Auburn Health & Organics on Auburn Boulevard.

BY ED MURRIETA

A former Assistant U.S. Attorney speaking in favor of the federal government’s pot pogrom said recently that a letter from the U.S. Attorney warning medical cannabis dispensaries and the landlords who rent to them is a good thing.

“This letter is the best news that marijuana growers have ever received from the federal government because this letter is a courtesy that most people don’t get,” Bill Portanova said.

In the courtesy vein, but on the opposite side of the battle, Auburn Health & Organics, one of scores of medical cannabis dispensaries operating without the required business and zoning permits that Sacramento County refuses to issue in the first place, is giving its patients (along with the county and federal forces counting scalps) the courtesy of a heads-up: It’ll close Nov. 15, another casualty in the $1 million war that the Board of Supervisors borrows to finance.

So far,  here’s an unofficial tally of confirmed closures:

Sunnyfields.

One Solution.

City of Trees.

California Holistic Care.

Fort Kush.

The Reserve.

Citizen Collective.

PACC Group.

All-Natural Solutions.

PACC Group on Auburn Boulevard.

The sign on the door at Fort Kush on Florin Road.

The sign you see from Florin Road may need updating.

For more pictures, click here.

Johnny Zonneveld, a Marines combat veteran who uses medical cannabis to fight post-traumatic stress disorder,addressed the Carmichael planning council in July. Photo by Patch.com

BY ED MURRIETA

With more than $5,000 in code violations and the threatened closure of two adacent businesses, Johnny Zonneveld conceded a skirmish in Sacramento County’s war on medical cannabis dispensaries and closed Sunnyfields Collective on Thursday.

Sunnyfields joins One Solution, City of Trees, California Holistic Care, Citizen Collective, The Reserve, PACC Group and Fort Kush among the confirmed casualties in the $1 million war that Sacramento County is borrowing to wage on medical cannabis dispensaries, jobs and tax revenue be damned.

Now hold on to irony. The case of  Johnny Zonneveld, a U.S. Marine combat veteran who uses medical cannabis to battle post-traumatic stress disorder and the events leading up to the closure of a medical cananbis dispensary that serves more than 200 military veterans who also suffer from PTSD, is about to sound like a 21st century Catch-22:

Zonneveld was fined, on zoning violations, for operating a type of business that Sacramento County does not recognize and will not permit.

“In violation of operating a medical cannabis dispensary,” Zonneveld said. “Non-permitted use, basically. Nusiance.”

Then Zonneveld was fined, on building code violations, when he constructed a wall inside the dispensary without a permit from the county, which would not issue such a permit to a business that does not already have a permit to operate as a legally recognized business.

Zonneveld recalled his trip to Sacramento County’s building department.

“I wanted a permit to construct a wall,” he said.

“The guy from the county said, ‘What’s your use?’

“I told him straight-up what I was doing.

“He said, ‘You’re never gonna get that approved.’

“I said, OK, I’ll take the fines for the walls.”

After fines topped $5,000, Zonneveld retreated.

“I couldn’t pay my employees,” he said. “We just couldn’t stay open.”

The liquor store and the tattoo parlor at this Fair Oaks Boulevard address remain in business. The medical cannabis dispensary closed.

Zonneveld threw his 8-month-old medical cannabis dispensary on a grenade. The survivors include a tattoo parlor and a liquor store in a ramshackle 1950s-era strip mall.

“It’s partially why I decided not to mess with the county,” Zonneveld said. “There are two other businessiness there. Basically, if you have a building code violation in a building, they can close that building down because it’s considered a safety hazard.  The landlord wasn’t willing to fix the different things that are wrong with the building, and the county wouldn’t approve the permit for me to get things up to code.”

Zonneveld, who served in the Marines infantry and performed tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2000 to 2004, is preparing a new front:

Sunnyfields Collective, Zonneveld said, will continue to dispense medical cannabis to qualified patients — but only by appointment and only to existing patients or to new patients who are referred by existing patients.

“We have a private location that members can come to,” Zonneveld said. “But we’re not advertising we have a storefront. We’re not advertising as a delivery service either.”

Zonneveld says he’s not deterred by the county’s response.

“I don’t really care what the hell the county thinks of it now,” Zonneveld said. “I’m not doing this for the county. I’m doing this for the people who need cannabis.”

As for the county?

“Basically, they’re telling me what I’m doing is wrong or illegal yet Prop. 215 passed in 1996 and 15 years after the law actually passed they still don’t have an ordinance written. That means they haven’t done their job,” Zonneveld said. “If anybody should get any kind of fine for doing something illegal, it should be the county Board of Supervisors for not doing their jobs, for not doing what the voters actually voted for.”

Sunnyfields Collective
sunnyfieldsgrow.org
916-572-7213

Closed: The Reserve on Fulton Avenue.

Closed: Citizen Collective on El Camino Avenue. Those cards taped beneath the closed signs at both Citizen Collective and The Reserve are a classy touch touting Touch of Earth, a dispensary on Auburn Boulevard.

Closed: Only one of the businesses at this Fair Oaks Boulevard address closed — Sunnyfields Collective.

Closed: California Holistic Care on Fair Oaks Boulevard, not far from the former Sunnyfields.

Unofficial Body Count: These four dispensaries join  City of Trees, formerly on Fair Oaks Boulevard, and One Solution on Madison Avenue among the casualties on the building code enforcement front in Sacramento County’s war on medical cannabis dispensaries.

A sign of things to come? On the door at One Solution in Sacramento.

BY ED MURRIETA

Once upon a time, when I was a restaurant critic in a second city in a bad economy, I chased restaurants — the delayed openings, the quick closures, the inspections in between, the cooks who served good food vs. the operators in it for a buck. It put a taste in my mouth.

Today, in the state capital of medical cannabis in an even worse economy, I spend a lot of time chasing medical cannabis dispensaries — not the ones that advertise themselves openly and regularly in Sacramento’s newspapers, keep regular hours of operation and work hard to make themselves part of the Camellia City’s community, but the ones that don’t advertise themselves to the public, or maybe do once or twice to mark turf and then disappear, maybe belly-up unsuccessful or maybe high-tailed underground; sometimes, there is no telling.

Medical cannabis directories — from online sources like Weedmaps and Sticky Guide to magazines like Kush and West Coast Cannabis, and even some pages of Pot Appetit that need housekeeping — are dotted with the littered listings of dispensaries no longer in operation for reasons legal or extra-legal. After visiting all of the dispensaries in Pot Appetit’s listings at least once to verify that they are in business, I now spend at least one day a week doing drive-bys: As I hear reports of closures, I visit locations. Some days I cruise around looking for “open” signs with the hope of debunking rumors.

The reality is this:

More medical cannabis dispensaries will close, disappear, cease to exist.

The market is saturated in Sacramento — 39 in the city and, depending on which source or rumor or day of the week you can cite, there are anywhere from 50 to 70 dispensaries in Sacramento County.

While the city of Oakland just received $360,000 in tax payments from hugely successful and highly visible Harborside dispensary, the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors is willing to borrow money in a million-dollar effort to close dispensaries. Already, One Solution and City of Trees have fallen. Wait for more, and more after that if the U.S. Attorney starts seizing property from landlords who rent to dispensaries.

Some medical cannabis dispensaries are fantastic. They offer great medicine at good prices. Some treat their patients as well as Nordstrom and Les Schwab treat their customers. And many, like now-shuttered One Solution, which donated backpacks with classroom supplies to schoolchildren, participate in community events.

In no particular order (and with apologies to any good dispensaries I overlook here in my quest to keep this paragraph pithy), I tip my bong to: The Farmers Market, Grass, El Camino Wellness, Arcade Wellness, Fruitridge Health and Wellness, All About Wellness, 1 Love, Unity, Northstar, River City Wellness, Alternative Medical Source, The Green Door, Magnolia Wellness, Nor-Cali Creations, MediZen and whatever name the former Mary Jane’s Wellness adopts after it was sold after the federal government seized money from its bank account, alleging the dispensary tried to hide profits.

Drug den is a gross overstatement describing the worst dispensaries. However, thug den aptly applies to a handful.

I had a discussion recently with an operator of a dispensary in Midtown Sacramento. We compared his dispensary to another dispensary nearby. That dispensary, he said, serves 5 times the number of patients he serves in a day. That dispensary, we agreed, has a better location — greater visibility, parking, nearby public transportation. Still, he said, he couldn’t understand why the other dispensary is more successful. Then the dispensary operated allowed, “Maybe I need to offer better medicine.”

There you go:

Dispensary Darwinism dawning.

Local politicians and the federal government will pick at the remainder.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a taste in my mouth that the skunkiest sativa can’t cure.

BY ED MURRIETA

“Kind of like Whack-A-Mole.”

That’s the assessment of Sacramento TV newsman George Warren, who’s on top of medical cannabis law enforcement coverage these days. Last night on News10, Warren reported that the federal government is threatening to seize the property of landlords who rent to medical cannabis dispensaries.

Warren’s report is based on a letter from the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco regarding dispensaries in that city.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Sacramento told News10 that the feds intend to contact Sacramento landlords.

This federal action follows asset seizures from the bank accounts of two Sacramento dispensaries that the federal government alleges made suspicious cash deposits in order to elude banking regulations. In an unrelated federal case, the former owners of a South Sacramento dispensary are accused of running a criminal operation, a story News10 broke last month.

News10′s posted video makes brief mention of the tax ups and downs of Harborside, the Oakland dispensary that is arguably the nation’s most successful and highest-profile medical cannabis dispensary. In the same week that Harborside wrote a check that infused $360,483 into the City of Oakland’s tax coffers — the payment was for a 5 percent cannabis tax that was approved by 80 percent of Oakland’s voters last year — the Internal Revenue Service said Harborside cannot claim business deductions that are available to virtually every other business in America — standard-claim things like employee payroll and health care deductions. The IRS will only allow Harborside to deduct the cost of cannabis and the cost of its patient-wellness services, such as yoga. The IRS wants $2.5 million from Harborside.

In denying the standard business deductions, the IRS points to a provision in the tax law intended to kill illegal drug operations. The federal government, of course, recognizes no medical value in cannabis and considers cannabis illegal. Harborside says the deduction denials will kill its business model. California law, as per voter-approved Prop. 215, allows medical cannabis.

Meanwhile in Humboldt County, the Eureka City Council essentially shrugged off federal threats last night and make only minor revisions to its medical marijuana ordinance, rather than approving an emergency moratorium on dispensaries within city limits. This, after the council asked the U.S. Attorney’s Office about the legality of its medical marijuana ordinance, inviting the feds’ obvious response.

Meanwhile, Sacramento County code-enforcement inspectors are visiting medical cannabis dispensaries. Some dispensaries are now out of business on building code violations. While the county borrows more than $1 million to shut down dispensaries, there’s still a county ordinance kicking around. Dispensaries, their lawyers and their lobbyists have presented their cases to the county in a series of stakeholder meetings. The dispensary discussion has now been dispersed among 14 community action committees throughout the county. Those committees will hear input from the community and dispensaries before making a recommendation to the county board of supervisors, which is busy feeding $1 million into something resembling an arcade game while Oakland collects $360,483 in tax revenue from just one dispensary.

Yes, it is kind of like Whack-A-Mole, wherein no matter how swiftly or righteously the hammer hits, something pops up somewhere else.

The sign on the door at the former One Solution in Sacramento County.

BY ED MURRIETA

Like the sign says, City of Trees, a medical marijuana dispensary in Carmichael, shut down. Farther down Fair Oaks Boulevard, California Holistic Care is empty, with a for-rent sign in the window. One Solution on Madison shut too.

In addition to closures (and rumors, oh, of course, rumors) of closures, I hear reports of dispensaries that are being fined for code violations, with the county intent on shuttering the 50-plus dispensaries that are operating in a Catch-22: permitted to exist by state law but denied local business permits because the county doesn’t recognize medical marijuana dispensaries and therefore doesn’t issue business licenses for dispensaries.

I visited The Farmers Market, off Bradshaw Road in Sacramento County, on Thursday for a scheduled appointment, which was delayed by a visit from county code enforcement inspectors, who left without any apparent action.

Meanwhile, the federal government seized the bank accounts of 1 Love Wellness in Sacramento and Mary Jane’s Wellness in Gold River, alleging the dispensaries made improper bank deposits to elude federal banking regulations. Following the asset seizure, the owner of Mary Jane’s sold the dispensary, now run with just the sign “Wellness” noting its existence.