| West Seattle Blog |
| DEA agents swarm the G.A.M.E. Collective Lounge in White Center. Agents who performed surveillance felt that the patients didn’t “look sick enough.” |
Need To Be Evaluated For Medical Marijuana? The DEA Can Tell If You ‘Deserve’ Medical Pot — From A Distance! With No Training!
The spectacle of federal and local law enforcement agents wasting large amounts of cash in Washington state while investigating medical marijuana dispensaries, of all things, just got several orders of magnitude more absurd and maddening.
The agents, who evidently have no serious crime to investigate, spent weeks staked out at various dispensaries across western Washington, watching from afar as patients came and went with medical marijuana. Not a big shocker. That’s what happens at dispensaries; patients get pot.
But several months ago, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, in all its bureaucratic wisdom, decided that the three locations of the G.A.M.E. Collective, all owned by Brionne Corbray, needed surveillance.
| West Seattle Blog |
| The G.A.M.E. Collective Lounge in White Center being raided Tuesday morning |
When DEA agents began watching the dispensary and its employees, “the spying didn’t uncover anything particularly nefarious,” according to court documents, reports Keegan Hamilton at the Seattle Weekly.
In fact, the investigation into G.A.M.E. (which stands for Greenpiece Alternative Medicine and Education), which began back on July 27, wasn’t able to accomplish much more than sending a paid informant into the dispensary who, on several occasions, bought small amounts of cannabis.
According to the search warrant affidavit, this informant has a legitimate doctor’s authorization for medical marijuana — so the purchases he or she made at G.A.M.E. were perfectly legal.
But, wait! The informant “reported seeing several people getting high on the premises.”
Well, yeah. G.A.M.E.’s White Center location has advertised the fact for months that on-site medication is permissible in its lounge. That would be why they call that location the G.A.M.E. Collective Lounge, don’t ya know?
Wow, you gotta be impressed with the keen investigative acumen of our wonderful DEA agents, haven’t you? Regular bunch of James Bonds we’ve got there! Quite a crew!
Still, though, that’s not the best of it.
While these morons were hiding across the street watching the damn place, one DEA agent writes that he “became suspicious” because many customers were in their 20s and 30s, and didn’t fit his preconceived idea of the way he felt medical marijuana patients “should look.”
“I did not observe anyone that required a wheelchair, crutches or walker to enter The G.A.M.E. Collective,” the deeply clueless agent wrote in the search warrant affidavit. “I know from personal experience, as well as observations of patients suffering from illnesses — such as certain kinds of cancer, AIDs [sic], or Multiple Sclerosis — the physical toll such illnesses take on a person’s body as well as the side effects of their treatment,” the agent “knowledgeably” shares with us.
“I know through experience and observations that hair loss, weight loss, lack of energy, difficulty in the ability to walk or to move limbs, or labored breathing are common and observable signs of such illnesses,” the agent wrote. “During this surveillance, I did not observe anyone who entered or exited The G.A.M.E. Collective exhibiting these signs.”
Isn’t it just heartwarming to know that among the written justifications for the armed raid on the G.A.M.E. Collective were medical evaluations made by DEA goons with no medical training — from across the street?
“These observations, of course, are patently ridiculous,” write Hamilton at the Seattle Weekly. “A DEA agent cannot possibly appraise a person’s medical condition and history from his stakeout spot across the street.”