| Graphic: Last Blog On Earth |
| Downtown Kush Lounge was one of two San Diego dispensaries operated by Joseph Nunes |
San Diego medical marijuana dispensary operator Joseph Nunes was sentenced to one year in federal prison on Monday, May 10.
“They took him right to jail,” said a medical marijuana activist who was in the downtown courtroom to support Nunes, reports Shane Finneran at the San Diego Reader.
“Joe, we wont forget you,” said an emotional Donna Lambert after U.S. District Court Judge Larry A. Burns announced Nunes’s sentence.
Police raided two dispensaries operated by Nunes as part of a sweep of pot shops across San Diego in September 2009.
Agents claim they found marijuana plants, bagged cannabis, several edible forms of marijuana, nearly $40,000 in cash, and two days of sales receipts totaling $16,000 at Nunes’s Green Kross Collective in Mission Beach, according to prosecutor Sherri Walker Hobson.
Agents also claim they found 89 more marijuana plants at Nunes’s dispensary on Sixth Avenue, the Downtown Kush Lounge Cooperative.
Nunes pleaded guilty to manufacturing marijuana, maintaining premises to sell marijuana, and money laundering, all felonies, three months after the raids.
The dispensary operator asked for probation with his plea, arguing that he was operating in accordance with California law under Proposition 215, passed by voters in 1996.
However, current federal law prohibits defendants from citing sate medical marijuana laws as defense against federal drug charges — even if they are abiding by state law.
Toke of the Town feels it must, at the risk of being obvious, urge all medical marijuana patients and providers NOT to plead guilty. Make them take you to trial!