My brother Andrew and I have gotten ourselves into trouble again. This time, it was during our recent whirlwind publicity tour in New York City promoting Weed Wars, our new Discovery Channel show. We faced a line-up of heavy TV hitters like Bill O’Reilly and Dr. Drew - neither of which is exactly a friend of medical cannabis. Thus, it was not surprising that, even though our mission is dedicated to medical cannabis, we got the inevitable question “Do you support the legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes?’

Our answer, which we delivered with varying degrees of effectiveness, was that it is not our mission to advocate for the legalization of cannabis for recreational purposes. In fact, we don’t really believe that cannabis consumers do - or should - use cannabis as a form of recreation.

On the morning of October 3, 2006, just before we opened the doors of Harborside for the very first time, I got a phone call: “Federal agents are raiding medical cannabis locations in San Francisco and Oakland — right now.” We had always known we were taking a risk, but had not expected to confront it so directly, on our very first day of business.

But we opened our doors that day anyhow, and we made a commitment to our patients: to provide them with the very highest quality cannabis and patient services — no matter what the risk level is.

Five years later, October 3, 2011, was a day of dramatically mixed messages. My morning started with the very pleasant duty of giving the Oakland Treasurer’s Office a check for $360,483.33, which represented 1/3 of our total annual tax payment of $1.1 million. When we first opened, all our tax money went to the state, so we got the City Council to pass a cannabis tax — and today, Harborside is one of the top 10 taxpayers in the City of Oakland.

October 14, 2011 - As I write these words, I’ve just learned that Matt Cohen, founder of Northstone Organics, has been released from detention by DEA agents; but only after they destroyed his 99 beautiful, carefully tended, fully licensed and legal cannabis plants. Matt is well known in the cannabis community as a pioneer in developing safe and regulated cultivation of cannabis. He was one of the very first to have the courage to enroll in the Mendocino County Sheriff’s licensing program - which intentionally limited cultivation to 99 plants, in an effort to address federal concerns about diversion.

This vicious and mean attack comes on the heels of a double-header assault on another pioneer of licensed and regulated cannabis distribution - Lynette Shaw and the Marin Alliance. First the IRS denied all of her normal and standard business deductions and levied a multi-million dollar tax bill. Then, to add salt to the wound, the DOJ sent a letter to her landlord, threatening to seize the property if the Marin Alliance is not evicted.