DEA Raids Marijuana Lab

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DEA Raids Marijuana Lab





Last week's DEA raid of Genovations, a Colorado Springs medical marijuana laboratory, was the second time in recent weeks that the agency had swooped in on a lab that had applied for a license in an attempt to prove its forthrightness and responsibility; the same scenario played out in January at Full Spectrum Laboratories.


But these searches and seizures were mere prelude to the Friday arrest of Chris Bartkowicz, who had created a marijuana grow in the basement of his Highlands Ranch home. His invitation to the DEA? A story on 9News that appears to have embarrassed authorities so much that they decided to punish Bartkowicz for his willingness to bring his story up from the underground.

Medical marijuana advocates have denounced these arrests, arguing that they violate the spirit of an October memorandum from Deputy U.S. Attorney General David Ogden stating that the Justice Department should defer to states that have legalized medical marijuana -- a policy decried by Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, among others.

Just over a week ago, a man named Chris Bartkowicz in Highlands Ranch, Colorado made a questionable (at best) PR move. He agreed to be interviewed by a local television station about his medical marijuana grow operation. Granted, he believed he was in compliance with state law and had no reason to fear prosecution. But, come on, dude. It’s one thing to make six figures growing marijuana in your home for patients; it’s quite another to advertise it on television. It’s like putting a "Home Invasions Encouraged" sign on your door.

What Bartkowicz wasn’t expecting – if he was really thinking things through at all – was that the DEA would show up the next day at his house, take all of his plants, and forward his case to the U.S. Attorney, who subsequently filed charges carrying a 5- to 40-year prison sentence. This, despite the fact that the Obama administration has instructed U.S. Attorneys not to prosecute individuals who comply with state medical marijuana laws.

Was Bartkowicz in compliance with state law? Maybe yes, maybe no. By the DEA’s admission, he was a caregiver for at least 12 patients, which would allow him to have 72 marijuana plants. The complaint – available on this page as a pdf – alleges that he had 224 plants, more than 100 of which were "clones" or "starter" plants; the others were "in various stages with root systems." So what we are talking about here is a matter of degree. If someone can legally grow marijuana for patients, but exceeds the allowable number – perhaps for fear that some plants would not mature or perhaps because they felt more patients would need help before the plants matured – is it an intelligent use of taxpayer dollars to raid, prosecute and imprison this person for 40 years?

The truth is, as discussed in my last column, the DEA is not concerned with using taxpayer dollars intelligently. They are merely focused on using taxpayer dollars. Cases like this demonstrate that they are no better than ambulance-chasing lawyers. They see an "accident" on television and they run like two-dollar hookers to keep themselves busy and make a couple bucks. Why waste your time investigating people manufacturing meth when you can look up a medical marijuana grower on the Internet (which the DEA acknowledges in their complaint was a major part of their "investigation") and raid his house?


And now the media is even helping the DEA advertise for clients. Inciting fears of possible house fires from marijuana growing, the DEA has launched a new campaign to fight this "menace." In addition to dutifully reporting on this "danger," the media helped steer business to the DEA by publishing this advice from George Morkovin, of the Denver Fire Department:


Morkovin said additional regulations are needed to protect residents from these marijuana fires, but until that happens, he recommends notifying authorities if someone believes a grow is taking place next door.


How convenient. With this information, the DEA won’t even need to waste time looking up an address. They can just use Google Maps and they’re on their way. They no longer deserve to be called the Drug Enforcement Administration. They are simply the Drug Employment Administration, keeping themselves busy by raiding people who are not raising the ire of state authorities, but are merely trying to cultivate marijuana so that there is an adequate supply for the tens of thousands of registered patients in the state.


Fortunately, we have rock star advocates like Brian Vincente of Sensible Colorado calling out the DEA and the U.S. Attorney on their true motivations. (This is just one quote from Vicente in an interview in which he simply shreds law enforcement):


"I think the U.S. Attorney and the DEA view marijuana laws as a continuing employment act. It gives them something to do, and they’re afraid that if they were to recognize the will of the voters, they’d be out of work. So I question the motivation for prosecuting these kinds of individuals. I think it’s driven by their own need for job security."

Healthcare Reform Of Any Kind DOA For Obama

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The thought of an individual insurance mandate has never sat very well with many supporters of healthcare reform. Particularly now that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) unveiled his committee’s health care bill today with zero Republican support. Baucus’s bill — which former Cigna executive Wendell Potter has referred to as “an absolute gift” to the health insurance industry — includes no public option, an individual insurance mandate, and the creation of health care co-ops

The number of Democrats immediately rose in opposition to Baucus’s bill and that is a good sign. I think that those in favor of healthcare reform have been clear that there can be no real reform with out a public option to compete with the private sector medical insurance companies. To now mandate that all Americans carry health with the companies that are the reason that pushing for healthcare reform to begin with is mind-boggling. Thankfully Dems are rejecting this madness loud and clear.

Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) said it has “no legitimacy,” outspoken single-payer advocate Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) declared it “dead on arrival,” and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) flatly refused to support it — one Democrat, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), praised the bill today:

“It’s a good product,” Conrad said on CNBC. “It is an attempt by the chairman to lay out what he thinks reflects best the discussions over this extended period of time. And I think the chairman has done a good job of capturing where the talks are at this point.” [...]
Conrad’s support for Baucus’s health care bill is unsurprising, given the fact that it includes his co-op proposal that he introduced shortly after a meeting with the nation’s largest insurer and health reform opponent UnitedHealth Group. BusinessWeek reported on the meeting last month:

United Health is generally well received in legislative circles in Washington. In late May its in-house point man on reform, Simon Stevens, hand-delivered a report to key senators detailing ways to save an estimated $540 billion in federal spending over 10 years.

A week later, on June 4, Stevens accompanied UnitedHealth’s chief executive, Stephen J. Hemsley, to a meeting with Senator Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), an influential moderate member of the Senate Finance Committee. Conrad has since led an effort to create nonprofit medical cooperatives that would operate much like utility co-ops as a substitute for a federally run plan. With less heft than a proposed national plan, the state medical cooperatives would pose a far weaker competitive threat to private insurers.

Conrad’s links to the health care industry don’t stop there. For the 2010 election cycle, the health care industry has donated over half a million dollars to the senator, and his former chief of staff Robert Van Heuvelen is now a lobbyist for the American Health Care Association.
As the Huffington Post’s Roy Sekoff told Ed Schultz last night, if the Baucus bill is anything, it is health insurers getting “what they paid for with the three million dollars they’ve donated to Baucus since 2003.”