Once again, government servants have told Americans that marijuana ranks right up there with heroin. The Drug Enforcement Administration ruled on July 8 that marijuana has “no accepted medical use” and will continue as a Schedule 1 drug — the most forbidden category. The DEA is a law enforcement bureaucracy, the Appeal-Democrat of Marysville observes in this refreshingly blunt editorial. The medical opinions of law enforcement bureaucrats should be of little interest. We do not ask cops to make laws; we pay cops to enforce the laws established by constitutions or enacted by the people [...]
What is it that makes marijuana more frightening to the federal government than cocaine or morphine? The Drug Enforcement Administration has steadfastly, over decades, listed marijuana as a Schedule I drug, meaning that it has no medical value and that the potential for abuse is high. Cocaine and morphine, far more dangerous and habit-forming, are listed as Schedule II because they have some medical value. Last week the DEA ruled once again, a decade after it made the same decision, that marijuana is a potentially dangerous drug without known medical benefits. During the intervening 10 [...]
Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies have been eradicating marijuana in Laytonville and south of Ukiah in the past week. At least two recent cases involved water diversion, bringing in state Department of Fish and Game wardens, Tiffany Revelle reports in the Ukiah Daily Journal. Arro Nikolai Kanavle, 38, of Laytonville, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of cultivating marijuana for sale and vandalism with property damage valued at more than $50,000 at his home in the 49000 block of Stivers Road in Laytonville. The investigation involved water diversion from a nearby creek, according to [...]
As the United States Attorney in Los Angeles in the late 1980s, Robert C. Bonner prosecuted Mexican drug cartel members and conspirators in the ruthless torture and murder of a U.S. drug agent, Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. At the time, he vowed: “The United States government will not let the murder of an agent by a terrorist organization go unavenged.” These days, Bonner is refusing let a California ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use go unchallenged, Peter Hecht writes in “Weed Wars.” In an interview for an article in last Friday’s Sacramento Bee, Bonner argued [...]
SANTA CRUZ – By his count, Don Ivey, 56, should have been dead six times by now. The artisan and former competitive in-line skater survived both a stabbing and a scuba diving accident as a young man. Fifteen years ago, he was diagnosed with AIDS and hepatitis C. Five years ago, he crashed a motorcycle, landing face down, partially paralyzed, in an ocean bay. Recently, just 30 days removed from his second emergency room visit for internal bleeding and vomiting blood, Ivey walked up a terraced marijuana garden that is a medicinal and spiritual refuge [...]
For decades, drug agents and illicit marijuana growers have engaged in a delicate game of cat and mouse in the rugged, remote forests of the North Coast. Authorities would swoop in to destroy a crop, only to find that the growers had faded into the wilderness. But that predictable pattern has been shattered this summer in violent confrontations that have left five suspected marijuana growers dead in four Northern California counties in the past seven weeks. It is an unparalleled level of violence in the 20-year history of coordinated marijuana eradication efforts, Glenda Anderson writes [...]
After Mendocino County passed a new ordinance to allow medical marijuana growers to cultivate up to 99 plants, Joy Greenfield was the first to sign up. According to the Ukiah Daily Journal, she purchased 25 zip ties from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department as part of a county program to regulate local medicinal cultivation by labeling pot plants to ensure residents don’t exceed growing limits. She was in the process of purchasing 74 more ties, Peter Hecht writes in “Weed Wars.” But this month, federal drug agents swooped onto Greenfield’s property, in the Chicken Ridge [...]
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A record 223,555 marijuana plants worth nearly a half-billion dollars were pulled from 20 Tuolumne County pot plantations in the past two weeks by a team of local, state and federal officers. The street value is estimated at $447 million based on each plant yielding a pound of marijuana valued at $2,000 a pound, according to Sgt. Jeff Wilson of the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Department. Wilson said Friday it was by far the largest haul in county history. He couldn’t pinpoint the next highest total, but a 2007 operation yielded 26,000 plants. Over the past [...]
Seven Sacramento-area residents were arrested this week as a result of two indoor marijuana growing investigations by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the Elk Grove Police Department. The two-day enforcement operation resulted in seizure of six indoor operations, more than 4,300 plants, approximately $82,600 in U.S. currency and one vehicle, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration news release reported by the Sacramento Bee. In November 2009, the Elk Grove Police Department and the DEA’s Sacramento District Office identified a suspected marijuana cultivator, Tac Che, 50, of Sacramento. According to the affidavit supporting the criminal [...]
Sometimes it’s helpful to shift focus from California to other states, if only to see the same issues from a fresh perspective. From the Fort Collins Coloradoan comes this excellent editorial, which laments the federal government’s mixed signals about whether dispensaries risk federal prosecution. (Special kudos to the writer for using “moratoria” correctly.) ============ Colorado communities face significant challenges as marijuana attempts to move from an underground drug to a legitimate medicinal business. Conflicting messages from the federal government aren’t helping. As the Coloradoan documented in a three-day series concluding today, medical marijuana dispensaries have [...]
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