details on the case or what prompted the
raid. No charges have been filed.

Federal motivation questioned

Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman, notified of the raid shortly
beforehand, defended local efforts to regulate medical marijuana
cultivation. The county restricts medicinal growers to 25 plants per
property but allows residents with 5 acres or more to apply for
special permits to grow a maximum of 99 plants.

"I would clearly say that what Matt Cohen was doing was in full
compliance with our ordinance. And he was not violating Proposition
215," the California medical marijuana law "under the interpretation
we have," Allman said.

Weeks before the raid, Mendocino County Supervisor John McCowen and a
sheriff's sergeant supervising the marijuana zip-tie program testified
for the defense in a Sonoma County preliminary hearing for two of
Cohen's drivers charged with transporting pot for sale. They were
stopped on two days in 2010 with a total of 2.3 pounds of marijuana in
bags for 35 registered medical users.

The Mendocino officials testified Northstone was operating legally
under their county's ordinance. Cohen and his lawyer say that
infuriated Sonoma prosecutors. They suggested the neighboring county
called the feds, triggering the raid on Northstone.

"The very day that they testified was the very day that the DEA did a
flyover of Mr. Cohen's property," said William Panzer, a co-author of
California's medical marijuana law and attorney for the two drivers,
Daniel Harwood, 33, of Willits and Timothy Tangney, 29, of Lucerne.
"Maybe that's a coincidence."

Sonoma County Deputy District Attorney Scott Jamar said he isn't aware
that anyone in Sonoma contacted federal officials, saying "I think
it's merely speculation." After the DEA raid, a judge granted the
defense a two-month delay in the Sonoma case.

On Thursday, an Oakland-based medical marijuana advocacy group,
Americans for Safe Access, sued Haag and U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder, demanding return of the marijuana seized at Northstone Organics.

Meanwhile, McCowen said he was outraged over what he viewed as a
federal attack on Mendocino's attempt to bring its marijuana culture
into compliance with state and local laws.

"I really question the motivation of the federal authorities," he
said. "This effort will drive medical marijuana back underground,
increase black market diversion and keep marijuana, illegal, dangerous
and profitable."

Supervisor Mark Lovelace of neighboring Humboldt, one of three
counties that sent officials to Cohen's garden to study the Mendocino
compliance program, said the action undermined hopes to rein in
unbridled marijuana cultivation in rural California counties through
local oversight.

"It's really frustrating. Prohibition prevents regulation," Lovelace
said.

Haag, the San Francisco U.S. attorney, had declared the government
would go after California medical marijuana operations that had been
"hijacked by profiteers."

Cohen insists he isn't one of them. He says he declared personal
bankruptcy a year ago after investing his savings and an inheritance
in Northstone Organics. He began earning a salary $1,900 every two
weeks a couple of months ago. He says he expected to do better
financially over time.

Chill on pot culture

The raid on Cohen's property has sent a chill though Mendocino, where
the county's pot heritage and harvest is celebrated each December.
Last year, the local "Emerald Cup" festival awarded designer bongs to
growers of prize-winning Mendo cannabis from "Sour Best Ever" to
"Pure Blueberry Hash."

Marvin Levin, director of the Mendocino Farmers Cooperative, an
organization of outdoor pot growers that sponsors the Emerald Cup,
said he is unsure the event will go on amid an atmosphere of fear.

The Farmers Cooperative also abruptly closed down its Laytonville
dispensary after the DEA raid. "I don't know what to make of it. I
just don't like the stress," Levin said.

Cohen, waiting to see if he will face federal charges, doesn't expect
Northstone Organics to return.

"If their point was to make a threat, they accomplished it," he said,
standing amid his leveled marijuana garden. "They scared the pants off
of growers who wanted to participate in the (county) program. And I'm
not growing next year, no way."