S. Tahoe council blocks pot club move after signaling it would approve
By Anne Knowles
The South Lake Tahoe City Council voted to deny a request from one of the city’s medical marijuana dispensaries to relocate its business after last month intimating it would approve the move.
At its June 5 meeting, the council declined to act on City Attorney Patrick Enright’s advice to deny City of Angels 2 its request and instead voted 4-1 on a motion directing staff to prepare a resolution to approve the move, according to Nancy Kerry, interim city manager.
But a day before the July 3 meeting, the council received a letter written by the South Lake/El Dorado Narcotic Enforcement Team (SLEDNET) painting a vivid picture of the criminal activity surrounding the marijuana collectives.
“Every day SLEDNET agents are intermingled with the marijuana industry that has become so enormous here, traffickers from outside California have made this city a prime distribution point for the east coast,” reads the letter dated July 2. “No longer are we seeing the large scale indoor grows. We see a simpler form of trafficking of marijuana through the U.S. Post offices, UPS and Fed Ex. It is such a significant problem that the U.S. Postal Inspector’s Office recently assigned a full time inspector for marijuana trafficking in our area post offices. Now the primary workload for our task force is the sales and distribution of marijuana from traffickers who simply go to the collective, purchase lbs (sic) of marijuana and ship it off in mail.”
The letter went on to describe eight cases involving large sums of marijuana in which all of the convicted felons claimed to have been working with one of South Lake Tahoe’s three collectives.
“I can provide further examples at your or the city council’s request,” read the letter addressed to South Lake Tahoe Police-Fire Chief Brian Uhler. “This year alone we have seized $142,708 in marijuana proceeds and worked interstate investigations in New Hampshire and New York.”
SLEDNET Task Force Commander Jeff Catchings told Lake Tahoe News there are numerous ongoing investigations into people tied to the collectives but no open investigations of the collectives themselves.
“This is a huge problem and we can’t turn a blind eye to it,” said Catchings. “No other business in South Lake Tahoe has so much criminal activity connected to it.”
“This is a game changer,” said Councilman Tom Davis several times during discussion of the resolution at the meeting. “This documentation from law enforcement is huge.”
“This is out of control,” agreed Councilman Bruce Grego, who cast the sole vote to deny the dispensary’s move at the first meeting. “I think we need to end it today.”
City attorney Patrick Enright cautioned the council that the item under consideration was narrow, focused on whether to allow City of Angels 2 to relocate, but adding that the California court rulings were inconsistent regarding whether cities had the power to ban the dispensaries outright.
And Councilwoman Angela Swanson raised concerns that the city could be opening itself up to some liability if they backtracked on the matter.
“I believe to not support this puts the city in a precarious legal position,” said Swanson. “We don’t have proof (the marijuana) is going through the collectives. There could be other things going on.”
Uhler, who delivered the SLEDNET letter to the council, said law enforcement was working on a way to track the collectives’ transactions.
City of Angels 2 owner Gino DiMatteo spoke during the public comment period, assuring the council that his dispensary abides by the law.
“If my collective had anything to hide we would never have offered surveillance to the chief of police,” said DiMatteo. “They have access to our security video any time.”
DiMatteo was told by his current landlord that he had until mid-July to change his business or vacate his current Third Street location after the landlord, Darcy DeTarr, received a letter from the U.S. Attorney General’s Office threatening to seize the property if pot continued to be sold there.
In the end, the council voted down the resolution to allow the dispensary to relocate.
Correction: South Lake Tahoe City Council did not vote on a resolution presented at its July 3 meeting and instead directed staff to draft a new resolution that it voted on at its June 5 meeting. The council did not re-vote on an improperly-worded resolution, as originally reported. The story has been changed to reflect that.
Input to City Council: Time to get tough. And if you don’t, the feds will.
“Every day SLEDNET agents are intermingled with the marijuana industry that has become so enormous here, traffickers from outside California have made this city a prime distribution point for the east coast,”
ARE YOU KIDDING!? This statement infers that thousands of pounds of pot is being shipped from our post office to back East? Sounds to me like PROPAGANDA! Save the taxpayers some money, legalize it and dissolve the DEA and other agencies like SLEDNET and save the country BILLIONS!
I am happy and hope the rest of them go! I am so tired of the sickening smell of pot every time I go to the bank in Bijou. I fell badly for the employees at El Dorado Savings there..it is OVERWHELMING. The other day it was so bad I was driving east on Hwy 50 and could smell it.
There is a grower in my neighborhood that is making it hard to be outside in the evenings. I left windows open 2 nights ago due to heat and the inside of my house smelled like I was growing.
So not fair. If there weren’t dispensaries there wouldn’t be growers in our neighborhoods.
Sorry, I believe that severely ill people should be able to get medicinal pot but its out of hand and anyone can get a script.
Want tourists to come back? Get rid of that smelly element.
so where is the follow up to Swanson’s comments about the city being open to a lawsuit? What did enrght say? Where is the interview with Swanson? Are we at risk to be sued again? Seems lke Cole, Davis and Grego don”t seem worried about it.Who is right and who is dumb or political? Maybe they are the same?
Good for the city, a cash business will never be on the up and up, one down two to go, we do not need this $#@^ in Tahoe.
Full time, so you would much rather these cash businesses go back underground run by street dealers with NO oversight? Do you really think that alleviating the collectives will alleviate the use of marijuana in our community? Just remember that the devil you know can be much safer than the devil you don’t know!
So Big you agree these are CASH businesses, and what I hate is the fact that the law is a joke, I am all for the real sick people getting what they need, no problem there, but you know as well as me that maybe 10% of those that use the pot shops really need it.
Full time, I fully agree with you about the majority of people using the collectives are not in medical need of MJ, and feel strongly that the legalization effort ought not ride the coat-tails of Medical MJ but should be legalized on it’s own merits. As to the cash business issue, don’t really get your point. Last time I checked using cash to purchase things in America is still legal (much to the chagrin of the credit card companies!).
Get with it City council. This is a legitimate business in California and your actions border on harrassment. There are laws already on the books that could be enforced to deal with many of the complaints shared in this thread. Slednet has used scare tactics on the Council and thay have fallen for it hook, line and sinker. Step into the 21st century and stop the failed war on drugs.
wow
Can anyone point out where in this article the link between allowing the club to move and criminal activity is?
By their logic, allowing a 4th club would increase criminal activity.
I don’t believe there is a link.
Finding marijuana is easy, SLEDNET. The numbers are not impressive, increasing those numbers 10 fold would not be impressive nor would be reason to say you are making the community safer. Show us an increase in seizures of hard drugs and justify your existence.
Wow. Just watched this portion of the meeting on the city website.
What an absolute cluster “f” the city has gotten itself in to. Seeing those five stew, ruminate and try to wrap their heads around this issue is true theater. It’s not that I don’t appreciate their quandary in the least. The whole of the situation is ubiquitously paradoxical. Damned either way. I do sympathize with these decision makers.
I guess it comes down to a city picking a side and standing by it until a more definitive ruling comes along. Meanwhile, to go down one road only to reverse course, as the city appears to be doing, plays as weak government.
Too bad the police weren’t consulted earlier. Looks like another lawsuit due to the incompetence and lack of forethought of the City Attorney and Counsil.
The Federal Government outlaws the cultivation, distribution and sale of MJ. The citizens of California decided to ignore Federal law. Now the Federal Government is threatening a landlord to confiscate his property so the landlord is not renewing a lease. Seems that the City Council should be ruling on the move of this business from one landlord to another, so that the new landlord can be put into jeapardy to lose his building as well.
So why are no formal charges being filed?
Wow! What to do, what to do???
There has definitely been an increase in residential growers since the collectives were established, but this was happening even before the collectives moved into the City. If the collectives are all shut down the residential growers will continue to grow and distribute their product, most likely on the underground black market.
I think a few actions could get the Feds and SLEDNET off the backs of the City and the collectives. Have full ACCOUNTABILITY for the collectives, their patients, and suppliers. And the City should BAN collective growing in residential areas (not to inhibit the sole individual grower/user who wants to grow their own for legal medical-uses). It should a zoning ordinance since it is basically a commercial venture in pharmaceutical-agriculture.
The accountability of where the drug is coming from, how much, where it goes, and who purchases it would provide the transparency that can be used to counter-balance the statements being made by the Feds and local drug enforcement departments.
One more thing…
I’d also like to see better accountability and implementation from the doctors who are prescribing medical marijuana (MM) in the first place.
Medical records and conditions being examined for MM use should be under a year old. Actual in office examinations should be made to determine if there is a actual need for pain management. These doctors should also be required to consult with the patients primary care physician, and the MM recommendation/prescription should go into a state/local tracking program.
Little perspective here: Nobody would buy lbs of MJ at full retail from a club and send it east, there is no profit margin there. It is a pretty well known fact you can buy this product for very cheap in areas like Humbolt, Trinity & Lake counties. People are most likely getting from there and shipping from here, this isn’t a dispensory problem.
If someone was to get caught with such a large amount the only defense they would have would be to say “I’m taking this to the collective”. Because they are way over their limit the only way they could provide a valid defense would be to state that this large amount belongs to a collective and supplies the needs of thousands or hundreds of patients. I would like to see alot more on SLEDNETS actual findings not just some letter. I don’t see this letter as a “Game Changer”, actual charges against a club would be a “Game Changer”.
Sounds like we have read one letter from a pretty shady organization and took it as fact. I hope Gino sues and wins.
Also if you watched last night this meeting was a pretty sad display of local government at work.
City council could set some sensible guidlines preventing people from moving to our area with the sole purpose to cultivate and could set limits and provide more regulation on dispensories. SLEDNET can do thier job and focus on hard drugs like Meth and Herion witch is actually deteriorating our community. With a little more common sense and compassion on these issues the whole community can be happy.
Also, after thier recent regulations on domestic growing what did they expect was going to happen next? If they expected for pot to go away than they and anyone who agreed with the regs is actually dumber than we could expect.
Can u imagine.how much the city council could have accomplished.without thousands of wasted hrs on,this issue. Slednet took less than 2ozs of heroin off the street.the illegal that,was caught got six
months in county.the female who was busted with him has since died.enough said
I dunno. One evening I went into the post office to check my mail. The place was vacant, and the reek of mj was so strong I had to hold my breath. It was overpowering. Someone is definitely mailing the stuff somewhere, which is silly since the feds are on the warpath.
I think it ought to be legal, but if you’re going to use the U.S. Mail to send it out of state, at least be smart enough to wrap it air tight.