Activists outraged over El Camino Wellness raid

Last week’s Drug Enforcement Agency raid on the city’s most popular medical-cannabis dispensary, El Camino Wellness Center, has sparked indignation among the region’s pot activists. And they plan to take to the streets this Wednesday, June 20, when protesters and Americans for Safe Access will demonstrate outside the downtown building at 1:30 p.m.

Pot advocates are shocked that the feds, who said they were only going to target traffickers and criminals, put El Camino in the crosshairs. As local ASA representative Courtney Sheats put it: If El Camino Wellness, a taxpaying pillar of its community, fails to pass muster with the federal government, then no one is safe.

El Camino spokesman Max Del Real told SN&R that, when the dispensary was raided on June 11, “The immediate reaction on the ground was ‘This was payback'"; El Camino sued the federal government this past December.

Del Real added that the feds seized more than $50,000 in medical cannabis, plus the executive directors’ “Computers and cars” while they were handcuffed at their homes, “in front of their kids” for three hours.

He rejected the argument that El Camino was profiteering. "When you have a limited number of dispensaries … and have a lot of patients" Del Real said, "those patients are going to go through the doors of legal, and limited, dispensaires." Indeed there are fewer pot clubs in town: Approximately 15 dispensaries are open in the city, and zero in the county.