On the morning of 9 September 2009, a county narcotics task force working with federal agents raided medical marijuana dispensaries across San Diego County in an operation dubbed Green Rx.[1][2] Officers from the San Diego police, the county sheriff, the DEA and the IRS hit fourteen dispensaries in San Diego, the North County and the South Bay, seizing cannabis, cash and patient records and arresting 33 people, 31 on state charges and two on federal charges.[3][1] Fourteen of those arrested were themselves medical marijuana patients.[3]
The raids came a day after the San Diego City Council voted to set up a task force to recommend rules for collectives under the state attorney general’s guidelines.[1] Detectives had spent up to six months joining collectives as undercover patients, in some cases obtaining recommendations under false pretences, to map the shops before the raids.[1][2]
Dispensary director Jovan Jackson, whose Answerdam collective was raided, was acquitted of marijuana charges at his first trial but convicted at a retrial after the judge barred a medical-marijuana defence, while fellow defendant James Stacy pleaded guilty to cultivation and received three years’ probation with no jail time.[2]
