Something to Consider Before Freaking Out About the DEA Raiding Seattl

[loves420]

Something to Consider Before Freaking Out About the DEA Raiding Seattle-Area Medical Pot Shops

 

Posted by Dominic Holden on Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 4:21 PM

KOMO confirms that the Drug Enforcement Administration is executing warrants right now on several marijuana cooperatives in the Puget Sound region. It's not clear how many. Federal agents reportedly told a dispensary employee in Olympia "the raid was part of a two-year investigation, and she said she was ordered to appear before a federal grand jury in Seattle in September."

 

Obama has been absolutely awful on medical marijuana, spending some $300 million dollars on busts. This is despite a promise that he was “not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws.” Since then, he's busted well-respected dispensaries that are following the rules—but many of the hundreds of raids have been on dispensaries allegedly violating their state's own medical marijuana laws.

That's been the case in Seattle.

 

The owner of a Seattle "medical marijuana cooperative" recently pleaded guilty to marijuana charges—landing him in prison for over six years—after prosecutors argued he was "selling pound quantities of marijuana to people who presented no medical authorization card." There are plenty cases of people running "medical cannabis co-ops" who get busted because they are running for-profit operations that have nothing to do with medical pot. You may not think that should be a crime (I don't necessarily), but it is. Washington State's Medical Use of Marijuana Act doesn't protect those folks and it wasn't intended to.

So before making an armchair verdict on today's dispensary raids, I want to see the charging documents. I want to find out if dispensaries are violating the letter or spirit of the state's marijuana laws. If these defendants are making a mint by trafficking pounds of weed to the healthy and laundering the cash, then I'm not going to shed a tear. But if the DEA and US Attorney are acting egregiously—if any of the defendants were following the state medical marijuana law—we should back them up and skewer the feds. It's still too early to know.

 

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/07/24/something-to-consider-before-freaking-out-about-the-dea-raiding-seattle-area-medical-pot-shops