In the dead of night, they came.
Strapped with threatening gear, locked and loaded for extreme prejudice, they swooped in SWAT-style on Wednesday, Sept. 12, after a month of planning to rid our city of yet another horrible scourge—to protect children, frail elderly ladies and nosy neighbors from … pot.
They are officers on the Counter Narcotics Alliance, a drug-busting task force with officers from 14 Southern Arizona law-enforcement agencies. Their perceived scourge was a group of certification clinics and collectives operating under the name Shop 420. Officers crashed into five Shop 420 locations—four in Tucson, and one in Casa Grande—and took 14 pounds of meds, 10 hostages and a gun. The hostages were later released, after they were charged with money-laundering, conspiracy, planning to sell pot and possessing pot paraphernalia.
All of this sucks quite a bit, especially for the hostages, but also for the medical-marijuana community at large.
But before you flap your arms and offer a hue and cry about patients being abused, and rights being forestalled, and doctor-patient relations being violated, put down the vaporizer tube, and step away from the Volcano. Please allow me to point out a couple of things that are probably more likely to piss you off than put your mind at ease.
You do not have the right to smoke, grow, eat, sell, trade, carry, store, infuse, cook or otherwise possess or distribute or give away marijuana. Period. Many of us think that because we voted for it in Arizona, we suddenly have the right to roll smoke. In a guest post on Forbes.com, Seattle lawyer Wendy S. Goffe recently said that until federal laws change, state regulation remains “lipstick on a pig.”
Of course, the Shop 420 case involves local jurisdictions, so federal law isn’t at play. But it seems like the Shop 420 folks were flying a little too close even to the state-law sun. If you try to soar at that altitude, the SWAT team will burn your wings into painful, seared stumps. You will not fly again soon. Just ask the folks at Green Halo Caregiver Collective, where a similar raid happened in July.
The narco-alliance folks reported that the Shop 420 raids turned up fake MMJ cards and equipment to make them. If that’s true, I have little sympathy for the people at Shop 420. None, in fact. Although it is a completely separate issue, those fake cards will now be inextricably linked to MMJ in the eyes of the gen pop, painting a picture in their minds that will be hard to overcome. Ouch.
I support Shop 420 in spirit, but taken as a whole, I think the way they were doing business gives MMJ a bad name. They were operating near at least one school and a church, which isn’t inherently bad, but isn’t allowed under the city’s dispensary rules. Couldn’t they have at least tried to be, or even appear to be, legit by putting their storefronts a little more in line with city pot rules? Yes, they could have.
Ultimately, it’s a bad idea to open a collective in Arizona right now. It’s a murky area of the law. Interestingly, no one in any Tucson raid has been charged with selling marijuana—the stated reason for the raids. I am not a lawyer, but it seems likely that prosecutors would have a hard time proving anyone sold marijuana at these places, because exchanges between patients and caregivers are allowed. Conspiracy to sell might offer an easier route to prosecution.
Time will tell.
This article appears in Sep 20-26, 2012.
You would do well to remember the words of Thomas Jefferson, sir: “A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.” Or, put another way, adherence to bad laws breeds tyranny.
“adherence to bad laws breeds tyranny.”
Well………….that certainly explains politics in Arizona.
So RJ Fletcher… so it is ok to break the law and go around the laws to uphold the law? Sounds like government and law enforcement is corrupt as the criminals. I guess Americans need to embrace their second Amendment rights a little further if thats the case.
Another point, if the government would concentrate on the good laws and enforce them, citizens would feel better about their community and would not have to focus on the little issues that could be solved easily. We don’t care that our president could illegally be in office, but MMJ shops close to schools when you can illegally obtain marijuana in most of the houses next to the school anyway.
When laws are in conflict with common sense or morality, breaking them does no harm. In fact, before administrative (statutory) law took hold, the common law held that for there to be a crime, there must be an injured party. Makes sense to me…if the state can present no evidence of injury, there can be no crime (Beccaria). Tote all the guns you like if you feel the need, just don’t shoot them without cause. Similarly, you can smoke and sell all the herb you like, just not to children. Fair deal?
In regards to your crack about the president being illegally in office, since the last one was never legally president due to vote fraud but was never removed, a precedent has therefore been established and the newest chief executive gets cut a pass, too, regardless of whether some people think his birth certificate is fake. Especially since they were invariably the ones poo-poohing the incontrovertible evidence of the former president’s illegal electoral ascent to power; the shoe’s on the other foot now, that’s all. That’s da real-deal with it.
The only thing illegal about marijuana is the monstrously destructive FRAUD of marijuana prohibition. It was perpetrated in 1937 on false testimony, orchestrated by soon-to-be-out-work alcohol prohibition bureaucrat, Harry Anslinger.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Histor…
In all its seven miserable decades, it has not garnered a shred of legitimacy and has never accomplished even one positive thing. It has ONLY caused vast amounts of crime, violence, corruption, and the severe diminishment of everyone’s freedom.
Thank goodness polls show a growing majority of Americans now want to end marijuana prohibition. – This crucial justice, and wise economic move, is way past due!
If our mmj law wasn’t written by monopolist for monopolists (i.e. “dispensaries”) law enforcement would be powerless to stop populists from passing around pot…too bad Oregon is soooo cold.
Don Ganganero
>>>”too bad Oregon is soooo cold.”
No problem. Oregon, Colorado and Washington all have re-legalization intiatives on the ballot for November. If just ONE passes, it will cause the collapse of the shaky marijuana prohibition – nationwide!
So, call everyone you know who lives in one of those states and ask them to vote YES. Then, pick a state and send money to their movement. – Freedom is on the way!
still stuck in the legal system for something thats supoose to be legal it got to be the most frustrating thing it like me aganst the state its lkke trying to win a speeding ticket there are no lawyer that specialize in mmj in Tucson and when you take into consideration that eveyone from some police public defenders and prosecutors are aganst it you might as well just start writting checks a pipe has costed me 10 grand and i have a mmj license police targeting people of low income lawyers arent stupid you think ther gonna go to bat for ya wrong ther loyality is to the courts not to a stoner and thats how they see us not as patients whatevr you do dont complain it makes it even worse all police got to do is get you in court and its over thank you to the police that dont lie on there reports and who honor the mmj license wheres normal when you need them
They broke the law and the arizona rules by dealing out the back door and they were allowed to reopen. Get caught red handed and get off scott free to do it again. Sell all the drugs you want because its just a slap on the wrist for open dealing.