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The Express

The Student News Site of Sacramento City College

The Express

The Student News Site of Sacramento City College

The Express

Greedy growers emerge from billion dollar industry

Illustration by || Patrick Higgins || [email protected]

The recent crackdown on medicinal marijuana has rattled many cages, but it doesn’t mean the end of the industry. An estimated $14 billion a year industry, according to CNNmoney.com, is sure to tempt greed and catch the attention of the money-hungry. The California government should be taking steps to prevent corruption instead of giving the impression that the marijuana industry has free reign in California.

Four U.S attorneys are currently prosecuting marijuana dispensaries accused of abusing the system by pocketing cash and drug trafficking. The feds say California is the country’s largest supplier of marijuana, according to npr.org, using state laws to conceal interstate drug trafficking. States that do not have laws allowing medicinal marijuana use receive pounds of marijuana that was grown legally in California and exported on the black market.

A dispensary in North Hollywood is accused of shipping up to 600 pounds of marijuana a month to the East Cost, according to The Sacramento Bee.

Federal prosecutors in Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego sent warning letters to property owners whose tenants are targeted medicinal marijuana growers and dispensaries threatening to seize their property if the operations were not closed within 45 days, according to The New York Times.

soft cialis pills The patients usually go back home from PSRI in high spirits after their treatment. It ensures continued flow of purchase viagra online blood and help to boost libido without the effects of erectile-enhancing medications. This is to be applied topically and the effects are purchase levitra almost not observed in case of proper administration and dosage. Due cheapest cialis uk pdxcommercial.com to embarrassment, men often tend to ignore penile fracture. A lawyer for the medicinal marijuana industry told The New York Times that the federal crackdown is unfair.

“The government’s irrational policy has reached a breaking point,” said Kumin. “The federal government said it will not prosecute patients, and yet they want to shut off their supply. This doesn’t make sense.”

Recent suits have been filed by dispensary owners and other industry lobbyists against the federal prosecutors’ crackdown, according to The Washington Post, calling for restraining orders to be issued until after court proceedings.

Any institution, especially when opportunity for revenue is so great, has the potential to be taken advantage of. Until recently, many Californians were under the impression that the federal government would not intervene and were convinced of that when President Obama announced the federal government’s “hands-off” policy in 2009. But the industry boom has produced some swindlers that state law needs to prove it can regulate so that the feds will back off.

Although the system has been corrupted by some, it is still a legal system in the state of California, and now it is the responsibility of California to protect the industry that has brought them hundreds of millions of dollars in local and state taxes and provided thousands of jobs to the unemployed.

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