# DEA hurting most vulnerable patients with escalated attack on
state's laws, activists say
By Michael Manekin
staff writer
Article Launched: 10/07/2007 03:01:25 AM PDT
OAKLAND -- The raid of a large Oakland-based manufacturer of
cannabis-laced candy last month was deemed by the federal government
as a timely victory in the war on drugs.
With Halloween only weeks away, "kids and parents need to be careful
in case kids get ahold of this candy," U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration Special Agent in Charge Javier Pena said after the
bust.
But medical marijuana advocates, who dismissed Pena's Halloween
reference as an "absurd" attempt at "pure publicity," pointed to the
raid as further evidence that the DEA has escalated its attack on
California's marijuana laws by targeting the most vulnerable medical
cannabis patients.
An estimated 150,000 to 200,000 medical marijuana users are in the
state, and the most terminal and debilitated among them cannot smoke
their medicine. Instead, the elderly and those suffering from cancer
or living with HIV must eat it.
The recent federal raid of Tainted Inc. -- a company that produced
cannabis-infused candy, cookies, granola bars, ice cream, brownies,
energy drinks and other products -- has "literally denied thousands
and thousands of patients throughout the state" of their medicine,
said Kris Hermes of Safe Access Now, the largest medical marijuana
advocacy group in the country.
Until last month, Tainted was perhaps the largest distributor of
cannabis-laced edibles for the state's medical marijuana patients,
according to dispensary
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owners and advocates.
Only Beyond Bomb, another Oakland-based manufacturer of pot-infused
morsels, once distributed as much edible medicine, but the DEA shut it
down last year. Since both companies were once the largest
distributors to the state's medical marijuana dispensaries, patients
too sick or weak to smoke are struggling to access their medicine,
advocates and dispensary owners said.
The raid on Tainted, which netted four arrests and the seizure of
about 460 marijuana plants, is one of at least 44 DEA raids of medical
marijuana dispensaries or individuals in California this year,
according to Hermes.
Last year, Hermes said, the DEA raided about 20 patients or providers
of medical cannabis -- less than half the raids conducted thus far
this year. In 2005, the federal government raided 19 establishments.
"The escalation is really quite serious and devastating both to state
law and seriously ill patients in California," Hermes said. "This
isn't just a game of chess between patients and the federal
government."
The DEA makes no apologies for the raids.
The shutdown of Tainted was consistent with the agency's mission to
"go after distributors who manufacture, cultivate and distribute
(marijuana) at the highest levels," said DEA spokeswoman Casey McEnry.
Asked whether the agency was concerned how the raid would affect
patients throughout the state, McEnry said that marijuana "has no
medical use ... according to federal statutes."
Dr. Frank Lucido, a Berkeley-based general practitioner who advocates
the medical use of cannabis, dismissed that notion and criticized the
DEA raids as a dangerous outgrowth of a misguided federal policy.
"These raids always affect the sickest the most because they don't
know how to go out on the street and find marijuana," Lucido said.
Patients who can't smoke because of illness or those who find
themselves in hospitals "rely on edibles," he said.
Many less-terminal patients choose to ingest marijuana because the
doses are steady and more easily regulated.
Using laced sweets and snacks with medicine is hardly a ruse to
encourage recreational marijuana usage but rather "a time-honored
tradition to use a little bit of sugar to make the medicine go down,"
Lucido said.
Jeff Bishop, a 41-year-old Oakland resident living with HIV, once
counted on Tainted products as his most reliable form of edible
marijuana.
Unlike smaller manufacturers of cannabis-laced sweets, "You could
pretty bet on the (Tainted) dosages being what they're supposed to
be," Bishop said.
Bishop is worried that the DEA raid of the two largest distributors of
edible medical marijuana will jeopardize his ability to treat his
illness.
