On 17 July 2007, Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided the Healing Nations Collective, a medical marijuana dispensary in Corona, along with the owner’s home, seizing fifteen pounds (about 6.8 kilograms) of cannabis and a large quantity of cannabis edibles.[1] Owner Ronald Bradley Naulls was arrested with another employee, and federal agents also contacted child protective services over the Naulls home.[1] Dozens of patients and employees protested outside the business during the raid.[2]
Naulls, 26, described Healing Nations as a collective supplying cannabis to patients with doctors’ prescriptions; he said he was caught in a fight between state and federal law.[2] His wife Anisha Naulls was also arrested that day on suspicion of child endangerment, and the couple’s three young children were removed from their home by child protective services over large quantities of marijuana said to be kept there.[2] A later Press-Enterprise account confirms the 17 July raid on the Corona dispensary and Naulls’s arrest on drug-trafficking charges.[3]
On 1 August, Naulls pleaded not guilty in federal court in Riverside to conspiracy to distribute marijuana and maintaining an establishment for distributing it, charges carrying up to 20 years in prison.[2] Federal agents had watched Naulls since January at his home, the business and a Norco storage locker used for deliveries, according to an unsealed search-warrant affidavit.[2] Agents also raided the Tree of Life Collective in Perris, which federal officials said Naulls also operated.[2] The July alert places that follow-up raid two days after the Corona raid and says the shop was already shut and not operating when agents arrived.[1] Supporters later announced a sentencing hearing in the case set for 30 August 2010 in Riverside.[4]
