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Reporter Michael Montgomery: Matthew Cohen cultivates medicinal
marijuana on a 7-acre farm set amid rolling vineyards in Northern
California. And for the past year, he’s been operating legally – atleast
in the eyes of local law enforcement. His marijuana plants are protected
by these tags.
Matt Cohen: It says Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department on it; it’s
upside down, though.
Reporter: This program is unique in California and has allowed Cohen’s
nonprofit cooperative to expand around the state.
Cohen: We’re about 1,700 members now.
Reporter: County rules allow Cohen to grow up to 99 plants ¬– provided
he submits to inspections by sheriff’s deputies and complies with state
law. It’s enough marijuana to keep his co-op members supplied for many
months.
Cohen: We were just getting ready to start harvesting. You know, we
figured that we were compliant with state law and compliant with local
regulations, and that’s not what the federal government was interested
in.
Reporter: But Cohen was wrong. On October 13th, heavily armed federal
agents stormed Cohen’s compound.
Cohen: This is where our dogs were sleeping when they started barking,
then I looked out the window and saw all the cars. Four or five, you
know, federal agent vehicles – you could tell with the blacked-out
windows and the blacked-out rims, come cruising in here very fast.
Everybody hopped out of the car very quickly. I told my wife, “We’re
being raided.” They said, “Open up, federal agents; we have a warrant.”
And I said, “I’m opening the door right now,” and I opened the door to
¬– you know, they had the battering ram ready to go through the door,
and they grabbed me, slammed me up against the wall here, cuffed me.
Reporter: As the agents searched other buildings on the property,
Cohen’s state-of-the-art security system recorded their moves.
Cohen: There’s a machine gun right there.
Reporter: Under the federal Controlled Substances Act, marijuana remains
illegal, and drug agents are stepping up raids across the state to
curtail California’s marijuana industry.
Cohen: Here, you can see that they tore through all our camping stuff,
and this is recycling that they went through.
Reporter: Before the agents discovered most of Cohen’s surveillance
gear, cameras caught them searching through his business files.
Meticulous record-keeping is required by county law. But there’s a
twist: The same documents that allow Cohen to operate legally in
Mendocino can be used against him as evidence in a federal criminal
prosecution. It was only after the DEA raid was under way that Sheriff
Tom Allman learned one of the farmers in his inspection program was the
target.
Allman: That afternoon, after I assumed that everything had cleared, I
called Matt Cohen. I asked him how he was treated. He said he was
treated fair, he said he wasn’t arrested and said that they cut down
marijuana plants, 99, and I believe that’s what their records show also.
I assured him that in my opinion, as far as local and state laws were
concerned, he was abiding by those laws.
Reporter: Days before the raid on Cohen’s farm, California’s four U.S.
attorneys announced a major offensive against the state’s marijuana
industry.
Melinda Haag: One of the reasons that we are making these announcements
today is to try to put to rest the notion that large marijuana
businesses can shelter themselves under state law and operate without
fear of federal enforcement.
Reporter: Targets also include property owners who lease land to growers
and distributors. Even newspapers and magazines that carry ads for
medical marijuana are under scrutiny.
Joseph Russoniello: The folks that say, “Here I am, and I dare you,’
they make themselves prime targets by their audacity and by the size of
their operation.
Reporter: Joseph Russoniello served as a U.S. attorney under four
presidents. He says advertising is just one indication that most medical
marijuana outfits in California are legitimate targets for the feds.
Russoniello: I think the U.S. attorneys would agree that 96-98 percent
of all the operators in the state were out of compliance because they
were commercial enterprises; they were not limiting themselves to people
in their jurisdiction. As soon as you cross county lines, packaging it,
suggesting you have a client base or patients really are all over the
state, you are basically in a commercial enterprise for profit.
[Chanting]
Reporter: The crackdown triggered protests and a lawsuit from medical
marijuana supporters. They accused the Obama administration of
backtracking on what they say were earlier promises to leave states
alone when it comes to medical marijuana. In Mendocino County, officials
worry that the raid on Matt Cohen’s farm undercuts their effort to
strictly regulate marijuana growing.
John McCowen: People are wondering what is behind this, what happens
next, am I personally at risk. We had an individual who was doing
everything they can do to be as legal as they could with local and state
law, adhering strictly to the letter of the law all the way down the
line. If the feds are going to raid him, then no one is safe.
Reporter: John McCowen didn’t start out as a medical marijuana advocate.
In fact, he supported bans on outdoor growing. But he says the county’s
modest cultivation program has helped bring order out of chaos.
McCowen: By bringing the production of medical marijuana above ground,
to a place where it is regulated by the sheriff, arguably tremendously
increases public safety and environmental protection. The raid, if it
has the impact of driving people out of the program and back
underground, will have the opposite effect.
Cohen: Well, here’s what’s left. Right there.
Cohen: It certainly sends the message that the federal government would
prefer that collectives and co-ops operate underground, unregulated.
It’s appalling to me that illegal farms are existing all around this
county and that they’re going to come after us.
Reporter: In fact, local law enforcement continues to target large-scale
illegal pot farms. And they’re using fees collected from permitted
growers to help pay for raids and officer training. Justice Department
officials declined to comment on Mendocino’s ordinance. And while the
feds have yet to directly challenge the program in court, the recent
raids leave the Sheriff’s Department squeezed between local and federal
law.
Allman: If the Mendocino County ordinance is in violation of federal
law, I want to be told that by the highest court in the land. But if
it’s not in violation, I want to be told that, too.
Russoniello: Look, we have consequences. There are things that we have
to do to enforce federal law, whether you’re in the way of our doing it
or you’re half-heartedly cooperating with us, or you’re indifferent to
us – the fact of the matter is, we have federal mandates; we will follow
those laws.
Reporter: Russoniello says federal prosecutors in the other 15 states
with medical marijuana and laws and the District of Columbia will be
following the crackdown in California closely.