14 DAY TRIAL // Police have executed raids at four clinics dispensing medical marijuana in Seattle, Washington.
"Several search warrants involving marijuana storefronts in King, Pierce, and Thurston Counties were executed Wednesday," a representative of the DEA tells KING 5 News.
According to a source in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, officials targeted dispensaries under investigation since 2011.
"What we heard from a DEA agent that talked to one of my clients that was at the scene was that there was 18 targets or 18 places that they were going to hit," Criminal Defense Attorney Douglas Hiatt notes.
He suggests that, although pot has been legalized by the State Senate in Washington, it is illegal where the Federal Government is concerned.
"Marijuana is illegal 24 hours a day, 7 days a week under federal law. There is no defense, there is no justification," Hiatt says.
DEA spokesperson Jodie Underwood remains mum about the other locations that will be raided.
"They don't get to see the cancer patients," argues Casey Lee at Bayside Collective in Olympia.
Bayside is one of the facilities that has been raided by agents with guns drawn, driving up in seven vehicles. Medical records and $2,500 (€1,880) worth of marijuana were confiscated.
"One of the DEA agents said: 'This is your second raid and your third robbery. Why do you keep doing this? [...] Things are going to be hell for you.'
"I just told him it's because we just enjoy helping people, and he told us that he wasn't expecting that answer," Lee recalls.
Cancer patient Leif O'Leary comments on not being able to acquire the pot at the Seattle Cross medical facility.
"You can't tell me there isn't bigger fish to fry, especially now that recreational marijuana is legal. It is just to me inconceivable that this is still happening," O'Leary says.