Some Southern California ‘Nonprofit’ Pot Shops Make Big Money

Los Angeles Times:  “Documents show a cash-infused retail world bearing little resemblance to the one pitched to voters for the 1996 Compassionate Use Act for ‘seriously ill Californians.’ . . . Many medical marijuana dispensaries have been making huge sums of money even as they claim to be nonprofit, according to court and law enforcement records, industry insiders, police and federal agents. . . . The federal government, which considers all marijuana use illegal and has signaled it will target any commercial operations, has launched a multi-pronged campaign to put this all back in the bottle. And local authorities throughout California, led by the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, are going after them too, based on the notion that nothing in the medical marijuana law permits sales or profits. . . . LAPD Det. Robert Holcomb instructs smaller agencies with a simple message: ‘Sales are not authorized anywhere in the medical marijuana laws.’  In the last three years, his team of detectives in the Devonshire Division got rid of all 38 dispensaries in their turf, whether they were barely getting by or brimming with cash.”