DEA agents raided three Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensaries Wednesday afternoon, according to a preliminary report from Americans for Safe Access California director Don Duncan. More details were not forthcoming by press time.
According
to Duncan, the DEA struck LA Wonderland on West Pico Boulevard, the
Downtown Collective on South Hill St. near downtown, and the Iron Works
in Venice.
The federal government has unleashed the DEA on dispensaries under both
the Bush and the Obama administrations, although there was a respite
between 2009 and late 2011, when the Justice Department had a policy of
generally leaving them alone. But that policy shifted again in 2011, and
both the DEA and federal prosecutors have been busy going after
dispensaries since then. One Southern California dispensary operator,
Aaron Sandusky, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison just this
Monday.
The policy has not been limited to California. While hundreds of
California dispensaries have been forced out of business by raids, asset
forfeiture threats and/or prosecutions, so have dozens of dispensaries
in Colorado, and a series of statewide raids in Montana in the spring of
2011 virtually wiped out that state’s dispensary scene.
The LA DEA raids come as the city grapples over what to do about
dispensaries. An effort by the city council to shut them all down was
blocked by popular opposition. Now, the council, and perhaps city
voters, will have to consider two different municipal initiatives, one
of which would limit the number of dispensaries in the city to about
100, the other of which would allow most existing dispensaries to stay
open.
