Pubdate: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 Source: Reuters (Wire) Copyright: 2002 Reuters Limited Author: Andrew Quinn U.S. AGENTS RAID CALIF. MEDICAL MARIJUANA CLUB SAN FRANCISCO, - U.S. agents raided a California medical marijuana club and arrested four people on Tuesday, provoking local protest as the Bush administration's top drug enforcement official arrived to defend his get-tough-on-drugs policy. Demonstrating that federal officials are determined to push prosecution of marijuana cases despite California's 1996 law legalizing the drug for certain medical purposes, Drug Enforcement Administration officers searched clubs and homes in San Francisco and surrounding communities, ordered one cannabis club shut down and made four arrests. DEA spokesman Richard Meyer said the crackdown targeted a marijuana-smuggling operation linking San Francisco area activists. "It pertains to smuggling and trafficking of marijuana and also some possible money laundering," Meyer said, adding that the investigation had been aided by the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Customs Service. The raids were condemned by San Francisco officials, who have been outspoken in support of the right of Californians to use marijuana to treat symptoms of anything from glaucoma to AIDS and cancer. "This is the federal government trying to make a point in opposition to the voters of California," San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan told a crowd of several hundred chanting protesters outside a hall where DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson was delivering a speech. "The voters should be outraged." Officials and club members said the raid on San Francisco's "Harm Reduction Center" cannabis club began early on Tuesday morning, and that agents ordered the building closed while removing hundreds of marijuana plants as well as computers and other equipment. The club's director, Richard Watts, was charged along with two associates, one of whom was arrested in Canada. Another man, James Halloran of Oakland, was arrested in a separate case and charged with cultivating hundreds of marijuana plants. "It's a travesty of American justice," said witness Eric Levy, standing outside the club's shuttered storefront. MORE RAIDS SHOULD BE EXPECTED Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman named to the DEA in August, said California should expect more federal sweeps against marijuana-distribution clubs. "The DEA must simply follow the law," Hutchinson said to jeers from an audience packed with medical marijuana advocates. "We don't make a judgment of use and abuse. We make a judgment of legal and illegal." Tuesday's crackdown marked the DEA's latest tough line in California, where voters in 1996 overwhelmingly approved Proposition 215 as the first law in the country legalizing medical marijuana use with a doctor's prescription. That state law was challenged by federal officials. In May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative that federal anti-drug laws do not permit legal distribution of marijuana as a "medical necessity" for seriously ill patients. The raid came on the same day that President George W. Bush unveiled in W ashington a new anti-drug strategy aimed at cutting use of illegal drugs by 10 percent over two years and 25 percent over five years. The Supreme Court's ruling against medical marijuana has been widely ignored in California, where a number of cannabis clubs have continued to operate with tacit permission from local authorities. But recently the DEA has taken a tougher line, moving against the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center in October and against the San Francisco "Harm Reduction Center" on Tuesday. Hutchinson said Tuesday's raid was not aimed at targeting individual medical marijuana users but rather "major traffickers" who supply the drug. He also vowed that federal drug officials would continue to accumulate information from the scientific community on the potential medical uses of smoked marijuana, noting that the DEA itself had approved one such study now underway at the University of California San Diego. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek