DEA'S SCARLET LETTER

Nervous L.A. Landlords and Dispensaries Get Caught in the Medical-Pot
Wars

THE DEA AND THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES are at war over medical marijuana.
On one side of the fight is the Drug Enforcement Administration, which
seems to be doing all within its power to shut down the 180 or so
medical-marijuana collectives (as dispensaries are called) in Los
Angeles County.

On the other side is the Los Angeles City Council - which voted on
Wednesday, August 1, in a 10-2 vote, to officially regulate the
medical-marijuana business, so that scam artists can be rooted out and
those who depend on cannabis for health reasons can get the stuff
safely from licensed purveyors without threat of arrest and criminal
prosecution. Within the next 10 days, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is
expected to sign what is officially known as the Medical Marijuana
Dispensary Interim Control Ordinance.

So far, neither side shows signs of bending, and July has been a month
full of skirmishes. On July 6, the Los Angeles branch of the DEA sent
letters to nearly 150 of the landlords in Los Angeles County who rent
sites to marijuana collectives, pleasantly reminding property owners
that selling cannabis is a federal crime punishable by up to 20 years
in the federal pen, and that even peripheral involvement could trigger
the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 - meaning that the
property owners' land could be confiscated by the U.S. government.

"This letter shall serve notice that, after a thorough investigation,
the DEA has determined that a marijuana dispensary is operating on the
above described property," concluded the feds' cheery missive.

The letter triggered a rash of freak-outs among targeted landlords,
causing scores of them to phone the DEA office - and their personal
attorneys. "I'd say about 80 percent of the people we sent letters to
called us," says DEA spokesperson Sarah Pullen. She says many believed
that California state law trumps the federal statute, when, in fact,
the opposite is true.

Attorney William Kroeger, who represents some collectives who rent
space in L.A., says that if he represented targeted landlords, "I'd
tell them, 'You should be in court five minutes from now filing
eviction papers.' "

For its part, the DEA claims it simply sent the letters out as a
courtesy, "to inform property owners about the law." Nobody in city
government, or among the medical-marijuana activists, really bought
it. "That's like me saying, 'I'm just informing you, I'm going to
punch you in the face,' " says one unhappy collective owner.

Whatever its purpose, the tactic had a chilling effect. Although some
property owners vowed to stand their ground, others told their tenants
to move out, says Chris Fusco, the Los Angeles County field
coordinator for Americans for Safe Access, one of the main
medical-cannabis lobbies.

By mid-July, several collectives had closed up shop, including the
Earth Collective on Sunset Boulevard just east of Normandie Avenue,
which posted a note on WeedTracker, the best known of the
medical-marijuana forums, that read in part: "Today, July 15, 2007,
will be our last day dispensing medicine... We would like to thank the
entire medical marijuana community . . . for their support throughout
our entire campaign."

Then, on July 25, Los Angeles City Councilman (and former LAPD
officer) Dennis Zine held a press conference before the Wednesday City
Council meeting, calling for DEA Administrator Karen Tandy to stop
threatening property owners and to allow L.A. to proceed with
regulating medical-weed distribution without federal
interference.

At the council meeting itself, Zine pushed through an "interim control
ordinance" that put a temporary moratorium on new outlets in Los
Angeles until more detailed municipal regulations are worked out.

"I understand there is a difference between federal law and California
law in regards to medical cannabis," Zine wrote in his letter to
Tandy. "Despite the difference, cities and counties must continue to
uphold the will of our voters and adopt sensible guidelines to
regulate the provision of medical cannabis in our communities."

But within an hour of Zine's press conference, about 100 Kevlar-clad
DEA agents broke down doors of 10 medical-marijuana collectives,
including the already shuttered Earth Collective. At some locations,
says Kroeger, the agents even smashed vending machines, ostensibly to
make sure none of the snacks contained contraband.

Zine and other council members were furious. "What the feds are trying
to do is flex their muscles," Zine said when told of the raids. "They
want to show us who's boss. We're not trying to legalize marijuana,"
he said. "We're just trying to regulate it for compassionate use for
those who need it."

Zine blasted the DEA for "wasting federal tax dollars going after
people that we're trying to regulate. These places are well-known.
They advertise - you don't have to go looking for them. Why doesn't
the DEA use those same resources to go after the drug dealers who're
ruining lives in our communities with crystal meth, heroin and cocaine?

"People don't like it when the government becomes oppressive," he
said. "At heart, I'm a hard-ass cop. And I don't like it."

Indeed, it is unclear what was accomplished in the 10 raids. Although
200 kilos of "product" was seized - not surprisingly - and five
arrests were made, no charges had been filed as of press time.Of the
five arrests, two were for non-drug-related outstanding warrants,
admits the DEA's Pullen. "We aren't even 100 percent sure yet if the
warrants are still active," she sighs.

Most of the raided collectives claimed they would reopen. As soon as
the feds left, the California Patients Group, which operates out of a
storefront on Santa Monica Boulevard near Vine Street, tacked up a
handwritten sign in its window that read, "Closed Today. Will Be Open
Tomorrow." Several others announced they will reopen "soon."

"It's so maddening," says attorney Kroeger, who - along with Zine and
representatives of city agencies including the LAPD and the Department
of Building and Safety - is part of a working group hammering out the
city ordinance still to come. "Here we are doing everything to
regulate this, and the DEA goes knocking down the doors of a lot of
people who may get evicted anyway."

To better understand this summer's battle, it helps to go back to
1996, when Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, was approved by
a healthy 56 percent of California voters. It was the first such law
in the nation. Since then, 11 more states have passed their own
medical-marijuana laws, New Mexico being the most recent.

These state laws are in conflict with the federal Controlled
Substances Act, but from 1996 to 2001, with a few exceptions, the feds
pretty much stayed out of it.

But in 2001, under George W. Bush, the DEA began raiding clinics in
California. Since then, the feds have waged an ever more aggressive
campaign in California to shut down collectives that dispense weed to
those holding prescriptions.

The DEA ramped up the Los Angeles crackdown on January 17, when the
feds raided 11 collectives in one day - five in West Hollywood, the
other six in Venice, Hollywood, Sherman Oaks and Woodland Hills. Like
last week's, these raids appeared unsuccessful. As yet, no charges
have resulted and, although three of the collectives closed for good,
eight reopened in less than a week. Within a month, several new
collectives had sprung up, mushroomlike, to replace the three that
closed.

The July raids coincided with a vote in Congress on the
Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment, which proposed to kill funding now used
for similar DEA enforcement actions in the 12 states where medicinal
marijuana is legal. The House bill was defeated, but its
strange-bedfellow authors - New York liberal Democrat Maurice Hinchey
and ultraconservative Huntington Beach Republican Dana Rohrabacher -
illustrate the party-crossing sentiment against the DEA's tactics.

More anti-enforcement attitude was seen earlier this month in Orange
County, where the all-Republican county Board of Supervisors voted to
regulate the sale of medical marijuana. Advocates pitched the fiscally
conservative idea that issuing identification to legitimate purveyors
would reduce pointless and costly prosecutions.

Meanwhile, in L.A. the war goes on. "Look, we're here to uphold the
law," says the DEA's Pullen. "And we can't really pick and choose
which laws."

At the collectives, the jitters continue. "We're hanging in," says one
L.A.-based collective owner who declined to be named. "But we're
getting tired. That's how it is for a lot of people I know, they're
scared and tired." And on Monday, the California Patients Group, which
had vowed to stay open, announced that it too was closing "as a result
of the economic and legal hardship resulting from this week's DEA raid
and threats made against our landlord."