Crime rates have been dropping in San Francisco during the last 10 years, not rising. Street sales of marijuana have not moved to neighborhoods where they never existed before. The parking, traffic, and noise issues that have arisen at some dispensary locations are hardly unique to the distribution of medical marijuana.
Nonetheless, the DEA has capitalized on the new wariness that dispensaries provoke. In March 2006, more than 70 agents raided the facilities of an Oakland-based company called Beyond Bomb. Beyond Bomb was manufacturing marijuana candies, sodas, and baked goods with packaging that parodied that of popular snack food brands. Its product line included Pot-Tarts, Toka-Cola, and KeefKats; it distributed these and other treats to dispensaries throughout the state.
“Even though there may be claims that these weren’t meant for kids, the packaging may suggest otherwise,” DEA agent Casey McEnry told the San Francisco Chronicle. In fact, the packaging includes information about the THC content of each product. According to Steph Sherer, the DEA removed stickers that read “For Medical Use Only” from the products it seized before photographing them for publicity purposes. The DEA has not claimed these products were being sold anywhere except dispensaries that only qualified patients could enter. When I asked McEnry if there were any cases where a child did in fact mistake a Beyond Bomb knockoff for the genuine article, she replied, “The DEA doesn’t keep user statistics.”
Apparently, none of this mitigates what could happen some day, maybe, thanks to these infernal treats that sort of look like popular snack foods. “What so many people don’t realize,” DEA agent Javier Pena exclaimed in a press release issued after the raid, “is that innocent children may somehow get their hands on these products and think they are just normal candy or soft drinks—thus, making this action not only illegal, but potentially tragic.”
Kenneth Affolter, the leader of the Beyond Bomb operation, was indicted by a grand jury in March 2006 on manufacturing, distribution, and conspiracy charges. Facing a possible sentence of life imprisonment and a $4 million fine, Affolter eventually reached an agreement with prosecutors and pled guilty to a single count of conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana. His sentence was five years in federal prison. He may be the only man in America serving time largely for making bad stoner puns.
Saving Joseph Conrad Square
Nine months after the Chronicle’s initial report on the clubs prompted promises of regulation from Mayor Newsom, the city’s Board of Supervisors delivered. On December 30, 2005, San Francisco introduced the Medical Cannabis Act, an 84-page set of mandatory guidelines for medical cannabis dispensaries. Under the new rules, patients could buy no more than one ounce of marijuana per visit. (The old limit was eight ounces.) New dispensaries could not be located within 1,000 feet of any school or recreation center, nor could they set up shop in residential districts, industrial districts, or the city’s South of Market neighborhood. All dispensaries, new and old, would have to obtain a permit to operate, and the approval process would include a discretionary review open to the public.
In July 2006, Kevin Reed, who had previously operated a dispensary in the city’s Noe Valley neighborhood, became the first person to try to obtain a permit for a dispensary under the new rules. Reed’s dispensary, the Green Cross, had been shut down in June 2005 after city officials, at the behest of a group of well-connected area residents, suspended Reed’s change-of-use permit on the grounds that his establishment was “hazardous, noxious, or offensive.” (Ironically, Reed had been one of the few dispensary operators to seek out a general business permit before the city created its regulations for dispensary-specific permits.)
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