Oakland sues feds to protect nation’s largest marijuana dispensary! BOOM! Take that Federal Government! Today, the city of Oakland, our homebase, filed a law suit to STOP the feds from seizing and closing down our beloved Harborside Health Center. This is the first time in history a city has taken such an action to defend a medical marijuana dispensary.
Because they’ve built an entire regulatory scheme for the sale and distrubution of medical weed, the city had no choice but to call president Obama on his shit. During his presidential campaign and once elected, the leader of the ChoomGang said he would not fuck with any medical marijuana dispensary that’s complying with state laws. And Harborside has done nothing but comply with state law. But rogue U.S. Attorney for Northern California, Melinda Haag, doesn’t give a shit. After killing off several CA dispensaries based on zoning laws, Haag has been attempting to murder the nation’s largest marijuana dispensary, the Harborside, simply because they’re the nation’s largest marijuana dispensary.
Calling Harborside a marijuana “superstore,” Haag has said, “the larger the operation, the greater the likelihood that there will be abuse of the state’s medical marijuana laws and marijuana in the hands of individuals who do not have a demonstrated medical need.”
In the historic suit, Oakland claims protecting a private property housing a dispensary is a matter of patients’ rights, public safety and city revenues. “If the federal government is successful with shutting down these businesses we have licensed and are complying with regulations and taxes, we will shift people into the black market,” said City Attorney Barbara Parker, who according the the SF Gate announced the filing of the suit Wednesday.
“That will endanger their lives because they may not have safe, affordable access to medicine,” said Parker, “It will also exacerbate our crime and public safety crisis.”
The suit also alleges the feds seizure attempts are too late since they came after a five-year statute of limitations on forfeitures had lapsed. “The only way the government could claim that the statute had not lapsed is if they claim they didn’t know in 2006 about the existence of Harborside,” said Cedric Chao, a partner at SF’s Morrison & Foerster who is handling the claim pro bono.
“It would be impossible for the federal government to say they were unaware of these dispensaries in 2006,” Chao said.
HELLA Stoked about the suit, Harborside’s Executive Director, Stephen DeAngelo, said, “Compassion and common sense says that if you’re going to give patients the right to use cannabis, you also need to provide them a way to legally access that medicine. The city, like us, is simply asking for the federal government to honor the policies they’ve already articulated.”
We’ll keep you posted on how this shit pans-out.
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