A medicinal marijuana club at 14th & Mission was raided by the D.E.A yesterday as well as eight other places throughout San Francisco and Oakland. In total, fifteen people were arrested and over 13,000 pot plants were confiscated. Medicinal Marijuana advocates are saying the D.E.A hauled out a bunch of patients (a tipster described the scene as "handcuffing people in wheelchairs") while the D.E.A. is denying it. The busts were connected to the New Remedies Cooperative, the cooperative who ran the club and the places busted were offices, storage facilities, and the places the plants were grown. Oh, and also a "a temporary-employment agency for pot growers" whatever the hell that is and why didn't we know about them when we temped? Totally beats the hell out of data entry. Anyways, the owner of the New Remedies Cooperative (?), Sparky Rose, was one of the people arrested.

Like all of these types of stories, it's hard to know what the what is. The D.E.A. is saying the arrests were because of "large scale trafficking" and money laundering. Activists are saying it was your basic, everyday, legal-in-San Francisco medicinal marijuana facility. All of which shows the problems in all of this Medicinal Marijuana thing, just how does one do something legal in a city that's against the law in the country? Like how does a dispensary sell dope if the growing of that dope is illegal? There's also been an increasein raids on marijuana dealers up and down California lately. On the other hand, according to the Government, the cooperative had assets of $1.5 million dollars which the Fed's tried to seize last year. We also couldn't help but note that Ms. Sparky was driving a convertible Porsche, which was also seized. We'd like to join a cooperative that will allow us to drive a convertible Porsche.

This is one of those things where everyone immediately jumps to conclusions depending on your point of view-- advocates and anti-cop types immediately think it's the Man keeping poor helpless sick people down while law-and-order types think it's just a bunch of hippie drug dealers using the medicinal marijuana thing as a way to try and go legit as dealers. In other words, we dunno.

Image from KTVU