Pubdate: Thu, 14 Jun 2012
Source: Sacramento News & Review (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://newsreview.com/sacto/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/540
Author: Nick Miller

DEA PULLS SHENANIGANS, RAIDS SAC'S MOST POPULAR POT CLUB.

After Shenanigans, DEA Raids Sacramento's Most Popular Pot Club

You'd freak out, too, if some two-dozen Drug Enforcement Agency
officers showed up in your driveway. Which is what happened on Monday
morning, June 11, in just off El Camino Avenue in the parking lot of
medical-marijuana dispensary River City Phoenix. Agents prepped
assault rifles and battering rams and fit into SWAT gear. And soon,
they were ready for action.

Just not at River City Phoenix. Instead of looting the club they
geared up near, agents got back in their cars, drove a mile down the
road and raided a different city dispensary: El Camino Wellness Center.

The DEA may not have a sense of humor, but, apparently, the agency is
not below messing with people.

So went the latest action in the federal government's nine-month-old
cannabis-crackdown effort. Neighbors say the DEA backed a U-Haul-type
truck up to El Camino Wellness' front door around 6 a.m. Officers
executed a search warrant at the dispensary, and Sacramento police
blocked off the driveway for crowd-control purposes. Simultaneous
raids also occurred at the homes of El Camino Wellness Center
executive directors.

By 10 a.m., at least five medical-cannabis activists arrived to
protest the raid. Neighbors, including Lou Fernandez, who owns a
moving company next door on Connie Drive, was surprised. "They didn't
bother me," he said. "A lot of folks who went in there look like they
needed [marijuana]. A lot of seniors."

El Camino Wellness had a lot of customers, period. All California
dispensaries are required to operate not for profit, but sales data
from the dispensary acquired by SN&R revealed gross receipts up to of
$20,000 in a single day, with upward of 70 percent profit margin on
cannabis.

That said, running a dispensary isn't cheap. There's a 4 percent city
tax, plus requirements to make property upgrades and purchase
security. The latter costs might explain the precipitous drop in
burglaries and assaults within 1,000 feet of El Camino Wellness since
the club opened in September 2008, according to recent Sacramento
Police Department crime data.

A press release from El Camino Wellness Center on Monday night
insisted the club was operating within the guidelines of the
California attorney general, and reiterated a commitment to
compassion, citing its free chiropractic, massage and counseling
services. Dispensary ownership was unavailable for comment, as was the
property's landlord.

Some protesters on Monday said the raid was simply retaliation. El
Camino Wellness Center, along with cannabis patient Ryan Landers, sued
the federal government back in November over its latest crackdown. A
judge threw out the case in February.
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