In
November 2012, the DEA served a search warrant on the Oregon
Medical Marijuana Program offices, located in Portland Oregon. Its
purpose was to obtain: “the names, addresses, telephone numbers,
birth dates, Oregon Driver's License numbers or other Government
Issued ID numbers for Patients, Growers and Caregivers in the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program database or files," according to
the written warrant viewable online.
Now that the Snake, (the DEA) is in the Grass, the
OMMP files, and cannabis patients are being bitten. The DEA has
also been trying to obtain, personal medical records, (HIPPA
protected) for many years. How do I know? Because they tried
unsuccessfully to subpoena my personal
medical records in 2007. The subpoena was refused by the medical
office holding the records and subsequently quashed by the Oregon
ACLU. But that didn't stop the DEA from coming after me, then a
caregiver, growing legally for 70 patients who desperately needed my
services.
Two days after a mysterious night time burglary
of one of my grow houses, (which I chose not to report to local
police) where a ventilation fan was pried loose, and wiring was
cut, presumably to see what was inside, the DEA arrived in full
force, guns drawn, automatic rifles at the ready, and served me with a bogus search warrant.While I stood handcuffed, looking down the barrel of an automatic rifle, various DEA ninjas unlawfully seized about $60,000 in growing equipment and patient medication.
I say mysterious burglary, because my trained female guard-dog, whom I depended on to alert me to intruders, was sleeping in her kennel just a few steps from the ventilation fan. My dog slept peacefully through the night, while the intruders pried and cut wires. This from a dog that could hear me rattle her food dish a half a block away. My
only conclusion is that the burglars neutralized my dog in some
way, thereby causing her to sleep, never letting out so much as a
warning peep. She awoke the next morning unharmed, but as an alert
guard dog, the fact that she never once made a sound indicates she
was probably given some kind of sleeping medication, which may have been delivered through a silent, tranquilizer gun.
Because all my papers were in order and I was doing nothing illegal I was never prosecuted by the DEA but they now had “the
names, addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, Oregon
Driver's License numbers or other Government Issued ID number”
for all of my patients!
Subsequently every one of my 70 patients received a chilling visit from DEA agents suggesting they testify
against me. “For what?” was their astonished reply. “Don has
done nothing but good things for us,” was their collective answer.
Some were visited at their job, and when the DEA walks into your
place of employment, your job generally walks out the door with
them. The patients were robbed and I was robbed. Robbed by the
DEA. Convinced that there was no further point in continuing to grow
for people unable to grow for themselves I stopped being a
caregiver in 2007.
Had the DEA done even one days surveillance on my house they would have known, concretely, that I was not growing marijuana. Had they bothered to check my electric bill they
would have known I wasn't growing marijuana. Even a minimal
investigation would have told them I was no longer growing. In
seeming dejection, they left with my six bags of Black Gold
fertilizer and I haven't seen them since.
But the snake keeps trying. October 2012 in
Mendocino County California, Mendocino County officials
retained an attorney after a federal subpoena demanded “names, and
locations of pot gardeners, county bank records, any and all illegal
correspondence, etc.” Attorneys for the county indicated the grand
jury subpoena “stepped all over medical record privacy laws.”
(More like stomped all over medical record privacy laws as they tried to stomp on mine.) The county attorney stated “no personal identifying information will be reported to the U.S. Attorney.” But the snake is slippery and slimy and keeps trying to get into the grass.
One
of my industry friends, James Bowman of Southern Oregon's High
Hopes farm, was similarly raided, and with heavy equipment the DEA
uprooted many marijuana plants and tore his farm apart. They also uprooted his immediate family of workers supporting the cause, putting them all out of work. Bowman was never prosecuted. Instead the feds filed civil forfeiture proceedings
against the property. Civil forfeiture allows government to take
(in essence steal) and sell property without ever charging the
owner with a crime or having to convict them of one,
and thereby puts the stolen money in their collective pockets. It's
the new cash-cow. Steal from the poor and keep the money.
Civil forfeiture is now a key strategy for the DEA. It
is so much easier, for the snake--no criminal case
necessary--no trial, just point guns and steal. The court papers
they file tells the judge
the property is to be seized because it was “used to commit and
facilitate violations of the controlled substance laws and
therefore are subject to forfeiture.”
“Used
to commit and facilitate violations,” has not been proved
because there was no criminal trial. Point guns, raid, scare the
be-Jesus out of people, steal and then put the money in your
pocket. Isn't this how the Mafia works? And this is the US DEA.
Now
that Washington state has made marijuana legal to grow, use and
sell, the DEA is busy violating the rights of those poor
citizens, by conducting raids on grow houses and collectives. In
Olympia, the state capitol, collective owner Casey Lee, thought he
was being robbed again when he saw seven vehicles
speeding into his parking lot recently. That is how the DEA
shows up, multiple vehicles, guns pointed, coming at you like gang busters. Lee has not been charged as of this writing.
Seattle
area DEA agents recently raided ten homes (grow houses) in
Snohomish and King counties, as part of a crackdown, targeting
marijuana grow operations, (aren't they legal now?) that have been increasing in Washington state. Increasing perhaps because it's legal?
Presently
Washington has no registry of medical marijuana patients, but
initiative 502 will require recreational growers and sellers to
register with the Washington State Liquor Control Board. The snake
must be wriggling and hissing in delight at the prospect of having
more records to snoop in.
Do
our citizens have any protection against these lawless
slitherers, called the DEA? Yes! The best way to dispatch a snake is
to cut off its head. I think there are two ways to do this, two
ways to defeat or avoid them. First, one way is to opt out of any program that keeps records.
Don't participate in the record keeping sieve the Oregon Medical
Marijuana program has been forced into. Drop out by not renewing
your medical marijuana card. Return to the black market. The black
market doesn't keep records. Perhaps the black market is more inconvenient, but better than facing the armed snake come to steal. I am now just one of many that have decided to un-register, in order to protect myself.
The
second is to awaken each County Sheriff to their powers, powers
given only to Sheriff’s under the law. Historical documents and
court cases, information that is on-line, confirms that
the high-Sheriff is the Chief Law Enforcement Officer in the county
and has no superior. Your local county Sheriff is elected by you the people, and is answerable to you alone. No federal or state agency has any authority in the county unless your Sheriff permits it.
If, in the Sheriff's opinion, a proposed action (by federal authorities,) is unconstitutional, the Sheriff is duty bound and fully authorized to block it and
may take the feds into custody (arrest them) if necessary. U.S.
District Court decision, case No. 2:96-cv-099J (2006) says “The
court confirms and asserts that “the duly elected sheriff of a
county is the highest law enforcement official within a county and
has law enforcement powers exceeding that of any other state or federal official.”
In
2006 I ran for Sheriff of Multnomah County Oregon on the
platform of not cooperating in any county involvement in the
administration of the so-called Patriot Act, not allowing the DEA to
operate in Multnomah County, not allowing any inter-agency drug
investigation without my personal supervision, not allowing any
marijuana prosecutions, and encouraging my fellow county sheriffs
to join in my efforts to oust the feds.
The state of Oregon has 36 counties, each with a Sheriff. Washington state has 39 counties. California has 58 counties. Think what it would be like if these 103 high-sheriffs of Washington, Oregon and California, acted in concert to make sure the US Constitution was obeyed. This is all it would take to make a headless DEA snake,wiggle, wither and die.
We must get back to the ideals of our founding fathers. Having
fled the tyranny of kings, they crafted the Constitution, a
document carefully designed to protect us from the on-going, rights
diminishing, power grabbing Federal Government. I
can think of no better way to re-assert states rights than for a
united front of 103 Western Sheriffs to put the Federal government
back in its place. Even if that place is a jail cell!
Works Cited