DEA raids LA medical marijuana clinics

[straightdope]

LOS ANGELES - Federal agents raided 10 marijuana clinics Wednesday, the same day city leaders introduced a measure calling for an end to the crackdown on the dispensaries allowed under state law.

The bust netted five arrests, large quantities of marijuana and cash, and was the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's second-largest since California voters approved medical marijuana sales in 1996. The drug remains illegal under federal law.

DEA spokeswoman Sarah Pullen said the timing of the bust and the city's action was "purely coincidental."

The agency has maintained the clinics are distribution points for illegal drugs and earn their owners big profits. Those arrested Wednesday included clinic owners and managers, though no patients, for investigation of marijuana distribution.

Councilman Dennis Zine, who earlier in the day wrote a letter to DEA Administrator Karen Tandy asking the agency to stop the raids, called the federal agents "bullies."

"Instead of using resources to go after drug dealers ruining neighborhoods and poisoning school kids, they're going after individuals dying of cancer and suffering from AIDS who need cannabis to have any type of appetite," Zine said.

The clinics are largely unregulated, which Zine and others said invites illegal pot use and sales.

He said he and the council support a congressional bill that would prohibit new clinics from opening until the city finds a way to better regulate its more than 100 dispensaries. It also calls for withholding funding for DEA raids on medical marijuana clinics.

The council proposed Wednesday requiring existing dispensaries to obtain a city tax registration certificate, a seller's permit, a property lease, business insurance, proof of dispensary membership and a county health permit within 60 days.

DEA agents raided 11 Los Angeles-area dispensaries in one day in January, the largest-ever such crackdown by the agency.

Earlier this month, the DEA sent letters to at least 30 landlords of marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles County warning their property and assets could be seized. Agency officials said at the time the letters were not a threat.

[straightdope]

SAN FRANCISCO -- A California woman whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive is not immune from federal prosecution on drug charges, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The ruling was the latest legal defeat for Angel Raich, an Oakland mother of two suffering from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other ailments who sued the federal government pre-emptively to avoid being arrested for using the drug.

On her doctor's advice, Raich eats or smokes marijuana every couple of hours to ease her pain and bolster a nonexistent appetite as conventional drugs did not work.

The latest legal wrangling once again highlighted the conflict between the federal government, which declares marijuana an illegal controlled substance with no medical value, and the 11 states allowing medical marijuana for patients with a doctor's recommendation.

The Supreme Court ruled against Raich two years ago, saying medical marijuana users and their suppliers could be prosecuted for breaching federal drug laws even if they lived in a state such as California where medical pot is legal.

Because of that ruling, the issue before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was narrowed to the so-called right to life theory: that the gravely ill have a right to marijuana to keep them alive when legal drugs fail.

Raich, 41, began sobbing when she was told of the decision and said she would continue using the drug.

"I'm sure not going to let them kill me," she said. "Oh my God."

The three-judge appeals panel said that the United States has not yet reached the point where "the right to use medical marijuana is 'fundamental' and 'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty."'

However, the court left open the possibility that Raich, if she was arrested and prosecuted, might be able to argue that she possessed marijuana as a last resort to stay alive, in what is known as a "medical necessity defense."

Raich was asking the court to block enforcement of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, which criminalized marijuana, LSD, heroin and other drugs.

"Though a necessity defense may be available in the context of a criminal prosecution, it does not follow that a court should prospectively enjoin enforcement of a statute," Judge Harry Pregerson wrote in the unanimous ruling.

When the case was argued before the appeals court a year ago, the government said it could not guarantee that Raich or other seriously ill patients using medical marijuana would not be arrested or prosecuted. Over the years, the government has raided dozens of medical marijuana dispensaries, mostly in California.

"I have to get myself busted," Raich said, "in order to try to save my life. You know, I'm dead man walking."

In a partial dissent, Judge C. Arlen Beam said Raich had no legal standing to even bring a case because she was not arrested. Beam added that Raich "probably cannot establish that she has no legal alternative to violating the law."

The case is likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, but each time the high court has taken up the issue of medical marijuana it has ruled against allowing the sick and dying to use the drug to ease their symptoms and possibly prolong life.

Voters in 1996 made California the first state to authorize patients to use marijuana with a doctor's recommendation. At least 10 other states followed suit.

[radracer]

that sucks, why even let them operate, if your going to raid them

[Stash]

because your not muscling in on the money if they don't operate...Just raid them every couple of years and your still getting the drugs and the money...plus you look like an all american hero....Sounds like a sweet deal to me if you don't have a soul

[Stash]

because your not muscling in on the money if they don't operate...Just raid them every couple of years and your still getting the drugs and the money...plus you look like an all american hero....Sounds like a sweet deal to me if you don't have a soul