Marijuana Grower's Handbook Page 2

  LEMAR groups sprang up across the country. John and Leni Sinclair’s in Detroit, DJ Levy’s in Cleveland, and mine at SUNY-Buffalo in 1966, the first college chapter. The Detroit chapter became the most vital chapter in the Midwest, thanks to the organizing of John Sinclair, the brilliant poet and bluesman, and his wife Leni, a great music photographer. Leni Sinclair’s photo of their 2-year-old daughter in front of a garden made the cover of The Marijuana Review, the magazine I started with Ed Sanders in 1968. The Marijuana Review’s news stories and colorful features of cannabis culture circulated internationally through the Underground Press Syndicate, run by Tom Forcade, who later co-founded High Times a few years later with Ed Rosenthal. Once again, the idea was to control our own media, publish our own understanding, and get the word out. As this was happening, Ed and other New York activists such as Dana Beal and Aron Kay were committing flagrant acts of public inhalation at smoke-ins, be-ins, rallies, protests, poetry readings, midnight Reefer Madness shows, and debates with expert know-nothings.

  IN FEBRUARY, 1969, I MET DR. TOD MIKURIYA at the New Worlds Drug Symposium in Buffalo. He was an example of Gladwell’s Connector, Maven, and Salesman all at once. A psychiatrist by training, he was something of an expert on cultivation as well as medicine, tramping off to Morocco to study kif cultivation in the Rif Mountains for his book Economic Botany. Not only was he one of the few who had actually read the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission report of 1894, he had just had them republished. A few years later, his Marijuana Medical Papers 1839-1972 would bring together the best articles in English about medical marijuana. As his hero, Dr. W. B. O’Shaughnessy, had done in 1839, Dr. Mikuriya re-introduced cannabis therapeutics to modern medicine.

  IN 1970, I began a project with Blair Newman, a radical young genius with an extraordinary vision who I had met at the 1968 annual conference of the National Student Association Drug Studies Desk. Why not, he had proposed then, fund the marijuana movement by selling hemp products? We ran with the idea, and in 1970 set up Amorphia, The Cannabis Co-op—a nonprofit organization that manufactured and marketed hemp-rolling papers. Because hemp cultivation was illegal in the U.S., we ordered the papers from Spain. Amorphia sold Acapulco Gold rolling papers (made from rice, maize, chocolate, and hemp), with all the proceeds devoted to legalization, including funding the 1972 California Marijuana Initiative. Amorphia emphasized cultivation for personal use as part of any legalization plan, and we liked the idea of using grassroots political activism, including voter initiatives, to achieve our goals.

  IN 1971, a bold young attorney named R. Keith Stroup got a tiny grant from Hugh Hefner and started the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). One of the main differences between Amorphia and NORML was that Stroup preferred a more traditional legislative approach to reform, working with politicians and suits rather than hippies, and hated initiatives because he was sure they would fail. The time was right for both groups, because the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Tim Leary case had made the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act unenforceable. In response, President Richard Nixon proposed a new federal law, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. This new scheme created a system of schedules for dangerous drugs, with penalties dependent on which schedule the drug was in, but gave the U.S. Attorney General, John Mitchell, final power to designate the schedule for each drug. Marijuana, Mitchell decided, would go in Schedule I along with heroin, instead of Schedule II or III for drugs with recognized medical uses, such as cocaine and amphetamines. Pot was officially the drug of hippies, not doctors.

  THE CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES ACT included another feature. At the insistence of then-Congressman and future New York City Mayor Ed Koch, the bill created the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. Nixon appointed seven of its 13 members, including its chairman, Raymond Shafer, the former governor of Pennsylvania who was then a national Republican Party leader. We didn’t have much faith in its credibility, but both NORML and Amorphia wrangled invitations to the Commission hearings in San Francisco in June 1971. I introduced Allen Ginsberg—clean-shaven, necktied, and wearing a porkpie hat—as “our spiritual and financial adviser.” I presented the case for legalization with emphasis on cultivation, telling the Commission that, in the future, “Amorphia intends to engage in the production of legal marijuana on a non-profit basis.”

  In March, 1972, to our astonishment, the Shafer Commission recommended that federal law be amended so that possession, use, or “casual distribution” of small amounts of marijuana by adults in private would no longer be a criminal offense. Possession or distribution in public would garner a $100 fine, while cultivation or sale of marijuana for profit would remain criminal, felony offenses. President Nixon rejected the Commission’s report out of hand. In a taped Oval Office conversation with his chief of staff, H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, Nixon said, “I want a Goddamn strong statement on marijuana… that just tears the ass out of them… every one of those bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob, what is the matter with them? I suppose it’s because most of them are psychiatrists, you know, there’s so many, all the great psychiatrists are Jewish. We are going to hit the marijuana thing, and I want to hit it right square in the puss.”

  1972 WAS ALSO THE YEAR THAT AMORPHIA ran a statewide initiative campaign to legalize marijuana in California. With impetus from Foster City attorney Leo Paoli, we came up with an initiative that emphasized cultivation for personal use. CMI-72 was succinct, easily understandable, and appealing to volunteers. It said:

  No person in the State of California 18 years of age or older shall be punished criminally, or be denied any right or privilege, by reason of such person’s planting, cultivating, harvesting, drying, processing, otherwise preparing, transporting, or possessing marijuana for personal use, or by reason of that use.

  This provision shall in no way be construed to repeal existing legislation, or limit the enactment of future legislation, prohibiting persons under the influence of marijuana from engaging in conduct that endangers others.

  Although it lost by a wide margin, CMI-72 was a “tipping point” in the early days of the reform movement. It was the first time marijuana law reform was on the ballot anywhere in the world. It was the first time that sales of hemp (paper) funded an initiative. And it was the last time that a California initiative campaign was run entirely by volunteers, instead of paid signature gatherers. The marijuana movement grew from a handful of activists to a state full of supporters.

  Many legendary Mavens, Connectors, and Salesmen cut their teeth in the CMI-72 campaign. Ed Rosenthal moved to San Francisco in 1972. He shared our vision of cultivation as the key to legalization and toured California encouraging growers to support the initiative, and offering advice to improve their crops. We took word of the campaign

  The marijuana movement grew from a handful of activists to a state full of supporters.

  to NORML’s first national conference in August 1972, where I met Michelle Cauble, who was working for the National Coordinating Council on Drug Education. I invited Michelle out to work on CMI, she showed up two weeks later, and we’ve been together ever since. Harvey Milk’s first political action in San Francisco was gathering signatures on the CMI petition by going door to door in the Castro district. In 1977, Milk won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and became the first openly gay American to be elected to public office. Milk’s marijuana supplier was Dennis Peron, who would play key roles in future initiatives.

  CMI received about 33% of the vote statewide; however, in Berkeley, CMI passed by 71.3%. Following that, Councilwoman Loni Hancock—who would later become mayor and serve in the state Assembly and Senate—sponsored a local ballot measure directing police to give lowest priority to marijuana law enforcement and to make no arrests for cultivation, possession or use.

  VOTER SUPPORT FOR DECRIMINALIZATION also caught the attention of another hugely important player, a charismatic politician with powerful n
egotiation skills who made others want to agree with him, the type of person Gladwell calls a “Salesman:” George R. Moscone, who was at that time State Senate Majority Leader, representing San Francisco.

  Senator Moscone held hearings in 1974 and worked with Gordon Brownell and me to craft a bill to reduce the penalties for possession of an ounce or less of marijuana from a felony to a citable misdemeanor with a maximum $100 fine. This bold move, passed by the legislature in 1975 as SB95, “The Moscone Act,” saved the state of California more than $100 million a year in enforcement costs. But it had a flaw: it didn’t decriminalize cultivation.

  WE WERE CULTIVATING ANYWAY, of course. In 1974, Ed began his long publishing career when he co-authored the Indoor/Outdoor Highest Quality Marijuana Growers Guide, 94 pages of sinsemilla cultivation information available to homegrowers everywhere. By the late Seventies, California growers were producing exquisite strains of sinsemilla such as “Big Sur Holy Weed,” and genetics had replaced geographic origin as a way of identifying strains. We were growing it in the U.S. now, but it was still illegal as hell. Sinsemilla farms, indoor hydroponics included, spread throughout the U.S. in the 1980s in response to the border crackdowns of the “War on Drugs.”

  “The goofy relaxant had become a critical medication.”

  JACK HERER ENTERED THE MOVEMENT in 1972, soon after mustering out of the army, by volunteering to work for CMI. One day in the Los Angeles CMI office, I showed Jack some hemp paper. His response, best I remember, was: “You mean there’s something else you can do with hemp besides smoke it?” Jack sure grabbed that ball of twine and ran with it! He researched the history of hemp for more than a decade, and in 1985 published the first edition of The Emperor Wears No Clothes (Herer 1985). It has gone through many editions and may be the most popular hemp book of all time. In the 1980s, Jack was also attempting to remedy the problem of federal prohibition with a series of initiatives in Oregon and California to legalize hemp cultivation for all purposes, though none made the ballot.

  IN 1973 BOB RANDALL discovered that marijuana helped his glaucoma better than prescription drugs. “The goofy relaxant had become a critical medication,” he wrote. Living in Washington, D.C., however, he couldn’t get through the droughts “when marijuana could not be bought for blood or money.” To provide his sight-saving remedy, he and his mate Alice O’Leary grew four little pot plants on their balcony, and promptly got busted by D.C. narcs. Bob pursued his medical necessity claim through the courts, and in 1976 became the first American in 40 years to gain legal access to marijuana for medical purposes. But where to get it? Would you believe free marijuana from the Feds?! Bob was the first patient in what the government calls a Compassionate Investigational New Drug program, receiving pre-rolled marijuana cigarettes from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Unfortunately, NIDA’s seedy, stemmy, low-grade pot remains some of the worst marijuana in the country. It is still the only legal source for federally approved researchers and the few remaining patients in the IND program that Bob’s case established. Bob and Alice’s Galen Press published the best early books on marijuana medicine, and in 1980 they founded the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics (ACT), the first group focused solely on the role of marijuana in medical treatment.

  IN 1978, DENNIS PERON placed Proposition W on the San Francisco ballot, a measure which demanded that the district attorney and the chief of police “cease the arrest and prosecution of individuals involved in the cultivation, transfer or possession of marijuana.” Prop. W passed, but just weeks later an assassin killed Harvey Milk and then-Mayor George Moscone. The new mayor, Dianne Fein-stein, now a U.S. Senator, refused to implement Proposition W. But Dennis wasn’t done. He started the world’s first Cannabis Buyers’ Club in San Francisco, and by 1996 it had evolved into America’s first medical pot emporium—a five-story building with one story devoted to cultivation. He never forgot the power of the initiative, and in 1996 he helped develop the wording and started the petition drive to put the Compassionate Use Act, Proposition 215, on the California state ballot. This “tipping point” initiative, which passed with 54%, enshrines in the state constitution the right of individual patients and their caregivers to grow marijuana, and pushed the movement forward at top speed. Since then, many other states have followed suit.

  IN 1989, DEBBY GOLDSBERRY co-founded Cannabis Action Network (CAN) after several years on the “Hemp Tour” with Jack Herer and Ben Masel. Goldsberry wrote recently that CAN “instilled a more grassroots, female-oriented spirit into the then heavily male-dominated marijuana legalization movement.” After Proposition 215 passed in 1996, she and Don Duncan opened the Berkeley Patients Group, one of the best medical cannabis dispensaries in the world.

  IN 1995, MIKKI NORRIS mounted a remarkable photo exhibit, “Human Rights and the U.S. Drug War,” that pioneered the movement to reduce the long sentences handed down for drugs. She and Chris Conrad also co-authored, along with Virginia Resner, the heartbreaking book Shattered Lives: Portraits from America’s Drug War. Another activist on prison issues, Julia Stewart, organized Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) to fight the harsh sentences Congress required judges to impose.

  VALERIE AND MIKE CORRAL in Santa Cruz started the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) after getting busted for five plants in 1992. Valerie remembers, “As the first patient in the State of California to challenge existing law and based on a defense of necessity, I was ushered into the legal, political, and social foreground of this health issue.” The DEA moved against WAMM in 2002. The city council then took it upon themselves to publicly distribute medicine to WAMM’s patients on the steps of City Hall. Valerie and Mike’s input also led to the inclusion of the rights of patients to collectively and cooperatively cultivate marijuana in the California legislature’s Medical Marijuana Program Act of 2003 (SB420). This further legitimized the hundreds of medical cannabis dispensaries and cultivation collectives already operating in California under local ordinance.

  TIMELINE

  1940 Robert Mitchum busted

  1958 Neal Cassady busted

  1964-1970 LEMAR

  1970-1973 Amorphia

  1970 Controlled Substances Act

  1971 NORML

  1971-1972 The Shafer Commission

  1972 CMI

  1975 Moscone Act

  1976 Investigational New Drug Program

  1978 Prop W

  1989 Cannabis Action Network (CAN)

  1995 Marijuana Policy Project (MPP)

  1996 Proposition 215

  1998 Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP)

  2002 Americans for Safe Access (ASA)

  2002 Green Aid

  IN 1995, NORML PROVIDED THE SPARK for what has become a leading marijuana reform organization, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP). MPP was founded by two former NORML staffers, Rob Kampia and Chuck Thomas, who wanted to create a mainstream D.C. lobbying organization focused narrowly on changing public policy. That initial effort got off the ground with an aggressive membership drive and a modest grant from a philanthropic foundation funded by financier George Soros. By the end of that first year, MPP’s work with the U.S. Sentencing Commission had helped change the federal sentencing guidelines, resulting in shorter sentences for people convicted of cultivating marijuana and the release of an estimated 950 federal marijuana prisoners. This early success attracted the support of another philanthropist, the insurance magnate Peter Lewis, who remains the organization’s primary funder.

  SINCE THEN, MPP HAS GROWN into one of the leading marijuana reform organizations in the U.S., claiming 25,000 members nationally and roughly three dozen full-time staff members spread between offices in Washington, D.C., and state campaigns around the country. MPP worked to pass a medical marijuana initiative in Washington, D.C. in 1998, and in 2000 MPP lobbying helped convince the Hawaii state legislature to become the first to enact protections for medical marijuana patients. That success was repeated in Maryland in 2003 when four years of lobbyin
g resulted in the Republican governor signing legislation to reduce penalties for medical marijuana use. In 2004, litigation MPP funded established that state privacy protections that meant Alaskans 21 years or over may legally possess up to four ounces of marijuana in their homes. That same year, MPP helped pass a medical marijuana ballot initiative in Nevada and in 2008 it was instrumental in the passage of a medical marijuana initiative in Michigan. MPP continues to lobby for medical marijuana bills and legislation to end marijuana prohibition.

  OUR MOVEMENT’S MEDICAL MARIJUANA VICTORIES have not come without a fight. In the early morning hours of February 12, 2002, federal agents began a series of coordinated raids on a San Francisco medical marijuana collective and the homes and businesses of the handful of people who were supplying it with medicine. As doors were being broken down, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Asa Hutchison, was preparing the speech he was to give that evening at San Francisco’s distinguished Commonwealth Club. He planned to announce a new front on the war on drugs—the arrest and aggressive prosecution of medical marijuana providers, including the “kingpin”, Ed Rosenthal. But the Feds misjudged both their target and the patient community. Not only was Asa Hutchison shouted down by patient advocates at his speech, but the actions of his agents galvanized a grassroots response of patients.

  Led by medical cannabis patient Steph Sherer and visionary entrepreneur Don Duncan, area activists formed Americans for Safe Access (ASA) to provide a voice for patients and resist federal interference in California’s medical marijuana program. The acronym was not a coincidence. One of ASA’s goals was to directly challenge and embarrass Asa Hutchison, the then-head of the DEA. As a grassroots organization of patients and activists, ASA began with protests around the trial of Ed Rosenthal in late 2002 and early 2003. Every day of Ed’s trial, the large courtyard of the federal courthouse was filled with protestors organized by ASA. The strategic creativity of Steph Sherer’s group was evident immediately, as protestors engaged in various forms of street theater to convey their message. One day, dozens of protestors stood motionless in rows with duct-taped mouths and medical placards, a silent demonstration of all that the jury was not being allowed to hear. On another, rainy day, protestors carried matching red umbrellas that had “Free Ed” spelled out in white tape, easily readable from the windows of the federal building above. When Ed’s trial concluded with a guilty verdict on all counts, ASA activists were instrumental in providing the jurors with the full facts and convincing them to speak out about their experience. This led to the first jury revolt in a federal medical cannabis trial, with the majority of the panel appearing on CNN, Dateline and elsewhere to denounce the Rosenthal trial as a miscarriage of justice.