A second Vallejo pot club has been shut down in what police now say is an ongoing crackdown on the city's 20 or more storefront dispensaries.
The Vallejo Police Department's Crime Suppression Unit served a search warrant Wednesday night at the Better Health Group on Sonoma Boulevard.
Detectives removed from the dispensary about 400 pot plants and 340 food products containing marijuana derivatives. Police also said they seized more than 30 pounds of "processed" marijuana and more than an ounce of hash.
Police also arrested one of the club's board members, 24-year-old Jorge Luis Espinoza, of San Rafael. He was booked on suspicion of possessing and selling pot and operating an unlawful place to sell marijuana, police said.
His attorney, Scot Candell of San Rafael, said Espinoza was scheduled to be arraigned today in Fairfield.
The police action followed last week's joint-agency raid on a prominent Marin Street dispensary. That club's operator was also arrested.
Both dispensaries were advocates of a voter-approved tax on cannabis clubs that goes into effect today. The tax measure was seen by many as a step toward legitimizing Vallejo's unregulated pot clubs.
City officials, meanwhile, have long said Vallejo's estimated two-dozen dispensaries, collectives and cooperatives violate zoning laws and create law enforcement headaches.
"We have 20-plus dispensaries in town," Vallejo police Lt. Ken Weaver said. "We're investigating all of them. It's in
a random order."
Weaver said the five-month investigation stemmed from complaints from the community.
"We get complaints not just about these two dispensaries, but all of them," he said. "People are vocal. We listen to the community, we look into these calls."
Pot advocates, however, say the complaints are exaggerated and the raids are politically motivated.
"No one is going to be convicted ... because no state laws were broken," Candell said. "It's really political harassment. The city is misusing the police force to enforce a political preference."
City and police officials have denied that charge. Weaver said the police are not targeting vocal pot advocates, and that the state Franchise Tax Board and Board of Equalization are involved in all of the cases. The state agencies have not commented.
Federal law prohibits the possession and sale of marijuana, but there are unresolved questions of state law in the areas of cultivation and distribution of doctor-recommended pot.
Distribution and sales for profit of marijuana -- medical or otherwise -- are criminal under state law, according to the attorney general's office. But there are significant unsettled legal questions about what it means for pot clubs to operate as non-profits.
The Solano County District Attorney's Office has not elaborated on the cases. However, Weaver said investigators focussed their attentions on marijuana "sales."
"From that standpoint, state law is clear," Weaver said. "You can't sell marijuana."
But others say the law's not cut and dry. Former state Sen. John Vasconcellos, the architect of the 2003 Medical Program Act that clarified the provisions of the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, says lawmakers never intended to enact a prohibition on "making a profit" regarding cannabis distribution.
"It was certainly true that one side wanted to outlaw any profit-making, while the other side did not and would not," Vasconcellos said in a recent open letter about bringing more clarity to the law. "We catered to neither side on this issue."
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