Why Is the DEA Trying to Cover Up the Agency’s Medical Marijuana Raids?
http://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com
2012 Sept 14
Reason The Drug Enforcement Administration raided two
medical marijuana dispensaries in California [Wednesday]. The agency is now
refusing to disclose any details of the raid, according to Redding.com:
Federal drug agents Wednesday raided a pair of medical marijuana collectives in
Anderson and Mount Shasta.
DEA agents served federal search warrants at the Green Heart locations in both
cities, Special Agent Casey Rettig said.
However, documents relating to the warrants and the warrants themselves are
sealed in federal court, Rettig said. She couldn’t provide a court case number.
Owner Gina Munday was notified by her alarm company Wednesday morning, thinking
someone had broken in, she said. The DEA officers had kicked in the door, she
said.
“They broke all the windows, vandalized the inside of the building and took all
of the medicine,” Munday said. “We were so surprised.”
As with dozens of other DEA raids on medical marijuana businesses, no one was
arrested at either dispensary, yet all documentation concerning the raid–the
warrant, inventory of seized assets, and the incident report–were sealed by
court order at the DEA and respective U.S. Attorney’s request.
This is all part of a strategy that dates back to at least 2009. It goes like
this: With permission from the U.S. Attorney’s office, the DEA raids a
dispensary, seizing marijuana but also cash and electronics; it makes no
arrests, but asks a judge to seal every document pertaining to the operation and
refuses to talk about it with the press. This has two effects: It implies that
an investigation is ongoing (even if it’s not); more perniciously, it makes it
difficult to learn where and how often these raids are happening.
Two years ago, when I worked at The Daily Caller, I did a comparison of local
reports of raids versus press releases from the DEA and U.S. Attorney’s offices.
Here’s what I found:
Late last week, DEA and FBI agents raided five medical marijuana dispensaries in
Nevada. In July, DEA agents raided the home of 65-year-old Mendocino County,
California, grower Joy Greenfield and confiscated plants, money, and her
computer. Also in July, DEA agents raided the home of a couple in Michigan who
were licensed by the state to use marijuana, as well as three medical marijuana
dispensaries in San Diego. In January and February of this year, the DEA raided
two medical marijuana research labs in Colorado.
In all of the above cases, the DEA and the U.S. Attorneys’ offices issued no
press releases and held no press conferences. The websites for DEA and the U.S.
Attorneys’ offices in Detroit, Denver, Northern California, and Los Angeles
(which also handles cases in Nevada) make no mention of the above dispensary
raids, but do feature news releases for raids, arrests, and investigations
involving harder drugs, as well marijuana trafficking, which is illegal in all
states.
According to Americans for Safe Access spokesman Kris Hermes, this is one of the
more notable differences at Obama’s DOJ, where Bush-appointee Michele Leonhart
is now Obama’s choice to run the Drug Enforcement Agency. “There was a time
under the Bush administration that [the DEA and U.S. Attorneys] were quite proud
of their attempts to undermine state marijuana laws,” Hermes told The Daily
Caller.
“Either these are rogue DEA agents and U.S. Attorneys operating in violation of
Holder’s memo, or the DEA and the DOJ want to be able to go about continuing a
policy of undermining state marijuana laws without drawing attention.”
While the lack of press releases and the use of sealed records are two different
issues, they go hand in hand. Sealing a record gives the DEA and the DOJ a
perfectly legitimate reason to say no comment to whoever raises questions about
these operations, even if the records are sealed on spurious grounds. Joy
Greenfield, mentioned above, was never arrested, yet the files surrounding her
case were sealed at the DEA’s request. Is the investigation into her grow
operation ongoing? Are there any charges pending against her? Was she involved
in a gang? The DEA won’t say–can’t say!–because her file was sealed by court
order shortly after her home was raided.
As a result, tax payers, dispensary owners, caregivers, and sick people are all
left in the dark about why these raids are happening, and more importantly, what
the DEA does with the assets it seizes.
“They know the raids aren’t popular with the public and that bringing people to
court provides more news hooks for the press to write about their extremely
unpopular activities,” says LEAP’s Tom Angell in an email.
“At the same time, they do these smash and grabs to try to intimidate the
industry out of existence. The career drug war bureaucrats at DEA are terrified
of the increasing public acceptance of legal, regulated and taxed marijuana
sales. They want to stop it before it’s too late and too many members of the
public see that medical marijuana centers improve public safety and
neighborhoods and decide that we should just legalize marijuana for adult use.”
And while I don’t know how the two might tie together, it’s interesting that at
the same time the DOJ is sealing records of raids (including warrants,
affidavits, incident reports, and inventories of seized items), FOIA denials at
the DEA have gone through the roof.
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