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Feds: California Marijuana Dispensaries Must Shut Down.

Discussion in 'Medical Marijuana Usage and Applications' started by Superjoint, Oct 7, 2011.

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  1. #1 Superjoint, Oct 7, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 7, 2011
    ​In a major escalation of the U.S. federal government’s war on medical marijuana dispensaries, federal prosecutors have warned California collectives they have 45 days to shut down or face criminal charges and confiscation of their property — even if they are operating legally under the state’s medical marijuana law, approved by voters in 1996. California’s four U.S. Attorneys sent letters on Wednesday and Thursday to at least 16 dispensaries or their landlords notifying them they are violating federal drug laws, reports Lisa Leff at the Associated Press. Medical marijuana is legal in California, but federal law prohibits pot for any purpose.

    The U.S. Attorneys are scheduled to announce their coordinated crackdown on dispensaries at a Friday news conference. Their offices have so far refused to confirm the closure letters.

    The Associated Press said it obtained copies of the letters that one federal prosecutor send to 12 dispensaries in San Diego; they say that federal law “takes precedence over state law and applies regardless of the particular uses for which a dispensary is selling and distributing marijuana.”

    ”Under United States law, a dispensary’s operations involving sales and distribution of marijuana are illegal and subject to criminal prosecution and civil enforcement actions,” read the letters signed by U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy in San Diego. “Real and personal property involved in such operations are subject to seizure by and forfeiture to the United States … regardless of the purported purpose of the dispensary.”

    “Please take the necessary steps to discontinue the sale and/or distribution of marijuana at the above-referenced location within 45 days,” the letter warns, reports George Warren at News 10.

    The letters inform landlords that their properties could be forfeited and their tenants could be thrown into prison for up to 40 years unless the dispensaries close, reports Chris Roberts at SF Weekly.

    A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Sacramento confirmed her office would also be contacting dispensary landlords.

    “We are initiating similar communications to selected property owners in the Eastern District,” public information officer Lauren Horwood said. “We will be in a position to say more in the near future.”

    After two years during which the Obama Administration said they wouldn’t move aggressively against medical marijuana providers abiding by state law, the federal government started cracking down earlier this year with threatening letters from U.S. Attorneys to governors and legislators in most of the 16 states which allow medicinal cannabis.

    The effort to shutter California dispensaries is part of a multi-pronged assault by the federal government on the shops.

    Banks are cutting business ties with dispensaries, possibly under federal pressure and undoubtedly due to federal banking rules as they pertain to “illegal drugs.” On a related front, the Internal Revenue Service is investigating the finances of some California dispensaries including Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, alleging the shop owes millions of dollars in back taxes.

    Federal tax rules prohibit medical marijuana dispensaries from taking tax deductions normally available to other businesses. The federal government issued Harborside — the largest collective in the country, with more than 90,000 patients — with a $2.4 million tax bill this week, reports Nick Schou at OC Weekly.

    “If you can’t declare your business expenses on your taxes, and if you can’t open a bank account, how can you run a business?” asked one San Francisco attorney specializing in medical marijuana.

    ”If we don’t get a change in the IRS ruling, every legal, regulated distributor of cannabis in the United States is going to have to go out of business, and patients will be forced back into the hands of criminals,” said Steve DeAngelo, executive director at Harborside.

    “It’s just the latest evidence that despite early signs from the Obama administration that it wasn’t going to interfere with the right of states to allow the medical use of marijuana, nothing could be farther from the truth,” Schou wrote at the OC Weekly. “And assuming the feds make good on this latest threat, it could mean the end of medical marijuana as we know it.”

    “I think the feds are seeing how much land, especially in northern California, is being used for marijuana growing, and realize they can start seizing these properties and turn it into federal land,” Christopher Glew, who represents collectives in Orange County and elsewhere, told OC Weekly. “And the thing with federal forfeiture is that it can take two or three years before it goes to court, but meanwhile you lose all your property.”

    Glew said that the medical marijuana industry is “either going to the grave or it will have to be reinvented.”

    William Panzer, an Oakland attorney who coauthored Prop 215, the 1996 ballot initiative that legalized medical marijuana in California, said the days are numbered for the current model of marijuana dispensaries, report Andrew Becker and Michael Montgomery at California Watch.

    “It’s an effective strategy because they’re basically saying to landlords. ‘If you don’t do this, then you lose your property, and we could also come after you criminally,’ ” Panzer said.

    “Although reprehensible and cowardly, the strategy does at least offer a useful guideline as to who will be at risk,” said Dale Gieringer of California NORML. “The memorandum sets thresholds that make investigations more likely to be prosecuted.

    “Those include distributors caught with at least 200 kilograms of marijuana, including distribution near schools, playgrounds and colleges; cultivators with gardens of at least 1,000 plants that are not on federal land and at least 500 plants on federal or tribal land or where there is significant damage; and dispensaries that sell more than 200 kilograms or 1,000 plants annually,” Gieringer said.

    “Prosecutors are also looking for provable ties to international drug-trafficking organizations or instances in which marijuana is distributed outside of California,” Gieringer said. “The memorandum also outlines guidelines for civil forfeitures for those who indirectly participate — like landlords of property owners — in marijuana operations.”

    There’s no word on whether the federal government plans to raid and shut down its own medical marijuana farm in Oxford, Mississippi, or arrest its own federal employees for distributing medical marijuana to the four surviving Compassionate Investigational New Drug cannabis patients who have received pot from them for the past 30 years.
    Marijuana is, after all, still against federal law.
     
  2. #2 MrMcGibblets, Oct 7, 2011
    its a shame too, when this country was founded State law superseded Federal law... my how far we've fallen

    why can't they just leave people the fuck alone?!?!?

    [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muHg86Mys7I]The Philosophy of Liberty - YouTube[/ame]
     
  3. #3 TrichomeBling, Oct 7, 2011
  4. #4 WildWill, Oct 7, 2011
    I actually think this is a bunch of fear-mongering by the DEA/FEDS. I'm not sure how much of this is actually true because I've already read some conflicting reports on this.
     
  5. #5 JoeRogansBong, Oct 7, 2011
    Seriously a group of old men are fucking you over. AT WHAT POINT do us the people raise up and stop this complete bullshit.
     
  6. #6 MrMcGibblets, Oct 7, 2011

    care to share some links?

    im not disagreeing, just curious myself... and how juvenile are these 50+ yo people that need to incite fear in the people they are elected to represent...

    long gone are the days when they were public servants...
     
  7. #7 ToTheDome, Oct 7, 2011
  8. #8 TrichomeBling, Oct 7, 2011
    theres a bunch of marijuana petitions on there if cannabis day isnt your thing, please check it out and spread the word
     
  9. #9 mikeyman, Oct 7, 2011
    i wrote the white house told him i won't be voting for him if this all goes down
    i thought the DEA was gunna make a statement today?
     
  10. #10 sourApple408, Oct 7, 2011
    Lol the can't find the Meth labs so they finally said fuck it back to mmj
     
  11. #11 justcallmesir, Oct 7, 2011
    they are supposed to make a statement today however i can't find a channel on tv nor a website online that can give up to the min info on whats going on. supposedly its all going down in Sac.

    anyone have a link or a channel where this can be seen?
     
  12. #12 An Ita, Oct 7, 2011
    Patients in all states, I suggest we stop trying to salvage these MMJ programs because they are not going to let you have safe and consistent access to medicine.
    Just stop wasting effort on saving these programs, because you'll just be doing it all over again next year when there are new attempts to limit patient's access to medicine.

    Let's put all of our efforts into legalization.
    Legal bud for all adults means safe access for patients.
    As long as it is illegal we are going to be fighting this uphill battle to get sick people some meds.
    Legalize it.
     
  13. #13 justcallmesir, Oct 7, 2011
  14. #14 angusbeef, Oct 7, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 7, 2011
    Don't get caught up in your own bias...

    I think a lot of you miss the forest through the trees.

    Read some of these statements from that article provided above.

    "Large commercial operations cloak their moneymaking activities in the guise of helping sick people when in fact they are helping themselves. Our interest is in enforcing federal criminal law, not prosecuting seriously sick people and those who are caring for them. We are making these announcements together today so that the message is absolutely clear that commercial marijuana operations are illegal under federal law, and that we will enforce federal law."

    They are spot on with some of them.

    I know this probally isn't going to be the most popular opinion considering the audience but...

    As a patient living in a state which accepts "donation" for medicine at a ridiculous prevailing rate of $50 per eighth I say go gettem.

    It's time to take the greed out of the herb, but full out legalization, is gonna be the only way.
     
  15. #15 wanderingway, Oct 7, 2011

    I think you missed as well. "45 days to shut down dispensaries or they will face criminal prosecution and have their property confiscated."

    10th amendment - read it

    Prop 215 passed

    Democracy -
    a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections

    What the Government is doing is illegal period. They will go ahead and start wars and force democracy in foreign countries but cannot abide by their own principles. "Cloaking money making businesses in the guise of helping sick people" oh what nursing homes can exploit these same values but just because its cannabis they can't have a legitimate business? This isn't even what its about that any way, this is a response from the Government because -

    a: Politicians can never admit they are wrong, especially admitting that cannabis is not harmful if used properly.

    b: Government always hates competition.

    c: Corporations run America and dictate policies. How is a pharmaceutical company going to make money if cannabis is already legal?



    Our constitutional rights along with our free will is being violated. Americans are being turned on one another and many not even recognizing their rights being lost. This is a long rant but I didn't serve my country so the Government can fuck its people.
     
  16. #16 angusbeef, Oct 8, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 8, 2011
    I agree.

    The course of action is not correct as usual but the government has at least, recognized a very real issue.

    I think patients should be much closer to the source.

    That one dispensary served 90,000 people? Wtf, yah, make them pony up 2.4 million.... thats a drop in the bucket to that operation? Should MMJ be big profit, big corporation just like the ones that run america today or should we be more like canada with 3 in every closet.

    IDK, I don't want to get caught up playing devils advocate to the cause but IMO its gotten outrageous.

    When I see people I went to highschool with driving land rovers and benz, postings on face book about dropping $1700 at the club last Friday, revenue I know came from the state MMJ program.

    It makes me SICK!
     
  17. #17 sparqit, Oct 8, 2011
    18 as of right now... haha!

    Im sure everyone who signs immediately goes on the SSSS extra security screenings ... just because. :hello:
     
  18. #18 sparqit, Oct 8, 2011
    I still say California is just going to become its own country. They along with what like 15 other states voted for medical marijuana and it passed. Now the govt is shutting them all down and taking that away from the people? Hows that not oppression? People need to wake up. So what if you dont smoke pot or dont think its medicine, other people do, and now theyre being violated by the govt... what if they come after you next? Stand up for your God given rights!
     
  19. #19 wanderingway, Oct 8, 2011
    [​IMG]
     
  20. #20 floating_by, Oct 8, 2011
    It couldn't have anything to do with the fact the government and pharma are looking to control the industry? Have a patent on CBD as medicine? Nah! They're looking out for us so we aren't charged too much for medicine. Oh wait... :rolleyes:

    By the way, what Federal services did harborside benefit from that they should pay $2.4 million in taxes to the fed? Isn't the idea of government to fund necessary expenses and public service? And it's a shame that money is turned around used to put people out of business. Surely, if criminal doing is PROVEN, then action is taken. However, just like the CSA/Interstate Commerce automatically assumes transport over state lines without investigation if a given arbitrary threshhold amount is involved, shouldn't the role of police be to investigate and prove wrongdoing first by dispensaries? Ya know, that whole "innocent until proven guilty thing?" And that land owners should be facing forfeiture should have you doing your best Paul Revere and yelling "the mother fucking redcoats are HERE!"

    No, these are NOT good things.
     
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