Campaign of Terror? Feds Raid Northstone Organics Today and Threaten Media Outlets
Kym Kemp / Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011 @ 2:13 p.m. / marijuana , News
In what can only be described as a frontal assault on medical marijuana, federal agents are currently raiding Northstone Organics. The Mendocino collective is a well known provider of medical marijuana. The Executive Director, Matt Cohen, has recently been featured on Frontline’s epsisode, The Pot Republic. This not-for-profit co-op offers home delivery of cannabis grown organically in Mendocino county to patients throughout the Bay Area and beyond. Cohen and Northstone Organics have been pioneers in Mendocino County’s “ziptie” program which allows medical marijuana growers to pay a fee for a permit to grow a number of plants up to 99 in certain conditions.
The website of Northstone Organics appears to be partially taken down. The site is showing a “Due to Technical Difficulties, our web site is currently unavailable” message. Speculation is that this is related to the raid.
California NORML Coordinator, Dale Gieringer, denounced the raid as a “shameful and despicable” attack on California’s most successful legally regulated marijuana cultivation program. ”The DEA is doing nothing but encouraging lawlessness and disobedience to the law,” said Gieringer, “This is a victory for the Mexican cartels.”
The US Attorney Laura Duffy says that she’ll go after media outlets that advertise marijuana products. According to 420 Medicated,
U.S. Attorney Laura E. Duffy, whose district includes Imperial and San Diego counties, said marijuana advertising is the next area she’s “going to be moving onto as part of the enforcement efforts in Southern California.” Duffy said she could not speak for the three other U.S. attorneys covering the state, but noted their efforts have been coordinated so far.
“I’m not just seeing print advertising,” Duffy said in an interview with California Watch and KQED. “I’m actually hearing radio and seeing TV advertising. It’s gone mainstream. Not only is it inappropriate – one has to wonder what kind of message we’re sending to our children – it’s against the law.”
This is going to radically affect the climate for cannabis in California. The question is will patients, the growers, and the businesses that rely on them fight back or once again go underground?
Or via the internet at: http://capwiz.com/norml2/issues/alert/?alertid=54512501
Since then the witch hunt has really taken off.
I can just see whoever is taking outraged calls to the White House hotline about these raids…they’re probably chuckling their ass off! The Feds could care less about state’s rights.
I know, I’m beginning to sound a lot like a crazy old man.
I think the answer is: Both.
ent!
“…(Matthew) Cohen said he was shocked when machine-gun wielding federal agents woke him up just after 6 a.m. to serve a search warrant. He said he was handcuffed while agents ripped out the (99) plants, eliminating the year’s crop and medicine for 1,700 patients. He was not arrested…
THE early morning operation shook the medical marijuana community because Northstone has been a model of compliance with local and state laws.
’I’m really puzzled. There are plenty of illegal marijuana organizations in Mendocino County,‘ said Aaron Smith of the National Cannabis Industry Association.
MEDICINAL marijuana advocates suspect the federal agents chose Northstone because it has been in the limelight. Northstone founder Matthew Cohen, an advocate of regulation, has been included in television documentaries as well as news articles on medicinal marijuana…
DEA officials declined to comment on the raid.
’The California marijuana industry is not about providing medicine to the sick,‘ said Laura Duffy, the San Diego-based U.S. Attorney on October 8. ‘It’s a pervasive, for-profit industry that violates federal law.‘
MELINDA Haag, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, said dispensaries near schools, parks and others areas where children gather would get special attention from her office. (But) the Northstone co-op is in a rural area far from schools or parks. It’s not a conventional dispensary in that it does not operate a store, but delivers marijuana to its members…
COHEN was among the first to obtain a permit from Mendocino County for his operation. Sheriff Tom Alman said Cohen appears to have followed all of the county’s regulations, which cost the cooperative about $8,500 a year…
A county supervisor and sheriff’s sergeant have testified on behalf of the cooperative earlier in Sonoma County court. The case against two Northstone members — arrested while driving through Sonoma County to deliver marijuana to its member patients — is pending.”
(More information found in the October 13th Press-Democrat article Feds Raid Medical Pot Co-op Near Ukiah)
*My caveat is that anyone who is actually imprisoned because of MJ prohibition, is involved in a very real struggle for freedom.
I made my comment at the end of that article, but basically, i wish that issue had never come out.
So of course they’re going to go after those who are as responsible and low-impact as possible, because they don’t want responsible, well-run, “good neighbor” growers and dispensaries, they want irresponsible, greedy, “bad neighbor” growers and dispensaries, because that’s what justifies their salaries and keeps the War on Pot gravy train running.
The problem, of course, is that (unless I misunderstood the joke) implicit in that joke is the idea that someone might use that diesel and fertilizer to make a bomb.
I’m not sure why that’s funny.
Another lie from a professional poilitcian..
Obama stated that he would not have the justice department prosecute medical marijuana patients—as it would “not be a good use of our resources.”
This assault is nothing more than terrorism perpetrated by the Feds. The back country is covered with thousands of mega-greenhouses and Obama goes after medica? Hmmm.