Pizza and a Beer, Hold the Beer

Wrongly arrested, guilty plea literally at gunpoint, and now this. Best of luck to The Brauns.

Horrible. I hope the city council, the DA and idiot Brown read this and see the damage they have done. The blame for this wrong lies completely on them. Especially Brown.

I myself would have (if I knew I could be found Not Guilty) stuck it out at the expense of loosing both business, rather than accepting a Felony conviction and adding "ONE" strike against myself. After loosing both business a LAW SUITE against the City, and State. The City for the obvious, no business, no income, false imprisonment, displacement, default on investment and so on. The State for the abigious nature of the Law for medicinal Pot, undefied or lack of explicit definition of distribution of said Pot, and for lack of protections from unlawful procecution from Runaway courts and Law Enforcement heads (Police Chiefs and Sheriff's). Remember , the Law was approved but not defined regarding the aquirment, packaging and distribution of medicinal pot., this leaves many open loopholes for false prosecution for what would be deemed legal operations of "Pot Shops". I have not as of yet found anything in the Federal Government designating the proper aquirerment, packaging or distribution of medicinal Pot but am still looking....
Anyway, that's how I would have handled it.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, only slightly differently:

"You can lead a HortiPharm, but you can't make her shuck the corn."

(Cue closing credits and outro music)

Wow, so they can shut your business down based on manufactured charges and threats.

Smells like tyranny to me.

This is a wonderful family & an incredible business (Guru). The vengeance with which local officials have gone after this young family is utterly horrifying. Where is the Civil Liberties Union on this? There must be a compassionate lawyer in town who can find ways to help these people out.

I admire Mr. Braun for maneuvering to protect his wife & children.

To the Brauns I ask: How can we help?

Also: Fine writing & reporting by Mr. Fastman.

"Admire Braun for maneuvering to protect his wife and children"?
How is someone who operated a business for years in clear violation of federal law protecting his family? How is a man who operated a business that at best was operating in a "grey" area of state law protecting his family? A good husband and father would have steered far away from anything that could be close to illegal and potentially hurt his family. He knew what he was getting into from the beginning and clearly thought the rewards outweighed the risk. It appears he was wrong, but he has only himself to blame and I hope his family forgives him for choosing the almighty buck over his family.

How were they blindsided if it is clearly in the code that a spouse can't be a convicted felon? It's hard to believe that this would not have been known and considered before he decided to plead guilty to a felony.

Here's pat of the problem: Medicinal pot & the "dreams" some have of getting involved w/ the "legal" distribution of it.
As it stands, even w/ all the legalities in favor of pot dispensaries, there will always be a law on top of a law to attack said legalities.
ANYONE getting into this business (medicinal pot dispensaries) needs to know the potential legal risks as well as the potential repercussions/ramifications before they make a deal w/ the devil.
There's many things that could've been done to avoid such a fiasco, sadly enough, they weren't.
I'm keeping my eye on this 1, it is gonna play out in a strange, yet familiar fashion :) henry

Holy crap! What sort of antiquated law is that????!!!? How have I never heard of this before? Am I getting this straight, SHE can't keep HER liquor license because of her husband's felony??? I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that this law has mostly affected women...as in female business owners have mostly been royally SCREWED by this. Um...I would go the divorce route, keep the rings on and family together under one roof, and keep the business with the liquor license. Who needs a piece of paper anyways??? And...I don't blame the husband for taking a plea deal. He probably did it to alleviate some of the stress on his pregnant wife, and to ensure that she wasn't going back into the slammer.

I don't think that business owners should be 'taking it in the behind' over grey areas of law. That's something that the City and the State should be working out BEFORE they start prosecuting people. That just wouldn't hold up in court.

I've seen Hortipharm in the newspaper a couple times over these past few years - quotes, pics, etc. It seems to me that they were the only dispensary willing to operate with a level of transparency and openness to the public. There are (or at least have been) other dispensaries that are awfully quiet and trying to fly under the radar, which to me is when they start to seem a little sketchy. Why be in the shadows if you've got nothing to hide?

Do medicinal pot shops want the drug re-legalized?

Well gaijin, people with nothing to hide fly under the radar because other people decide to create problems where there were none before...then create more layers of legislation & bureaucracy to address those manufactured problems. I get what you are saying...and sometimes that is true..but this is one of those situations where it isn't. Other dispensaries flew under the radar because they were afraid of the morality police/prohibitionists who have deemed themselves worthy of telling the rest of us what we may put into/remove from our bodies.

And yes, billclausen, I am fairly certain that the pot shops want re-legalization of marijuana, as many folks do.

Sadly, we live in an era where the Nanny State is becoming increasingly powerful, as people are indoctrinated from childhood both at home and in the schools to turn to the government to answer all their questions and tell them what to think and do. Rather than recognize and address our own needs as adults, we are slowly becoming infantalized by special interests and various powers-that-be, losing our ability to question what must be questioned and to act on our own behalf.

Yes, there is a place for government, social services and law enforcement, but unless we as a people define that place, and also work to preserve our civil liberties, we are destined to become fearful, quivering, shuffling sheeple with our heads down, handing over all our resources and civil rights, doing exactly as we are told, and waiting to die.

Not a good prospect.

Manufacturing problems is what special interests are good at; it has worked in many other arenas ranging from pet ownership to the words we are permitted to say, and beyond. We all know about ridiculous legislation and political correctness gone off the rails. We discuss it. We detest it. Yet we continue to allow it.

Stand up for the pot shops and don't buy the crap that we need to "protect The Children". "The Children" aren't going in the pot shops. This is not about "The Children"...it is about adults who want the power which adulthood conveys, without the responsibility of standing up for what they themselves believe or wish for.

Enough.