pot crackdown

As California's outdoor marijuana growing season nears its end for 2012, drug officials are reporting a sharp decline in crop seizures for the second year in a row.

The latest figures show that local, state and federal law enforcement agencies are on track to eradicate an estimated 1.5 million plants from outdoor gardens – mostly on public land – down from a decade high of about 7.3 million plants in 2009. This year's seizures would be the lowest since 2004, when a little more than 1.1 million plants were eradicated, according to Drug Enforcement Administration statistics.

Some attribute the drop to a federal crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries and illegal grows on public land and political losses in California, such as voters’ defeat in 2010 of the pro-legalization Proposition 19. At the same time, fewer counter-narcotics teams hunted for California pot this year due to the elimination of a three-decades-old state eradication program.

Others say growers have retreated to smaller garden plots on private land and gone back underground to wait out what legalization advocates have deemed the last throes of prohibition. They also point to a glut of marijuana that depressed wholesale prices and burst the state’s so-called “Green Rush” to capitalize on the relaxed attitudes toward the drug.

With its only retail outlet due to close today, Berkeley Patients Group is set to become the biggest casualty so far in a bold and controversial legal offensive by federal prosecutors against California’s pot industry.

The group sent an e-mail to customers earlier today announcing the pending closure.

While dozens of other medical marijuana dispensaries around the state have been forced to shut down since California’s four U.S. attorneys launched the crackdown in October, none is as large or commands the same local political support as Berkeley Patients Group. 

Late last year, Melinda Haag, U.S. attorney for Northern California, warned the group’s landlord, David Mayeri, that the government would seize his assets if marijuana continued to be distributed at the property. The letter cited violations of federal law and the outlet’s 1,000-foot proximity to two schools. 

“Marijuana dispensaries are full of cash and they’re full of marijuana, and everybody knows that,” Haag said in an interview in March. “They are at risk of being robbed, and many of them are robbed.”

Haag said another dispensary being targeted for closure was located next to a preschool in Santa Cruz. In February, armed gunmen robbed the facility.

Berkeley Patients Group supporters, including neighboring businesses, contend the facility has operated safely for 12 years and has never been the scene of a serious crime.