Berkeley takes measures against DEA raids
If you follow medical marijuana news at all you know that the DEA looooves to raid marijuana dispensaries and has been doing so up and down the coast for some time. This week The Berkeley City Council took action to prepare for raids against the city’s marijuana dispensaries. This could be happening just in time as their have been 5 dispensaries shut down in the last year in the bay area.
So what did they do you ask?
On Tuesday night The City Council UNANIMOUSLY passed a measure that makes a commitment by the city to take action to “uphold patients’ rights to safe access to medical marijuana” if the DEA does raid any of the city permitted dispensaries. The measure is pretty broad, aren’t all medical marijuana laws haha, but most are speculating that the city would either help reopen dispensaries or help new distributors get started after a raid.
The medical marijuana community was out in full force at the meeting to urge the council to pass this measure. One senior citizen with arthritis and disintegrating disk disease voiced his concern about federal DEA raids
“I’m a senior citizen, and I would be very upset if the feds came in and busted us and frightened us and stopped what (the distributors) are trying to do here,” Pat Crossman.
Although Berkely is not the first city to become a medical marijuana sancuary(San Fran has been for years)hopefully they will set a trend with their courageous efforts to provide safe access to medical marijuana patients in need. The more the can keep the federal strong arm from getting in the way of state law the better…