Cities Balk as Federal Law on Marijuana Is Enforced
,Faced with growing chaos in the state’s medical
marijuana industry, this city in Northern California passed an
ordinance in 2008 that meticulously detailed, over 11 pages, how the
drug could be grown and sold here.
Humboldt Medical Supply, a dispensary here in Humboldt County
regarded as a law-abiding model that has given free cannabis to
elderly patients, became the first to obtain a permit in 2010. The
Sai Center, whose owner has a history of flouting city regulations
and was described by the mayor as running his business “purely for
profit,” was rejected last year.
Humboldt Medical quickly closed shop after federal prosecutors began
shuttering hundreds of dispensaries in October in one of the biggest
crackdowns on medical marijuana since its legalization in California
in 1996. The Sai Center’s owner moved locations and has defied the
authorities by continuing to operate, most recently out of his
mother’s house. City officials, afraid of becoming targets
themselves of the prosecutors, have suspended the applications of
two other dispensaries that were expected to be approved.
“We feel the federal government’s actions have had a very negative
effect,” said Mayor Michael Winkler. “We’re very upset with their
actions.”
Like their counterparts in many other municipalities that have
regulated medical marijuana on their own, Arcata officials say the
federal offensive has brought renewed chaos to the medical marijuana
industry. The federal authorities, their critics say, have
indiscriminately targeted good and bad dispensaries, sometimes
putting the best ones out of business. The crackdown, the critics
say, has made it difficult for qualified Californians to obtain
marijuana for medical use and is just pushing buyers into the black
market.
Acting on federal law, which considers all possession and
distribution of marijuana to be illegal, California’s four United
States attorneys, working with the Drug Enforcement Administration
and the Internal Revenue Service, have shut down at least 500
dispensaries statewide in the last eight months by sending letters
to operators, landlords and local officials, warning of criminal
charges and the seizure of assets. The United States attorneys said
the dispensaries were violating not only federal law but also state
law, which requires operators to be primary caregivers to their
customers and distribute marijuana only for medical purposes.
“We’re not concerned in prosecuting patients or people who are
legitimate caregivers for ill people, who are in good faith
complying with state law,” said Benjamin B. Wagner, the United
States attorney for the Eastern District of California. “But we are
concerned about large commercial operations that are generating huge
amounts of money by selling marijuana in this essentially
unregulated free-for-all that exists in California.”
Because of the lack of regulation, it is difficult to know precisely
how many dispensaries have shut down or even how many were in
operation before the start of the current crackdown. But figures
provided by three of California’s four United States attorneys
totaled more than 500: “dozens” in Mr. Wagner’s district; 217 in the
Southern District, in San Diego; and more than 200 in the Central
District, in Los Angeles. Officials in the three districts say they
have succeeded in putting out of business more than 90 percent of
the dispensaries they have identified so far.
Declining to release figures was the United States attorney for the
Northern District. The district includes San Francisco and Oakland,
the two cities that have led the fight against the current federal
offensive, as well as Arcata and other municipalities long known for
their tolerance of marijuana.
Dan Rush, an official at the United Food and Commercial Workers
Union, said about 650 out of the 1,400 marijuana dispensaries that
existed last October have ceased operating. The union represents
between 600 and 800 members working in statewide dispensaries, he
said.
Except for San Francisco and Oakland, the roughly 50 municipalities
with medical marijuana ordinances have suspended the administration
of dispensaries, said Kris Hermes, a spokesman for Americans for
Safe Access, a group that promotes access to medical marijuana.
[This was misstated by the New York Times. With the exception of a small handful of localities, almost all of the more than 50 local dispensary ordinances are viable and fully functional, despite the federal crackdown.] Though federal authorities have periodically gone after dispensaries
since California became the first state to legalize marijuana for
medical use, Mr. Hermes described the current crackdown as
“unprecedented” because of its “intensity” and because of the number
of dispensaries closed and federal agencies involved.
Prosecutors denied that legitimate patients were being driven to
illegal sellers.
“Most often the individuals who are visiting these places have
obtained sham doctor recommendations for really no purpose other
than to engage in the recreational use of marijuana,” Laura E.
Duffy, the United States attorney for the Southern District, said of
the dispensaries. “To the extent that blatant distribution of
marijuana is not available in commercial businesses throughout
California, certainly in this district, I think that’s a good
thing.”
Here in Arcata — a city of 17,000 people in a region of the state
known as the Emerald Triangle, where the illegal marijuana trade has
long been tolerated and is a pillar of the local economy —
government officials worried that counterparts in neighboring
communities had received letters warning them against regulating the
medical marijuana industry.
“They said they could prosecute city officials and staff,” said
Larry Oetker, a city official who oversaw the regulations on the
dispensaries. “That was a dramatic change.”
Under the ordinance here, the city approved the permit of Humboldt
Medical Supply, an “exemplary” dispensary according to Mayor
Winkler. Greg Allen, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union
who represented the dispensary, said its staff included a nurse and
rigorously screened customers to ensure that they had legitimate
conditions that required treatment with marijuana.
By contrast, the city rejected the application of the Sai Center,
which has violated city regulations, including advertising its
services and letting customers mill around its premises. Its owner,
Stephen Gasparas, exhibited “an extremely hostile attitude” at city
hearings for his application, the mayor said.
“He was very contemptuous of any government regulation of this at
all,” the mayor said. “He seemed really to be in it for the money.
If he also had any commitments to patients, I wasn’t aware of that.”
But federal prosecutors sent warning letters to the owners of the
two dispensaries, as well as their landlords, citing their proximity
to a ballpark, city officials said. Humboldt Medical Supply, which
had been struggling financially, ceased operating. But Mr. Gasparas
moved five blocks away to a house owned by his mother and quickly
resumed business.
On a recent afternoon, an employee was working out of a single room
in the back of the blue, single-story house, sitting behind a large
desk, surrounded by marijuana plants and three large safes. Through
the employee, Mr. Gasparas declined to be interviewed.
The employee, who declined to give his name but said he was majoring
in botany at Humboldt State University here, said the federal
offensive was “all political.” The dispensary, he said, was helping
the ill who would otherwise buy marijuana from “an unsafe source.”
He said he himself first obtained a doctor’s approval to use medical
marijuana because he had anxiety.
At the Humboldt Patient Resource Center, one of the two dispensaries
whose application was delayed because of the federal crackdown, a
steady stream of customers — young men but also middle-aged men and
women — came in to buy various strains of marijuana, including those
called Blue Dream, Lemon Diesel and Oh Sour Head, at $40 for an
eighth of an ounce.
Mariellen Jurkovich, the dispensary’s director, said she had spent
$200,000 to comply with the city’s marijuana ordinance. Federal
prosecutors had not sent her a warning letter, but she remained
worried.
“Even if I eventually get a permit from the city, I don’t think I’m
protected as long as the federal law doesn’t change,” she said. “I
don’t know who they’ll go after and why.”