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From the Department of I’m going to need a pillow on my desk to protect my head, aka, the LA Times:
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and other law enforcement agencies arrested 11 people during a four-county raid on marijuana facilities that recovered drugs as well as pot-laced breakfast cereal and candy bars.
Officials served search warrants this week at 16 locations, seizing 78 pounds of marijuana as well as related evidence, according to a statement from the Sheriff’s Department. Officials said the drugs had a street value of $234,000.
Translated LA Times: today LA Sheriffs seized $234,000 worth of relatively harmless products from small businesses in a move certain to harm their businesses, subject harmless people to criminal harrassment, increase unemployment and withdraw money and trade from a lagging economy, all to help protect legal monopolies of far more harmful products.
Down the street, under the full protection of the same law enforcement departments, courts and regulatory oversight agencies, the nation’s largest criminal enterprise drug manufacturers and drug sellers uh, pharmaceutical stores continued to sell dangerous drugs with both known and unknown harmful side effects, with misleading and incoherent labels, after performing fraudulent studies, covering up harmful findings, bribing medical professionals to push the drugs on unsuspecting/frightened patients, selling them for uses never approved by the FDA, obtaining federal subsidies for all of the above to ensure massive sales to the elderly and others and bribing state and federal officials to ensure the illegal and harmful trade could continue uninterrupted.
Just by coincidence, I’m told by the ever watchful Michael Whitney, the products seized just happen to play into scare stories put out by those fomenting fear of California’s Proposition 19. But I’m certain law enforcement would not be so corrupt as to manipulate its actions to benefit a political campaign.
The Sheriff’s Department did not return calls asking whether they would afford the same legal protections to the harmless products if only the level of bribes and corruption were increased.
But Afghanistan is corrupt.
John Chandley, US citizen in mourning for what we’ve become
44 Comments
Let’s see. I first took a drink when I was 13. I smoked cigarettes regularly from age 14 to 22. I’ve smoked grass off an on since I was 18.
Grass is far and away the least harmful of the three substances.
The one thing I recall most from having eaten it a few times is that the high lasted a whole lot longer.
lol in college my roommate came back from a weekend at home with pot brownies she made, only she didn’t clean the pot so it was very sticky. That didn’t deter us from munching on them, not at all. And then we all played bridge (srsly)
Ahh youth.
We had the Fourth of July party way out in the country. Someone’s wife was 8 1/2 months pregnant and making chocolate chip cookies from scratch.
I ate 2 cookies about 9PM
When I woke up the next day at noon and answered the knock at the door, I told the guy standing there “Thad, I’m stoned”
I was still buzzed at 3PM, when I got to work at the liquor store and was still buzzed even at 6PM.
Good times.
Talk about a waste of tax dollars, amongst many other stupidities. Doesn’t the LAPD have anything better to do with their time? Like fill out reports? Or organize their files? Or watch paint dry somewhere?
This is the LA County Sheriff’s Dept – different entity than LAPD
This was the LA County Sheriff’s Department.
Enforcing federal law? I thought there was a moratorium on busting medical marijuana? Easy targets…while Mexican cartel move millions of pounds of pot cocaine and anything else. But when help is needed they will tell you sorry no crime committed. I don’t smoke anything and don’t like second hand smoke but only smell cancer causing cigarette smoke. Missing the mark Mr. Sheriff.
In America we HATE small time criminals and our prisons are full of them. On the other hand own a Wall st. brokerage, bank or a Big Pharm. Corp. and you can commit all the fraud and other crimes you can dream up and were likely to reward you.
Sheriff=Cowboys..let’s get liquored up folks. Yea haw!
This sounds a lot like the same story I read yesterday that claimed they had seized cocaine & crystal methamphetamine from the facilities, but only ever cited a street value for the marijuana products of about $250K (that story read something along the lines of “arrested for trafficking in meth, coke & marijuana. The seized marijuana products had an estimated street value…”). I wondered to my spouse at the time if they seized meth & coke, why was the only dollar value cited specifically for the marijuana? It was the strangest story about a drug bust that I believe I’ve ever read.
Who wrote the warrants?
Ok. I stand corrected on the LAPD mistake, but the rest of what I said stands. It’s still a waste of tax dollars, and couldn’t they have found something more productive to do, like watch paint dry somewhere? I have no doubt that there’s some fresh wet paint somewhere in the greater LA area.
Fixed it for you….
“…the products seized just happen to play into scare stories put out by those fomenting fear of California’s Proposition 19…’
Nothing could be scarier than the list of side effects associated with just about every drug that gets advertised on TV. Anyone else notice how often they list “suicidal thoughts”?
Just got my Official Voter Information Guide for CA’s general election on November 2nd. The Prop 19 opponents spend a lot of time claiming it allows stoned drivers and workers, and allows workers to possess pot on the job. *None* of these things is true, but the proponents did *not* say so in rebuttal. That may be a disaster. If voters believe the lies, it may get voted down. This point has to rebutted by November 2nd!
Ah, I guess it was TWO days ago, and $350K, but still, no coke or meth actually appears to have been seized…
link
But I’m certain law enforcement would not be so corrupt as to manipulate its actions to benefit a political campaign
I surely believe that couldn’t possibly happen, not in Amerika;)
Yep seeker 561 I agree when my Doc. asked me if I wanted to take a drug for my health, I ask about the side affects and then said no thank you. Then he told me about just changing my diet a little.
How coincidental that Sheriff Baca’s co-chair of the Prohibition Campaign, Dianne Feinstein, just warned us last month about the dangers of food-based medical marijuana! Isn’t it amazing to see a plan come together?
Think of THE CHILDREN!
It’s the same as the Prop 8 campaign, and DiFi knows that firsthand, having finally cut an ad against the children-based lies they put out in 2008. She should be ashamed of herself, using the same arguments against pot this year.
In my dead-tree version of NYT, I often see 2-page, full page ads for a particular drug. The first page at the top is in bright colors, lots of positive things about how this drug will make you feel better. Then at the bottom half and the entire next page, in tiny black print, are all the warnings that FDA forced them to publish.
The Actor in the governor’s house just signed a bill to make possession a traffic ticket & $100.00 fine! And these Thugs do this?? sounds like the LA Sheriffs dept as they have always been. Very Gestapo & Political in how “They run Things”. Vote for Prop 19 and lets be done with this mess. Get the Gestapos out of the equation. If it passes I wonder what they will do to get their pot???
Unless the dispensary is cartelled-up, it’s highly unlikely there was meth and cocaine, except perhaps in the pocket litter of patients. Dispensaries in SF, for example, were very diligent about keeping to business: stay in the medical pot lane only, no other drugs permitted on premises, lifetime ban (and communication with other dispensaries about your ban) for breaking the rules, especially the ‘other-drugs’ rules.
And this has been true in the medical marijuana movement for a very long time, back to the nineties with Dennis Peron, who wouldn’t permit any other drugs in his home. People know better, but cartels are greedy thugs so maybe they’ve changed the rules.
Of course, if the cartels were out of the business they love because of prohibition, all this would be different.
This just another example of the out of control gang problem in LA. When thugs can bust into a store and steal $234k of merchandise without any retribution you know this gang owns the street. Almost like a police state…
Oh, I understand. I’m believed even when I first read it that the original story that was published on MSNBC was bogus, and that there was never any real suspicion of the facilities trafficking in meth and coke, but that was an excuse to make the bust and seize the inventory.
Edited to add that I’d bet the cartels are very much interested in ensuring that Prop. 19 does NOT pass for the same reasons the Sheriff’s Dept. is… Drug trafficking is BIG money for both.
How can the pot have any value after it’s seized? the courts can’t auction it off,sell it, or give it to the needy!
Before porky seized the pot, it did have a value cause it could be sold! Now that it’s in police custody, the dope will never see the streets again,so it has no monetary value!
Hmmm, I don’t think you grew up on the same planet I did…
I saw “Reefer Madness,” and is scary stuff. Besides, it’s been proven that if you force a little white lab mouse to smoke 12 lbs of Afghanny Pocahantus red haired flying thunderfuck every day, the mouse might forget how to do quadratic equations. Just sayin’.
“… the dope will never see the streets again,so …”
Don’t bet on it. Back in the days when I was involved in such things, bricks with charred wrappers were commonplace.
“… the mouse might forget how to do quadratic equations…”
LOL. May have to borrow that sone sometime.
They would have arrested even more people, but they had to go pick up a couple kegs of beer for the big party they were throwing to celebrate all those pot busts.
In my wild and wooly youth, I played cops and robbers with real cops. I “knew a guy” who had a source in impound.
Sometimes a couple of pounds have been known to fall off a truck.
Yeah, to reliably get the best stuff around here you definitely need to get it from the cops…
I, too, am in mourning for what we’ve become
I’m here giggling over your analysis. Now, if those mice shared, all would be well.
So glad to hear from you again. i share your mourning. the are jillions of things to mourn about these days.
Curious: What’s the basis of your assertion that the Sheriff’s dept. is taking money from the Big Pharma or anyone else working to kill 19?
You’re totally right on about the Pharma’s practices. While suicide is perhaps the most serious side effect, most of the drugs being used today can also produce a wide variety of long term chronic conditions that they try to cover up, e.g. the latest avandia issue for diabetics, which is now essentially finally withdrawn (?) I think, because it can cause significant heart disease problems, as well a heart attacks, etc. But FDA played a lot of games for a while before they finally acted.
Blessings,
Just start offering the cops money. They have their price! That already has been proven.
Got the guts to strike back? Lay off buying booze for a couple of weeks. This will do you good physically (not too long) while getting the attention of the big money pos’s who controll this. But you got to have guts.
Scarecrow is upstairs!
Wish We Had Something to Vote For
What happened to the cocaine and meth that they were “making”? There’s not a peep about that since they splashed it all over the headlines.
You know why? They did it so they could get the big headline to influence people against Prop. 19, and also to negate the outcry they knew would come for closing down legal Cannabis outlets.
Then again, they busted the closest dispensary to my house. I have mixed feelings about that because they charged $70 per eighth. But, they should have been arrested for robbery rather than for Cannabis distribution.
That’s the real question, isn’t it? Considering that “Local law enforcement was aided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the State Board of Equalization and the State Franchise Tax Board.” it might be a bit premature to lay the blame on the Sheriff’s Dept.
Mourning right there with ya John . . . .
Great read and rcc’d.
Thanks for all yer work.
After Prop 19 passes, they can FINALLY stop wasting our time with this BS.
It’s critical that you VOTE YES ON PROP 19
Really well written. I totally agree with your points about the pharmaceuticals. I think they’re going to be our biggest enemy after prop 19 passes. Them and alcohol.