Medical Marijuana Raids - Santa Barbara, Goleta, and San Diego dispensaries

I'm not sure if you guys are up to date on what happened this past week, but just wanted to post my article here for you guys to read. It really shows that some of the individuals operating dispensaries are just looking to make money and NOT putting our patients first.

This kind of activity really hurts our community and makes it much more difficult to be respected by the people, state, and country. Lets be smart out there guys.


This past week SB sheriff and SB police served warrants at three different dispensaries, Helping Hands (Santa Barbara), Choice Dispensary (Goleta) and Helping Hands (San Diego) resulting in the arrest of 3 individuals and dispensaries being shut down. James Harder,30, Craig Corneal, 29, and Laura Bertucci, 24, were all arrested and charged with felony drug trafficking and felony money laundering.
Major Statistics of the Raid:

• Corneal was arrested at a residence off Shoreline Drive in Goleta, he had 11 pounds of processed marijuana and $2,400 in cash when the sheriffs arrived.
• Harder was found with $70,000 in cash, growing equipment and a small number of plants
• Sheriffs seized 75 pounds of processed cannabis, hundreds of edibles, $20,000 and automatic teller machines from Santa Barbara’s Helping Hands dispensary
• 1,100 plants, a few pounds of hash products and small sum of cash was taken from the Goleta Choice dispensary
• 35 pounds, $17,000 cash was taken from the San Diego based Helping Hands
• Corneal and Bertucci were booked at County Jail with bail set at $2 million each, Harder bail was $500,000

This raid comes after a previous bust of over 91,000 plants there were found in a week long back country raid in Santa Barbara’s beautiful foothills. The three dispensaries and their owners above created this situation out of pure disrespect for the legal regulations allowing them to operate and the city council and individuals keeping them in business. They were grossly and negligently operating outside of ALL medical marijuana guidelines and being absolutely greedy; turning a “business to help the medically needy” into a “wannabe gangster greed driven problem”.
There is no doubt that individuals who see Medical Marijuana as a means to get rich quick and be a gangster will be punished. No one in the medical community agrees with their actions and only hopes that future dispensaries will act respectfully towards our state, our law enforcement, and our patients.
Patients come first, this is what it’s all about. I hope that California citizens will not see these actions as representative of the medical marijuana community and know that this is a gross act of negligence on individuals who are NOT part of our community.

wow thats crazy... At any business you should have customers first, but especially at a dispensary where those people are PATIENTS!!!!

that really sucks but, serves them right!!!

Greed is a time-bomb!!! just ticking down the time

I believe that you could be making a mistake here. You are going on the assumption that all of the facts that you listed are true.

I'm here to tell you, they are not true. Those "facts" come from the pigs. Pigs are professional liars, who will lie to their mother to make their case. They certainly don't have a problem lying to the public, and they do it every time they open their mouth.

Any time you read something that a pig says, just remember that they are lying to make the story sound plausible, and so the public will allow them to continue with their sadistic tactics.

Don't believe the pigs.

I am familiar with Craig and Helping Hands; I don't disbelieve what is being charged against them. I am sorry that this is how it went down, but he was not running a legal business; doesn't matter if its marijuana or donuts, you need to abide by legal business laws and regulations.

A few months ago he was raided and had $90,000 in cash on his kitchen table being counted.. Does he think he's scar face or something??

That is not a legitimate business practice for any business,, is it??

Also in realtion to this story: Cops posed as the "New Managment" in order to entrap customers

Law Enforcement Reportedly Posed As Medical Marijuana Collective Managers

There are reports out of California that law enforcement officers were posing as the managers of a medical cannabis collective for the purposes of arresting unsuspecting patients.

A patient and a reporter are both claiming that officers were posing as the “new management” of a collective today in Hillcrest, CA.
The collective member, who asked not to be identified, said he visited the Helping Hands Wellness Collective in Hillcrest at about 11 a.m. this morning and found the collective closed. It was supposed to open at 10 a.m., so he called the collective’s number on his cell; a voice answered and he was let in. Once inside, he said several men wearing the collectives’ T-shirts introduced themselves as the “new management.” He was allowed into the dispensing area and was given hash as a free gift, a common gimmick to attract and retain collective members.
When he mentioned that he also grew marijuana, he said the men identified themselves as law-enforcement and detained him in a back room.
“Entrapment” is the word that immediately springs to mind. But beyond that, how despicable of a person do you have to be to spend your day trying to dupe unsuspecting medical patients into incriminating themselves? Is this really a wise expenditure of tax dollars?
But the patients story isn’t the only report of this:
At about 2 p.m., CityBeat rep Jason Noble visited the collective as part of a routine call to see whether the organization was interested in advertising. He says the door was initially locked, but he could hear someone fumbling with the locks before letting him in. There were about five men inside, including one with long goatee and wearing a T-shirt.
“He said they were under new management and had just opened the doors today,” Noble says. “Then I introduced myself and that’s when he pulled out his badge.”
Law enforcement in CA have gotten so lazy and engorged on the easy busts of cannabis users and growers that it’s become all they know. No more real crime fighting for them, not when they can just dress up as a hippie and sit in a cannabis collective all day, looking for sick people to arrest.
This is a disgusting display of uselessness by CA law enforcement. Uselessness seems to be their most abundant resource.

I just want to point out I had visited San Diego's NTF (Narcotics Task Force) website, which had "marijuana eradication" on their list of things to do... such bs! Waste of funds and time. WE fund these "special" teams ..only to go after a harmless plant?