SAN MATEO POT SHOPS RAIDED

Three Medical Cannabis Dispensaries Shuttered in Joint Action by DEA
and Local Police

SAN MATEO -- In the largest Bay Area raid of medical marijuana
dispensaries in nearly a year, federal agents stormed three medical
cannabis outlets in downtown San Mateo on Wednesday afternoon and
shut them down.

The DEA, accompanied by members of the San Mateo County Narcotics
Task Force and the San Mateo Police Department, seized 50 pounds of
processed marijuana, hashish, cannabis-laced edibles and
approximately $30,000 in cash, according to a statement by the U.S.
Department of Justice. No arrests were reported.

The raids occurred in the middle of the afternoon, and the three
dispensaries were located in busy, commercial districts of the city
- -- including one site in an office building in the city's commercial
center on Third Avenue. "A bunch of guys with drawn guns dropped into
the building and bashed the door down, shock-and-awe style," said
Josh Snyder, an employee of an Internet startup in the Third Avenue
office building.

A DEA spokesperson refused to identify the dispensaries, and the
search warrants issued for the raids remain under seal, but the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws lists on its
Web site three San Mateo dispensaries: Patients Choice Resource
Cooperative, at 164 South Blvd.; Peninsula Patients Local Option, at
397 S. Claremont St.; and MHT, at 60 E. Third Ave.

All three dispensaries were reportedly raided, according to Kris
Hermes of Americans for Safe Access, an Oakland-based medical
marijuana advocacy group. A fourth dispensary named Holistic
Solutions closed voluntarily as a result of the raids, he said.

Federal agents did not say whether the raided dispensaries had
violated the state's medical marijuana laws. However, they were all
"in violation of federal law," said Cmdr. Mark Wyss of the county's
Narcotics Task Force.

The use of medical marijuana with the recommendation of a doctor is
legal in California under Proposition 215, passed by state voters in
1996. In San Mateo County, 66 percent voted in favor of the measure.

However, federal law prohibits the possession of cannabis, and the
city of San Mateo does not have local regulations pertaining to the
distribution of medical marijuana.

According to NORML, which only lists dispensaries compliant with
state and local marijuana laws on its Web site, the raided
dispensaries had not violated state law.

Medical marijuana advocates and law enforcement officials said that
the raids essentially wiped out the county's medical marijuana dispensaries.

"Of course, that's going to impact access for the patients who live
in San Mateo and surrounding areas," said Hermes. "You're talking
about the vast majority or all of the facilities in a particular region."

That the DEA would devastate one county's supply of medical marijuana
is not "unprecedented," Hermes said. Last year, federal agents raided
two dispensaries in Stanislaus County, which essentially cut off
patients' access in that region.

"The federal government has been coming in and undermining the
state's medical marijuana law," Hermes said. "There is an unrelenting
amount of harassment currently going on by the federal government."

Hermes called the DEA's collaboration with San Mateo police and
Narcotics Task Force "very distressing."

San Mateo City Councilman Brandt Grotte said that he was not aware
that local police were working with federal agents on a nine-month
investigation of the city's medical marijuana dispensaries.

"If it turns out that the activities that were being undertaken (at
the dispensaries) were in compliance with the state law, then I would
prefer that police were not involved locally, aside from being
informed the raids were occurring.

"I have a lot of compassion for people who are suffering," said
Grotte. "If they're in cancer treatment or something like that, I
honestly believe that (marijuana) can have therapeutic value."

Outside the shuttered dispensaries in San Mateo on Wednesday
afternoon, that seemed to be the prevailing view among the
eyewitnesses to the raids.

Michael Gilbert was standing across the street from the Patients
Choice Resource Cooperative when "the DEA just came down like a ton
of bricks," he said -- an operation he emphatically disagreed with.

"I don't smoke dope," said Gilbert, "but that's what I think."

"Oh, man, that's not dope -- that's medical marijuana," said Glenn
Owens, the owner of a lawn-mower repair shop next to the dispensary.
"There are people who actually use it for medical purposes -- and to
deny them that is wrong."

Jason Marshalla, a 19-year-old college student from Mountain View,
was one of a handful of patients who attempted to stop by the
Peninsula Patients Local Option on South Claremont Street late
Wednesday afternoon.

Standing outside the shuttered dispensary, he said he smokes medical
marijuana to treat his Attention Deficit Disorder -- a treatment
which helps him do his homework better, he said. His aunt, he said,
takes THC pills (a distillation of the psychoactive ingredient in
marijuana) to treat her cancer, and a friends' mom uses marijuana to
ease her arthritis.

Marshalla traveled all the way from Mountain View to San Mateo, he
said, because the city harbors the closest dispensaries to his home
in the South Bay.

Now, he said, he would have to travel to Hayward, the next-closest
location -- a prospect he called "inconvenient."

"Now, I have to go really far to get it," he said. "It's probably
going to be the same now for a lot of people."

The last large-scale raids of Bay Area medical marijuana dispensaries
by the DEA came in October 2006, when federal agents stormed about a
half-dozen locations in San Francisco and Oakland, seizing about
13,000 plants and arresting 15 people.