Federal raid angers California medical-marijuana advocates

[Abja Roots]

Thought this was an interesting article.

Someone who was under 100 plants, worked with the city, had the patients, had the inspections, and seemingly did not profit much. It raises a few questions. He did have some profile from various media avenues.

So one can't help but wonder if this is indicative of what is to come, or if they are unwilling to dedicate the resources to raiding and prosecuting all the various outdoor farms. Perhaps they will only continue to target certain individuals who step into the light in a very public way.

It will also be interesting to see what happens when this goes to court.

REDWOOD VALLEY, Calif. -- REDWOOD VALLEY, Calif. The U.S. drug agents' vehicles rumbled past vineyards and cattle ranches, traversed winding roads through oak woodlands and cleared a gate marked with a sign: "Member, Mendocino Farm Bureau."

Camouflaged and heavily armed, Drug Enforcement Administration officers brought a battering ram to the door of Matthew Cohen and a chain saw to cut down his 99 marijuana plants earlier this month.

The raid on Cohen's Northstone Organics garden, which boasted of "farm direct" marijuana deliveries to medical users, has stoked a fierce debate over whether federal authorities sought to nullify California's most renowned local regulatory program for medical marijuana cultivation.

In Mendocino County and beyond, Cohen, 34, was applauded as a leader who worked with local officials to initiate a program in which the sheriff issues $50 per-plant zip ties, with serial numbers, to enforce 99-plant limits for growers with dispensary contracts or documentation that they serve medical marijuana patients.

In a county infamous for black market marijuana growing and trafficking and distrust of the government nearly 100 local pot farmers signed up for the oversight program in two years. They paid more than $8,000 in annual fees each to let the sheriff inspect their gardens, count their plants and enforce environmental standards and rules for fencing and security.

Other Northern California counties were looking to emulate the Mendocino County model. Now those efforts are in doubt. And locals fear the raid may send Mendocino's pot culture scurrying back to its illicit past.

"It's paranoia season up here right now," said Fran Harris, who with her husband, James Taylor Jones, runs a clothing store in the town of Laytonville and grows marijuana for medical users under the county-supervised program. "Matt (Cohen) may have been targeted to send a message. He was trying to promote doing it the right way. And the federal message is there is no right way."

Cohen, who helped organize a Mendocino medical marijuana trade association called MendoGrown, was the public face for local pot regulation. He was profiled in documentaries such as the PBS show "Frontline" and a special on Australian television.

Dale Gieringer, California director of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, said Mendocino's licensing and supervision of marijuana farmers was "the flagship program for outdoor regulation in the whole country, and probably the world."

But on Oct. 7, California's four U.S. attorneys declared a crackdown on the state's medical marijuana market.

San Francisco U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag said the government would target "significant drug traffickers ... involved in the commercial cultivation and distribution of marijuana." That day, authorities charged a North Hollywood dispensary accused of shipping hundreds of pounds of marijuana a month to New York and Pennsylvania, and a Los Angeles lawyer who was said to have raked in millions of dollars from pot gardens supplying marijuana stores.

"We are making this announcement ... to put to rest the notion that large medical marijuana businesses can shelter themselves under state law and operate without fear of federal enforcement," Haag said.

Marijuana activists didn't expect the next target would be Cohen, a philosophy major who dropped out of the University of Colorado and became part of the California medical cannabis movement.

He established himself among advocates by growing free pot and buying groceries for an Oakland woman with a brain tumor and seizures, Angel Raich. Cohen signed on as one of two "John Doe" caregivers in a case Raich took to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004. It ended with the high court affirming a federal ban on marijuana as medicine.

In Mendocino County, Cohen founded Northstone Organics, a farm and delivery service that supplied medical marijuana users in nine Bay Area counties and Los Angeles.

Cohen, who is critical of retail-style marijuana dispensaries, claimed to offer a true nonprofit model under state law. And he promised "sun-grown medical cannabis delivered discreetly to your door."

Federal authorities are scornful of pot deliveries. On Oct. 13, Cohen was indiscreetly greeted with a battering ram at his door.

"You don't have to knock it down. I'll open it," the tall, pony-tailed Cohen said he shouted to DEA agents. "And please don't shoot the dogs."

Cohen said officers handcuffed him and his wife, Courtenay, 31, demanding to know where he kept guns and cash. He said he had no weapons and just $5. They were restrained for hours as agents cut down and packed up his harvest-ready marijuana plants, Cohen said.

When he argued he was licensed by the county, Cohen said, one of the DEA agents told him the Mendocino program was "a sham."

DEA Special Agent Casey McEnry in San Francisco confirmed the raid occurred but declined to give details on the case or what prompted the raid. No charges have been filed.

Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman, notified of the raid shortly beforehand, defended local efforts to regulate medical marijuana cultivation. The county restricts medicinal growers to 25 plants per property but allows residents with 5 acres or more to apply for special permits to grow a maximum of 99 plants.

"I would clearly say that what Matt Cohen was doing was in full compliance with our ordinance. And he was not violating Proposition 215," the California medical marijuana law "under the interpretation we have," Allman said.

Weeks before the raid, Mendocino County Supervisor John McCowen and a sheriff's sergeant supervising the marijuana zip-tie program testified for the defense in a Sonoma County preliminary hearing for two of Cohen's drivers charged with transporting pot for sale. They were stopped on two days in 2010 with a total of 2.3 pounds of marijuana in bags for 35 registered medical users.

The Mendocino officials testified that Northstone was operating legally under their county's ordinance. Cohen and his lawyer say that infuriated Sonoma prosecutors. They suggested the neighboring county called the feds, triggering the raid on Northstone.

"The very day that they testified was the very day that the DEA did a flyover of Mr. Cohen's property," said William Panzer, a co-author of California's medical marijuana law and attorney for the two drivers, Daniel Harwood, 33, of Willits and Timothy Tangney, 29, of Lucerne. "Maybe that's a coincidence."

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/10/30/4017877/federal-raid-angers-california.html#ixzz1cJawvJaX

 

[AOD2012]

I really hope it isn't a preview of things to come. I just dont get how people who are obviously doing shit by the book continue to get fucked like this.


aod

 

[Private Joker]

I really hope it isn't a preview of things to come. I just dont get how people who are obviously doing shit by the book continue to get fucked like this.


aod

I don't think the Feds play by any book. They seem to just do what they want.

 

[Midnight]

This guy got his shit taken for one reason...He was too high profile, the squeaky wheel always gets the grease, he got the grease.

 

[IE2KS_KUSH]

Re: Federal raid angers California medical-marijuana advocates

Low hanging fruit.

 

[rick shaw]

On the dumb ass scale Cohen is right up there,alongside Lepp,Emery,Lee,DeAnglo,Martin,Norton bros,Scarmazzo...the list goes on.

 

[supermanlives]

nobody is safe from the feds. you aint in compliance with their laws.keep a low profile and dont register shit and make it easy for em.

 

[Grass Lands]

People need to wake the fuck up....the feds will start to come after anyone they can get their sites set on, plant count will not matter as the feds are broke and need your belongings...

I can see the headlines;
90yr old man in cali has house seized because his son grew pot 4000 miles away in NY

mark my words folks, it will only get worse before it gets better, and who's to say it will get better...best bet is to stay low and fly under the radar...

 

[highonmt]

Even out here in BFE we have hazmat suited jack booted thugs kicking in doors and seizing cars,houses, accounts. you name it. They even stole a friend of mines wife's jewelery right off her person, wedding and engagement rings, earrings and necklace...and she was just an employee sitting in the front office. Never got em back either...common thieves. We never kept any money in our company bank accounts maybe 100 tops and gave all our product away free of charge...donations encouraged...lol I think presenting yourself as a person of modest means and leasing places you grow is the only smart way to run a canna biz in this legal environment. Growing herb on your own high profile mendo ranchette is like hanging a elk next to your tent in hunting camp your just asking to be attacked...HM

 

[Grass Lands]

Even out here in BFE we have hazmat suited jack booted thugs kicking in doors and seizing cars,houses, accounts. you name it. They even stole a friend of mines wife's jewelery right off her person, wedding and engagement rings, earrings and necklace...and she was just an employee sitting in the front office. Never got em back either...common thieves. We never kept any money in our company bank accounts maybe 100 tops and gave all our product away free of charge...donations encouraged...lol I think presenting yourself as a person of modest means and leasing places you grow is the only smart way to run a canna biz in this legal environment. Growing herb on your own high profile mendo ranchette is like hanging a elk next to your tent in hunting camp your just asking to be attacked...HM

Yeah Brother...you hit the nail right on the head...

People need to realize it is not about the status/legality of cannabis, its all about the MONEY and how much they can steal/rob and intimidate the one that allow themselves to be intimidated...

 

[Yes4Prop215]

when prop215 was passed, and all these people started coming out of the woodwork, claiming they could legally grow and sell hundreds of thousands of dollars of pot...i basically compared them to the whack a mole game where you gotta hit the moles that poke their heads out...


these guys, even though i respect them for their courage to do so....chose to stick their heads out...northstone organics was very high profile, i have definately heard of them before and it peaked my interest. if it makes a fellow grower/broker curious as to how they are able to do this "legally" of course the cops would do so as well....even if they are operating legally, it makes sense they would get a compliance check..

why would the DEA, FBI waste time trying to dig up underground growers when they can just open a magazine and pick and choose a random dispensary..or go on thugtrader, craigslist and find a delivery service to raid...

also, congrats to mendo sheriff allman, one of the few guys out there still sticking up for his constituents. 25 per property is the way to go.....i got lots of friends in laytonville and none of them go above 25 for this reason, its the safest bet..

feds arent stupid...they know a 99 plant outdoor garden can easily gross a quarter million, if not half a million dollars a year in profit. THEY WANT THAT MONEY!! if you are just doing 25 plants and getting by, burying that extra cash instead of using it to buy full page advertisements in newspapers for your pot, you seriously should not have a problem...

 

[windrunner1]

It's a sad day when feds refuse to acknowledge a referendum by their own commader in chief.......power hungry fuckwads.

 

[windrunner1]

It's a sad day when feds refuse to acknowledge a referendum by their own commander in chief.......power hungry fuckwads.

 

[Grass Lands]

Anyone see the movie "American Gangster"...? Learn not to flash the cash, (i.e. cars, boats and houses) and your survival rate goes up considerably...and these days its all about survival.

 

[Kaptain_Kronic]

do people in this line of work still do it for trivial things such as cars boats and much too large houses?

shame... i do what i do to further the movement and remove the word "drug" from any conversation mary jane comes up in. as long as i have enough to smoke and make enough cash to get by, im a happy man.

 

[rootfingers]

My entry to the cynical contest: A pg+e lobbiest idea. Big corp, push em back indoors and the feds just take their cut, 'Everybody' wins.

 

[Kaptain_Kronic]

i dont see why the feds should get a cut at all.

once apon a time in this world you could make a living all on your own without shelling out money for paper with "permission" to do something, esp with the risk of it being ignored and your shit taken.

just let me smoke my shit and grow it in peace.

 

[weeddaddy50]

maybe some do

maybe some do

But that is not me.

do people in this line of work still do it for trivial things such as cars boats and much too large houses?

shame... i do what i do to further the movement and remove the word "drug" from any conversation mary jane comes up in. as long as i have enough to smoke and make enough cash to get by, im a happy man.

 

[RomulusUSA]

i dont see why the feds should get a cut at all.

once apon a time in this world you could make a living all on your own without shelling out money for paper with "permission" to do something, esp with the risk of it being ignored and your shit taken.

just let me smoke my shit and grow it in peace.

I think you should pay income tax on profits, as you would any other legit biz. I see zero reason for special certification etc, it's a plant damnit!!

 

[mrcreosote]

Be careful Mister Blue, this phase you're going through,
Can lead you nowhere else, but to disaster.
Excuse us while we grin, you've worn our patience thin.
It's time to show you who's your master.
What will it take, to whip you into line?
A broken heart?
A broken head?
It can be arranged.
It can be arranged.

Mr. Blue- Tom Paxton

And... That's all Folks.