morepot

Source: San Jose Mercury News
Author: John Woolfolk and Sean Webby
Posted: 11/09/2010 07:05:04 PM PST
Updated: 11/09/2010 10:23:34 PM PST

Medical marijuana activists pleaded Tuesday for San Jose leaders to stop drug raids they say have sent a jolt of fear through cannabis providers and patients alike.

Drug agents in recent weeks have raided three local medical marijuana providers. Several other collectives, including Harborside Health Center, one of the area's largest and best-established, have simply closed, fearing an imminent bust.

"How can you sit up there and take my rights away?" asked a tearful Aisha Alexander, 36, who told the City Council she uses marijuana to relieve breast cancer symptoms.

But city officials said they were powerless to act, noting that although some San Jose officers have participated in the raids, they were conducted by a county special enforcement team. The topic also wasn't on the council's agenda, which prohibited any action.

"This is not something over which we have any authority or jurisdiction," Mayor Chuck Reed told a crowd of dozens who spoke during an open-comment period at the end of the council's afternoon meeting.

Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio, who last year initiated an ongoing city process to consider limited zoning and taxation of medical marijuana providers, asked the city manager to gather additional information for the council.

The raids straddled a historic statewide vote last week in which Californians rejected an initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use. Voters in San Jose and several other cities, however, approved local measures to tax and regulate the drug.

In addition to the recent raids, South Bay narcotics agents also ran a sting operation dubbed Up in Smoke against medical marijuana delivery services, arresting almost two dozen suspects officials accused of "perverting" the state's medicinal marijuana law.

Santa Clara County Special Enforcement Team Commander Danielle Ayers defended the raids in an interview, saying the marijuana sellers were nothing more than profiteering drug peddlers and that their activities were drawing complaints. She noted the number of marijuana dispensaries has multiplied to 88 in the county, mostly in San Jose, in just two years.

"The county chiefs got together and told us, 'This is a huge problem in our community, there are 14-, 15-year-old kids buying marijuana,' " Ayers said. "The problem is that they are making money, and they are hiding it. There is money laundering going on."

But the operators and employees of the medical marijuana collectives are in a panic, saying they're unsure of what local law enforcement wants from them and are worried that their industry is under attack.

"Everyone's shaking in their boots," said David Genovese, executive director of the San Jose Patients Group, which was raided Nov. 4. He is also a founding member of the Medicinal Cannabis Collectives Coalition, which promotes "sensible regulations" for providing medical marijuana.

Genovese acknowledged that there are some shady operators -- which he blames on city officials who have dragged their feet on regulations. But, he said, raids of those striving to operate within the law have left everyone fearful.

City zoning currently does not allow marijuana dispensaries. But Genovese noted that more than 78 percent of San Jose voters just approved Measure U, which called for a 10 percent tax on marijuana providers to help with the city's chronic money shortages.

The city council next month will continue its discussion of marijuana dispensary zoning.

"This is a modern witch-hunt to chase the 'green skinned' people out of town," said Dave Hodges, who founded the San Jose Cannabis Buyers Collective -- among the first of what are now dozens of dispensaries.

Harborside, one of the Bay area's best-funded, most high-profile dispensaries, left a message on its door saying "recent police raids of San Jose collectives, with no intervention of the City Council, lead us to believe we are not welcome in this community."

In recently unsealed affidavits attached to two of the raids, narcotics agents accused the dispensaries of selling pot for profit, violating state guidelines that medical marijuana be distributed only by nonprofits.

In their investigation of Angel's Care, undercover agents who bought marijuana with such names as "Orange Kush" and "Grapefruit Diesel" argued in court documents that the operation sold pot for street prices 12 or 13 times the cost of growing it.

"I believe that it is highly improbable Angel's Care Collective generated no profit from projected annual sales of $5,880,000, with a 75 percent markup on their marijuana," wrote agent Dean Ackemann.

The thousands of "members" -- Angel's Care reported 6,500 -- had no responsibilities or duties toward their cooperative/collective, documents said, other than the right to purchase pot.

Genovese, however, insists that his nonprofit San Jose Patients Group on the Alameda was no such place. He said his nine employees were terrorized by agents pointing guns in their faces, screaming at them and trashing the center.

Councilman Oliverio said he had "sympathy for the plight of medical cannabis clubs that are operating under the state law," and he questioned the agents' priorities.

"Law enforcement perspective overall is that they typically view these things as bad," Oliverio said. "Tell me how medical cannabis is worse than the epidemic of meth or alcoholism?''


Contact John Woolfolk at 408-975-9346.

Cannabis Clubs Closing up shop

Here are the South Bay medical marijuana providers that have been shut
down by police or have closed voluntarily in recent weeks. All are in
San Jose unless otherwise noted:
Angel's Care Collective (Santa Clara)
Harborside Health Center
Medi-Leaf
The Natural Herbal Pain Relief Center
New Age Healing Collective
San Jose Patients Group
The South Bay Healing Center