Pubdate: Thu, 22 Dec 2005
Source: Los Angeles City Beat (CA)
Copyright: 2005 Southland Publishing
Contact:  http://www.lacitybeat.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2972
Note: Also prints Los Angeles Valley Beat, often with similar 
content, and the same contact information.
Author: David Rolland
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

'ALL I DO IS SELL WEED TO SICK PEOPLE'

DEA Raids 13 Marijuana Dispensaries In San Diego

Medical marijuana activists gathered in the University Heights area 
of San Diego on Monday, December 12, furious about raids on pot 
dispensaries and vowing not to back down in the face of what they 
called federal law-enforcement intimidation.

Earlier that day, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration led a 
multi-agency assault on 13 dispensaries in San Diego County, 
handcuffing those inside the shops and confiscating products, 
computers, and patient records.

Tony Amarine, 32, who runs Utopia, an Ocean Beach dispensary, said 
the aggressive manner in which heavily armed agents came bursting 
into his shop made him feel like they must have thought it was Al 
Qaeda's headquarters: "Guns to my forehead, handcuffed, down on the 
ground." He pulled up a pant leg and revealed a bloody scrape he said 
he suffered when manhandled.

DEA Special Agent Misha Piastro, an agency spokesperson, said he was 
unaware of any injury incidents during the raids. The actions came, 
he said, after several instances in which dispensaries sold to 
undercover agents without prescriptions or I.D., as required by law. 
"One of the things being lost here is that trafficking in marijuana 
is still illegal under state law," Piastro said.

Eight to 10 agents raided Utopia, Amarine estimated. Once the place 
was secured, he said, one agent opened an envelope and began to read 
its contents, a list of things they were searching for--"about a 
thousand things," he said, adding that they left after three or four hours.

"All I do is sell weed to sick people," Amarine said, vowing to open 
again on Tuesday and then sue the federal government.

Utopia serves 2,000 to 3,000 patients, he said, including 150 who are 
terminally ill. "They're scared," he said. "They're not going to get 
medicine. They're gonna go back to the streets ... or they're going 
to go without."

"Anne," a 45-year-old patient who declined to give her real name, 
said she favors pot over prescription drugs to help her battle 
fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition that causes pain in 
muscles, ligaments, and tendons and affects mostly women. In addition 
to relieving some of the pain, marijuana relaxes her muscles, eases 
her anxiety, and helps her sleep.

If she can't get pot at a dispensary, Anne said, "I'll exhaust my 
existing resources [and then] I'll buy it back on the streets. That's 
what Prop. 215 was trying to eliminate."

San Diego Police Department cooperated with the raids. Assistant 
Police Chief Cheryl Meyers said, "We were convinced; the evidence was 
there" that each of the 13 locations raided were acting outside the 
boundaries of Prop. 215 and the city's medical-marijuana guidelines. 
She said state and city laws do not allow for caregivers, which is 
what the dispensaries are supposed to be, to make a profit. "They're 
jacking up the prices so steep [that] they're making a profit off of 
the illness" of their patients, "and they were very loose in who they 
sold the marijuana to."

She added that in most cases, the dispensaries had more pot on hand 
than city law allows. The guidelines allow caregivers to have two 
pounds of pot and 48 plants. Most dispensaries had more, she said. 
One had psychedelic mushrooms; several had hash (although, she 
acknowledged that the police are struggling with whether or not hash 
- - concentrated THC, the active ingredient in pot - is allowed.

Of particular concern, Meyers said, was a man apprehended in the 
parking lot of a Loma Portal dispensary carrying two pounds of pot, 
$2,600 in cash, and a firearm. Another guy coming into a Kearny Mesa 
dispensary had two pounds of pot which, he said, he picked up in Palm 
Springs and had heard he could unload it at the dispensary for $3,000 
and an $800 profit. That's the sort of activity Meyers said San Diego 
doesn't want.

As for the patients who count on dispensaries, Meyers said, "they'll 
have to find a caregiver that fits within the guidelines of Prop. 215."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman