The LA Times reports United States Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole sent a June 29, 2011 memo to federal prosecutors about "multiple
large-scale, privately-operated industrial marijuana cultivation centers."
Deputy Attorney General Cole wrote the Obama administration's hands-off policy on medical marijuana patients was "never intended to shield such activities from federal enforcement action and prosecution, even where those activities purport to comply with state law."
In California, some collectives grow their own marijuana or develop a network of patient-growers.
One Northern California entrepreneur hoped to convert 172,000 square feet of empty brick buildings into a marijuana industrial park with growing and manufacturing businesses. He planned to cultivate marijuana worth $59 million a year and send as much as $3.4 million in annual taxes to the city.
But in February 2011, Melinda Haag, the United States Attorney for the Northern District California warned she would consider prosecuting anyone authorized to set up an industrial pot farm, including property owners and financiers.
President Obama's Attorney General announced the official policy in an October 2009 memo to federal prosecutors: the federal government should not raid medical marijuana users and caregivers.
Under guidelines issued by Jerry Brown when he was California Attorney General, most dispensaries in California are organized as nonprofit collectives.
California's current attorney general, Kamala Harris, declined to comment on the June 29, 2011 Justice Department memo. The California AG is currently working to revise the nearly 3-year-old California guidelines.
A special assistant city attorney in Los Angeles said she believes court cases have repeatedly shown that LA's dispensaries operate outside those guidelines. "Strangers, unidentified strangers, are bringing in large satchels and suitcases and bags of dried marijuana," she said.
If you are someone you know has been arrested for a drug crime in California, contact the California criminal defense attorneys with over 80 years of combined experience today.