Pot-candy boss sentenced on federal drug charges

Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, September 5, 2008


(09-05) 12:13 PDT OAKLAND -- The owner of an Oakland factory that produced marijuana candy with names like Buddafinga and Mr. Greenbud has been sentenced to a year in a halfway house and a year of home detention for conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana.

Michael Martin, 33, of El Sobrante was also sentenced Wednesday to five years of probation by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in Oakland.

Martin is the owner of Tainted Inc., which started as a boutique business that made chocolate truffles and grew into a large marijuana-candy maker that bought chocolate by the ton, authorities said.

Tainted Inc. employee Jessica Sanders was sentenced Wednesday to three years' probation for illegally using a phone to distribute marijuana, a felony. Two other employees, Michael Anderson and Diallo McLinn - the son of longtime Berkeley activist Osha Neumann - were each sentenced in April to two years' probation on a misdemeanor count of marijuana possession.

Authorities said Tainted made candies with names that played off popular legal treats: Buddafinga, Mr. Greenbud, Stoners. The business also made pot-laced items such as cookies, ice cream, peanut butter, granola bars and barbecue sauce, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Martin's attorneys, Sara Zalkin and J. Tony Serra, wrote in court papers that their client had been manufacturing the candy as a medicinal marijuana product. Martin, they said, "was not motivated by profit" and now has a "negative net worth of $147,000."

In a sentencing memorandum, however, Assistant U.S. Attorney Keslie Stewart wrote that Martin "was not growing marijuana solely for his own use or for the use of a sick family member. He was running a profitable business and supporting himself and his family with the proceeds of marijuana sales."

Martin said he joined the medical marijuana movement after seeing his father die painfully of prostate cancer in 2002 after a 10-year battle. His father refused to use marijuana because of a federal ban on all types of the drug, Martin said.

Martin said he uses medical marijuana to ease pain after a fall left him with seven screws and a steel plate in his left heel. He said he also has degenerative cartilage in his right knee.

In September 2007, federal agents raided his factory on the 900 block of 61st Street in North Oakland and a building on the 300 block of 40th Street where marijuana was grown.

The investigation bore similarities to DEA raids in Oakland in 2006 in which five people connected with a company called Beyond Bomb were convicted of making marijuana-laced treats with such names as Munchy Way, Rasta Reece's and Puff-a-Mint Pattie.

In federal marijuana cases, defense attorneys are barred from telling jurors that companies supply medical cannabis products through licensed dispensaries to qualified patients. Proposition 215, the initiative approved in 1996 by state voters, legalized growing and using marijuana for medical purposes with a doctor's recommendation. Under federal law, marijuana used for any purpose is illegal.

E-mail Henry K. Lee at hlee@sfchronicle.com.


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