At 7:37 a.m. on January 28, 2016, nearly 30 officers from the San Diego joint narcotics task force conducted a raid on Med-West Distributors, a licensed medical cannabis extraction company. The officers, decked out in helmets and tactical gear and clutching assault rifles and handguns, used a sledgehammer to open the door, and then burst into the lobby. Once inside, the task force arrested two employees present, cracked open the company's safe, and collected its inventory--more than 30,000 cartridges of cannabis oil and a couple of pounds of concentrate.
The narcotics task force seized $1.4 million in cash, product, and money from various bank accounts belonging to owner James Slatic ($325,570 in cash was found in the safe). Med-West had been providing hundreds of licensed dispensaries around California with medical CO2-extracted cannabis oil and products under the state's medical marijuana laws since 2010. The company was licensed by the city of San Diego and operating openly. Slatic says his company was raided a second time in late June and is now officially closed.
