Posted on 03/25/2009 11:26:54 PM PDT by LibWhacker
One week after President Barack Obama's top law enforcement official seemed to indicate the feds would no longer raid pot clubs, DEA agents busted a medical marijuana facility in San Francisco Wednesday night.
As agents carried large plastic containers of marijuana plants out of Emmalyn's California Cannabis Clinic at 1597 Howard Street, a small crowd of protesters formed a gauntlet outside the door, booing the agents and chanting, "our medicine is marijuana listen to Obama!"
DEA spokeswoman Casey McEnry told CBS 5 the documents regarding the raid are sealed, so the DEA was not able to give any details.
"Based on our investigation we believe there are not only violations of federal law, but state law as well," said DEA Special Agent in Charge Anthony D. Williams in a written statement.
Emmalyn's has a provisional permit from the city, according to Eileen Shields, spokesperson for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, which she said is an indication the club is in good standing with city laws.
Brendan Hallanin, the pot club's attorney, said Emmalyn's is in compliance with state and local laws.
"They are well-respected and have a good reputation in the medical marijuana community," said Hallanin, who added the business has never been raided in its five year existence.
Hallanin said the DEA would not tell him why the club was being busted.
"They're going to have a huge fight on their hands if they're arbitrarily busting clubs that are in compliance with state and local laws," said Hallanin.
Kris Hermes, spokesperson for Americans for Safe Access, a national advocacy group for medical marijuana issues, wants the attorney general to explain the DEA's actions.
"We're shocked that after the Attorney General has made repeated statements that raids on California medical cannibis dispensaries would be suspended that we are seeing a continuation of that policy," said Hermes.
As for Mexicans growing pot in the U.S., I think that is, indeed, a problem, and I oppose the domestic production of pot by foreigners. I think this problem is just a subset of a larger problem: Illegal aliens roming free across the land. However, if my platform was adopted, the problem would melt away very quickly. I propose shooting noncitizen drug dealers/producers after a speedy trial. All of them. In public.
As for your comment "Oh, Mexican dope is horrible! Nobody would want to smoke that!", I think the answer is simple supply and demand. If another product was available, consumers would buy it. I live in a border state, and my city is awash in Mexican pot. It is what is commonly available. If there was better/other, folks would buy it.
Believe me when I say the thought of supporting drug lords sickens me.
Regarding my lengthy treatise on pot, it was simply an attempt to educate and inform about the different strains available, and their associated traits, traits that hint at their origin. I did not reference "problems on the border" or "Mexican drug gangs trying to smuggle their dope north!", but rather the dynamic of Mexican pot and the reason it is a totally different animal than domestic pot.
With the increase in domestically-grown-by-Mexicans pot, these rules become less of an absolute, but are still a good guide.
Actually, I have a solutuion to the problems on the border, but it involves drastic measures which are too severe for most Americans; it involves guns and minefields, and maybe even sharks with frickien lasers on their heads.
You might agree with this comment: I think the problem is not pot per se, but rather the fact that it supports foreign criminals and narcoterrorists. If we could eliminate them from the loop, most of your (and my) moral qualms may subside a tad.
You call me a pothead, and perhaps that is an accurate descriptor, but I am absolute in my belief that pot should be kept away from children, and not glamourized in the media. It is, indeed, a vice. But then again, all of that also applies to Guinness beer, another vice of mine.
Also, I grew up in San Francisco and have seen firsthand how pot eases the suffering of people who are gonna die soon anyway. I am not a big fan of the gays, but I think it is abhorrent to deny an AIDS sufferer a method of increasing appetite and reducing nausea. (a method that cost pennies compared to the pharmacueticals pushed by Big Pharma). The same goes for the (more numerous) cancer victims. My mother's suffering could have been greatly mitigated by pot, but she would not use it because she was a big Law and Order person. I watched her whither away; she was destined to die anyway, as the cancer had spread to her brain and was inoperable, but who is to say that her final weeks could have been just little less painful?
Answer: you, and the government.
“medical marijuana is already legal and available by prescription. its called Marinol”
Yes, the whole reason medical marijuana is illegal is because the big drug companies can’t profit from it. So they come up with “marinol”...just so they can profit.. it is so stupid. The same reason vaccinations are “required”. More $ for drug companies...
Yes - pills would cause vomiting. It would come up before it could work. Anything she put in her stomach came up.
This is absolute horse manure. They don't sell crappy Mexican brickweed at those clubs. They sell expensive pot, the fancy indoor grown stuff with strain names like “White Widow,” “Bubblegum,” etc. They sell mostly indica, not dirt cheap seedy Mexican sativa. If they sold “shwag” they'd go out of business. People can get cheap Mexican anywhere. They go to those clubs to get their fancy organic sticky buds that cost and arm and a leg. John Walters is full of crap. He's either ignorant or lying. It is absolutely true that lots of Mexican pot is sold in this country, thousands of tons of it, but not at medical marijuana dispensaries. Those places sell expensive high grade marijuana, and pot smokers can darned sure tell the difference between fluffy seedless sticky buds with pungent aromas and seedy compressed Mexican dirt weed that smells like moldy socks. John Walters lies because he's a liar. The Mexicans are probably lying because medical marijuana is cutting into their business. It probably is cutting into their business, all these people with medical marijuana cards growing their own and sometimes selling some of what they grow and going to dispensaries to buy it. This is definitely preferable to funding Mexican organized crime.
My response to another poster blows your “argument” into a puff of smoke. Read. Rinse and repeat. And next time you post, do so in an unaltered state so it at appears that you are capable of making sense. And not repeating and stuff.
I can see why the DEA wants to hang on to their marijuana clinic gigs, its the only thing they haven’t completely failed at. Only in government could such an incompetent collection of idiots keep their job.
End the failed drug war.
You've got nothing but insults and recycled propaganda from that liar John Walters. There is no evidence whatsoever that much if any Mexican grown pot is being sold at these establishments. The facts point to a different conclusion. Most of it is grown here by Americans. Your argument is about as lame as the argument that Mexican cartels are buying all their fully automatic weapons, hand grenades and grenade launchers and so on here. It's just more b.s.
Ever seen anyone speed in front of a school before? Do you know that drugs are available anywhere at anytime? I want to live in a world in which people do not require a 5 trillion dollar per year government to tell them what they already know.
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