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 OneMoreRobot3021
punky jewster
Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 56,833
Loc: new york shitty
Last seen: 2 days, 10 hours
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 DEA targets landlords of pot outlets
#7188889 - 07/17/07 04:25 PM (1 year, 5 months ago) |
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-potlords17jul17,0,3296426.story?coll=la-home-center
About 150 L.A. owners are told they could face jail and lose properties rented to dispensaries.
By Eric Bailey, Times Staff Writer
July 17, 2007
Raising the stakes in the federal government's war against medical marijuana, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has warned more than 150 Los Angeles landlords that they risk arrest and the loss of their properties if they continue renting to cannabis dispensaries.
The two-page letter sent last week by Timothy J. Landrum, DEA special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office, has whipped up worries among landlords and dispensary operators in a region that has seen a proliferation of the businesses in the last two years.
"I'm devastated," said Lisa Sawoya, who left her lucrative job selling high-tech hospital equipment to open a dispensary 18 months ago in Hollywood. "My landlord believes in cannabis as medicine. But they're taking the letter very seriously. So I'll be closing my doors at the end of this month."
Sarah Pullen, a DEA spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said the purpose of the letters was to "educate" property owners at risk because they were housing marijuana dispensaries.
"By renting their property to individuals violating fed drug laws, they are in and of themselves violating federal law," Pullen said. "These are definitely meant to serve as a notice. What might happen as to the continuing investigations, we'll just have to see."
The DEA move has focused entirely on Los Angeles. Activists suspect that the logistics and timing — more than a decade after state voters legalized medical marijuana with the passage of Proposition 215 — is intended to thin the ranks of Los Angeles dispensaries on the eve of new city regulations. A proposed city ordinance would cap and regulate the number of outlets, which now number more than 400.
Medical marijuana activists say most of the landlords take the threat seriously and have asked the dispensaries to move out.
"Raiding dispensaries and arresting patients hasn't worked to end medical marijuana, so the DEA is trying a new tactic and claiming a new victim in this war," said Steph Sherer of Americans for Safe Access, a group that supports medical marijuana.
Dale Gieringer of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws said the DEA crackdown won't stop patients' marijuana use. Instead, he said, they could be driven to find drugs in the illegal market, potentially putting themselves at risk.
In recent years, courts have upheld the federal government's ability to seize assets. After the DEA raided the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center in 2001, the federal government seized more than $300,000 that West Hollywood had loaned the center to purchase its building.
Gieringer said the most likely outcome of Landrum's letter would be numerous evictions and shutdowns followed by a few select forfeiture prosecutions "to scare remaining landlords."
Hap Kent, who runs Therapeutic Medicinal Health Resources in Sherman Oaks, said he hoped that the DEA would consider letting dispensaries operate for another six months, so patients weren't immediately pushed out on the streets.
"I don't want to put my landlord in jeopardy. I refuse to do that," said Kent, whose dispensary serves patients with AIDS, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries and other serious afflictions. "All we want is an amicable amount of time."
Though the possibility of eviction looms for many of the dispensaries, Kent sees a possible silver lining — a political outcry that could get the state to finally respond to voters' wishes and take on the role of directly supplying medical marijuana.
"That's the way it should have been from the beginning," he said.
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The Drug Policy Alliance  Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
"The psychedelic experience - it has a tremendous force to revivify the spirit, particularly because it is not an ideology. It is not something someone 'figured out.' It is an EXPERIENCE. And this is important to bear in mind." - McKenna.
"We're not mad, we're just doing what we want. You rigid thinkers can't recognize the healthy sanity of that." - Harlan Ellison, "Crackpots"
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simplystoned
Tree Wizard
Registered: 03/28/07
Posts: 782
Loc: K-Town up in this biache
Last seen: 1 year, 2 months
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So... State laws don't really count?
Did this happen today? I think they've already done this, I read about it somewhere very recently...
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"Your pain is the breaking of the shell which encloses your understanding. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided
by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips,
has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter
has moistened with His own sacred tears." - Kahlil Gibran
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funknsoul
Funkin' Soul
Registered: 08/03/06
Posts: 134
Last seen: 1 year, 1 month
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Re: DEA targets landlords of pot outlets [Re: simplystoned]
#7188951 - 07/17/07 04:39 PM (1 year, 5 months ago) |
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State laws only count if they don't contradict federal law. That's what all this fight is about. Ridiculousssssss
Edited by funknsoul (07/17/07 05:13 PM)
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jeverden
Mushroom Hunter
Registered: 05/10/06
Posts: 1,126
Last seen: 3 days, 23 hours
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Re: DEA targets landlords of pot outlets [Re: funknsoul]
#7189848 - 07/17/07 08:07 PM (1 year, 5 months ago) |
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More bullshit from the dea. We all need to stand up!
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All of my posts are purely fictional and for hypothetical purposes.
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