Federal officials say the pot clubs raided Wednesday were actually fronts using medical use of marijuana for good, old-fashioned drug dealing and money laundering.
This would seem to counter some fears — for now, at least — that in light of a Supreme Court ruling these raids signalled the opening salvo in a crackdown on people who truly use marijuana for medical purposes. Details on what this case involved, according to the New York Times:
Federal authorities said Thursday that they had cracked the biggest case ever involving the use of medical marijuana dispensaries in California as a cover for international drug dealing and money laundering, which they said extended to Canada and countries in Asia.
“This organization had been operating for over four years,” Javier F. Peña, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in San Francisco, said at a news conference. “It is now dismantled.”
In court documents unsealed here, the federal authorities accused a 33-year-old San Francisco man, Vince Ming Wan, of leading a multimillion-dollar operation in the trafficking of marijuana and Ecstasy that used three medical marijuana clubs in the city as a front.
If these folks also dabbled in Esctasy, it would certainly lend credence to the allegations that they were exploiting the claim of medical marijuana use to run a traditional illicit drug business. MORE:
“We’re not talking about ill people who may be using marijuana,” Mr. Ryan said. “We’re talking about a criminal enterprise engaged in the widespread distribution of large amounts – millions of dollars, if you base it on historical evidence – of marijuana and other drugs, and money laundering their proceeds from these activities.”
So clearly yesterday’s spate of stories here in California (and beyond) have motivated the feds to clarify.
Why is this significant? Because after the Supreme Court ruling some news stories and analysts predicted that the court’s decision would not mean federal agents would be storming into homes, taking terminally ill patients away in handcuffs or arrested doctors. The argument was: this ruling is on the books and it clarifies federal powers but it’s not the beginning of a massive campaign. MORE:
Agents from the D.E.A., the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies executed search warrants on Wednesday at the three medical marijuana clubs. Twenty-three residences, businesses and other growing locations in San Francisco were also searched.
Agents hauled away more than 9,000 marijuana plants. In all, a drug agency official said, the investigation yielded 18,000 marijuana plants over the two years with a wholesale value of $17 million. The official, Special Agent Jose Martinez, said it was the largest drug investigation ever by federal authorities that involved medical marijuana dispensaries. In addition, the court documents said, some of the marijuana was grown in Canada.
Kenneth J. Hines, assistant special agent in charge of the I.R.S. in Oakland, said the authorities were still tracking financial transactions in Asia that Mr. Hines said had been funneled through 40 bank accounts at 12 financial institutions by two of the suspects, Phat Van Vuong, 30, and Richard Wong, 28, both of San Francisco.
Mr. Hines, who declined to name the country or countries that were involved, said the suspects had also bought automobiles, real estate and “other high-end items” with the money in an attempt “to disguise illegal proceeds derived from their activities.”
All in all, this truly sounds as if it is indeed a typical drug case — and one where, if the allegations are correct, the suspects took advantage of the concept of medical marijuana to mask drug operations similar to the kinds that have gone on for many years.
MORE STORIES ON THIS ISSUE:
—San Jose Mercury News has a story that quotes a protester as insisting this is due to the Supreme Court but a federal rep countering that this has nothing do with it — and pointing out that this investigation pre-dated the court ruling:
The federal sweep came just two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that users of medicinal marijuana are subject to federal prosecution regardless of whether states allow the use of marijuana on a doctor’s recommendation, as California has since voters approved the idea in 1996. The timing of the San Francisco raids and arrests fueled the belief among medicinal marijuana advocates that cannabis clubs are under attack by the federal government.
“I think the Supreme Court decision emboldened them to come in here against the will of the California people,” said San Francisco resident Brent Saupe, who joined a protest led by Americans for Safe Access, a medicinal marijuana advocacy group, outside the city’s federal building.
But federal authorities said the Supreme Court’s decision had nothing to do with their investigation. Their probe, they insisted, was about dismantling a large-scale operation that allegedly was using cannabis clubs as a cover as it grew and distributed thousands of pounds of marijuana throughout the Bay Area.
–The Los Angeles Times story notes that even some advocates of medical marijuana use are hedging their analysis of this case:
Medical marijuana advocates said it remains unclear whether the bust could be the start of a renewed campaign by U.S. drug agents against pot dispensaries after the recent Supreme Court ruling against a pair of California patients who use the drug.
“I hope it’s an anomaly,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
At the very least, “this is certainly a sign that the DEA is watching people who use medical marijuana,” said Bruce Mirken, a Marijuana Policy Project spokesman.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.