On June 22, federal drug narcos in San Francisco arrested 15 people in connection with a marijuana and ecstasy distribution ring that officials say was run from several of the city’s medi-pot dispensaries. The Wednesday raid was the culmination of a two-year undercover sting, code-named Operation Urban Harvest, officials told The New York Times. According to a federal indictment unsealed late last week, 19 people have been charged with conspiracy to grow and distribute marijuana over a four-year period, three were charged with possession with intent to distribute ecstasy, and two face money-laundering conspiracy charges, reports the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times. (Seven of the indicted individuals have not yet been arrested.) According to the feds, the group used three of the city’s medi-pot dispensaries as a front for their illegal trafficking activities.
U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan told reporters that the case was not an attack on medi-pot patients. “We’re not talking about ill people who may be using marijuana,” Ryan said. “We are talking about a criminal enterprise engaged in a widespread distribution of large amounts of marijuana and other drugs.” Still, that doesn’t mean Drug Enforcement Administration officials have any tolerance for medi-pot use, even if it has been legalized by California voters – after all, under federal law, which the DEA has a duty to enforce, medi-pot is illegal.
Earlier this month in the case of Angel Raich, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the right of federal narcos to raid and arrest seriously ill people using medi-pot in compliance with state law. Although Ryan told reporters that last week’s raids had “nothing to do” with the Raich case, medi-pot advocates think the timing of the raids is less than coincidental. “One fears this is the beginning of a massive federal crackdown to close the medical marijuana dispensaries currently serving California’s patient community,” said Keith Stroup, legal counsel for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “One hopes that common sense will yet prevail, and the tens of thousands of medical marijuana patients in California will not be forced to search for their medicine on the black market.” It looks like that’s exactly what will happen. That is, if the attitude of Javier Pena, the DEA’s special agent in charge in San Francisco, is in any way shared by his narco buddies: “Some of us in the public think they can disregard the courts and Congress on this matter,” Pena told the Los Angeles Times. “The DEA will not be among them.”Perry School Plan Under Fire
This article appears in July 1 • 2005.