Oakland pot candy maker pleads guilty
The owner of an Oakland factory that produced marijuana candy with names like Buddafinga and Mr. Greenbud has pleaded guilty to conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana.

Michael Martin, 33, of El Sobrante entered a guilty plea at a hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Oakland. He is scheduled to be sentenced July 2 by Judge Claudia Wilken.

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.

When the federal government charged Tainted Inc.’s owner and employees in September, authorities said the company supplied the marijuana-laced candies to cannabis clubs in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Seattle, Vancouver, British Columbia and Amsterdam.

Before surrendering to face the charges in October, Martin blasted the U.S. government for what he called an unfair attack by federal bullies on ailing patients who rely on medical marijuana.

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 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.

The DEA loves to go after manufacturers of marijuana edibles. Note that Tainted Inc., was only distributing to places where medical marijuana is legal under state law (California, Washington) or federal law (Canada), or the country where recreational use of marijuana is tolerated in coffeeshops (the Netherlands). But to the DEA, this is a big headline where they can show pictures of marijuana and guns and cash on the evening news along with a story about pot being made into candy. The intended inference is that the dreaded pot dealers are coming to hook your kids with pot candy, which ignores the fact that at every location where these candies are sold, one’s ID is checked for age 18 or above and in the medical dispensaries, a doctor’s recommendation is also checked.