Pubdate: Sat, 03 Nov 2001
Source: Los Angeles Independent (CA)
Copyright: 2001 Los Angeles Independent Newspaper Group
Contact:  http://www.laindependent.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1602
Author: Malaika Costello-Dougherty
Note: Scott Imler will be the special guest Wed. Nov. 7, 2001 8:00 EDT in 
the NY Times Drug Policy Forum and Sat. Nov. 10, 2001 8 PM Eastern in the 
Drugsense Chat Room. See http://www.cultural-baggage.com/schedule.htm for 
details.
Bookmarks: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Scott+Imler
http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

CANNABIS CLUB RAIDED BY DEA

Last Thursday at about 4:30 p.m. federal Drug Enforcement Agents came
through the doors of the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center calling
President Scott Imler's name.

It was a bust.

The DEA had a federal search warrant and declared the center a federal
crime scene. About eight agents were present and some momentarily had
their guns drawn outside, according to neighbor Chris Shaefer. Shaefer
says the agents secured the exits, watched the windows and entered the
building.

The LACRC was closed for the day, but some members who work there had
just finished baking marijuana goods, according to member Michael Mallory.

The members were detained for about four hours, during which time
neither West Hollywood Mayor John Heilman nor the center's attorney,
City Councilman John Duran, were allowed into the center. The DEA left
at around 11 p.m. after confiscating about 400 marijuana plants, the
growing equipment, disbursement records, financial documents,
computers, 3,000 medical records, and doctors' names in two Ryder trucks.

"They were as gracious as they can be when they are raping you," Imler
says of the DEA agents.

The bust was a result of months of surveillance and years of
investigation of the LACRC by the DEA. Court records state that the
center and its leadership are under investigation for manufacturing
and distribution of a controlled substance, maintaining a drug
establishment and related money-laundering offences. No arrest
warrants have been issued yet.

The bust is another move in the conflict between state and federal law
over medical marijuana. In May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
dispensing marijuana was a federal crime and that marijuana did not
have medicinal value, upholding a 1970 law.

"It is a felony violation of federal law to cultivate, distribute or
possess with intent to distribute marijuana.... Prop. 215 [the medical
marijuana initiative approved by voters in 1996] is a California state
law that has no bearing on the applicability of federal criminal
laws," U.S. Attorney John S. Gordon said in a statement.

According to court records, DEA agents conducted surveillance outside
the LACRC on four days -- Aug. 31, Sept. 5, Sept. 7, and Oct. 17 --
and counted individuals who entered the staircase as well as noting
they stayed for about 10 to 20 minutes and left carrying small paper
bags.

The DEA also searched the property of Lynn and Judy Osburn in Ventura
County on Sept. 28, 2001, according to court records. Agents seized
273 cultivated marijuana plants, 76 pounds of marijuana and tax
documents where the Osburns claimed $264,500 as income from "dried
flowers." They also found a document titled "LACRC Patient Co-op
Cultivation Cost Reimbursement Jan. through Dec. 1999" listing paid
amounts totaling $264,500.

The court records cited a news report where Imler stated the plants
seized from the Osburns were 30 percent to 40 percent of the annual
supply. It also cited a news source that in the calendar year 2000 the
LACRC had paid $620,000 to black market dealers for 100 pounds of
marijuana that was distributed to its members. The court records show
that the DEA anticipated finding between 408 and 637 plants on the
LACRC premises if these plants constituted the rest of the supply.

City officials condemned the raid at a press conference last Friday
that was attended by more than 100 center members.

The West Hollywood Sheriff's Station has worked in the past to protect
the center and did not cooperate with the DEA raid, when they were
reportedly given a five-minute warning.

Duran says that a visiting federal judge issued the search warrant
from Florida rather than a California judge, which is unusual. He says
that the DEA treated the LACRC as if it were a crystal methamphetamine
laboratory instead of a group of patients using medical marijuana to
treat AIDS, cancer and other illnesses.

"It is absolute overkill, it is outrageous," Duran says. "Given all
the priorities -- war, anthrax terrorism -- that the federal
government would think that this is a priority in light of Sept. 11 is
just outrageous."

The cannabis resource center has been open in West Hollywood since
1996. The LACRC is a cooperative of medical marijuana patients who
collectively assert the ability provided under Prop. 215 for patients
to grow medical marijuana, according to Imler. Duran says the center
has been fully compliant with local and state law and keeps
"squeaky-clean" records.

Imler says: "The immediate problem in the short term is to find
marijuana for the 960 people who have come to rely on it in the past
four and a half years." Eighty percent of LACRC clients are HIV/AIDS
patients, 10 percent are cancer patients and the rest have glaucoma,
multiple sclerosis, sickle cell anemia, paralysis, epilepsy and other
illnesses.

Many LACRC medical marijuana patients felt the Supreme Court ruling
was a potential deathblow. However, they hoped that the federal
government did not have the resources to come after them. The center
did begin cultivation classes to teach members how to grow their own
marijuana as a precaution, according to Imler.

LACRC member Mallory, an HIV patient, says the raid has left him
feeling "robbed." "It's become systematic to go on a regular basis to
pick up my medicine, to improve my health and my weight.... Now I
don't know what to do," he says. "I have concerns that my weight is
going down. All this causes me to do is to get it off the black market."

Mallory says that his use of medical marijuana decreases the nausea
caused by HIV medications and increases his appetite. Center vice
president Jeffrey R. Farrington, who cultivates the plants, is a
glaucoma patient who says that medical marijuana prevents him from
going blind.

LACRC members had to provide a doctor's recommendation and go through
a screening process before they were accepted into the center. They
would enter an unmarked door, present their identification card at a
checkpoint and then proceed to a counter where they could choose from
a selection of marijuana, the best quality selling for $65 for 3.5
grams. (Fees were charged on a sliding scale.) Downstairs, there was
an indoor garden of marijuana plants being grown with lights and
equipment that were carefully cultivated and documented.

The U.S. Attorney handling the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, is planning
to go through the records for anything unorthodox, according to Duran.

The LACRC is concentrating on getting medical marijuana to the
patients first and then planning its legal strategy, he adds.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake