Pubdate: Thu, 20 Apr 2006
Source: Good Times (Santa Cruz, CA)
Page: Cover Feature
Copyright: 2006 Pacific Sierra Publishing
Contact:  http://www.gdtimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1422
Author: Peter Koht
Image: "Don't bogart that joint!" http://www.mapinc.org/images/420.jpg

420: EXPLORING THE CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARIJUANA ON THE DAY (AND 
TIME) IT MATTERS THE MOST

The problem with writing about pot is that due diligence dictates 
that you get baked beforehand. So ... Check. Is there any food around here?

Marijuana is a drug plant. If you smoke it, you get lit, and then 
everything is different for a bit. It's an occasional habit for many, 
for some, it's a lifestyle, and others rebuke it with mighty fervor.

Criminalized by a number of federal laws starting with the 1937 
Marijuana Tax Act, weed used to be thought of as an industrial plant. 
Harvested and processed to make cheap paper, cloth and rope, 
Washington grew it, his buddy Jefferson wrote on it and nearly 200 
years later, our brave boys used hemp parachutes to safely come down 
behind enemy lines.

While it makes great cloth and threatens the profit margins of the 
petrochemical industry, the real reason for the federal government's 
disapproval lies in the flowers. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a 
complex compound capable of altering perception and metabolism, makes 
up a healthy percentage of pot's resinous, trichome-flecked flowers. 
Technically called sinsemilla, but better known as bud outside of 
reggae tunes, these unfertilized flowers have been a part of American 
society since the jazz age.

Appropriated by the beats, explicitly enjoyed by the hippies and 
talked up by Snoop, these flowers have also played an enormous role 
in determining the cultural reality of Northern California in 
general, and Santa Cruz in particular. It was here on the West Coast 
where the nerdier nurturers amongst the Aquarians first went into the 
hills to bend botany to their will and develop incredibly powerful 
strains like Kona Gold and White Widow. You can't print it, but 
there's a brand out of the frozen north called "Alaskan Matanuska Thunderf**k."

One of the government's chief gripes about marijuana is that in order 
to supply the vast multitudes who inhale (and enjoy it), a 
multinational, multibillion dollar criminal economy has emerged. Even 
with all the discussions surrounding its potential medical benefits 
and relative harm of marijuana being conducted by academics, 
scientists, activists and policy makers, the man still brings the 
hate down on the herb.

Marijuana cessation is an important portion of the War on Drugs, 
which merged with the War on Terror about five years back. Last year, 
the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) distributed $12.5 
billion to other federal agencies that attempt to eradicate drugs in 
the United States. Many millions of those earmarked funds were spent 
trying to stop the cultivation, transportation, distribution, 
inhalation or ingestion of any portion of the cannabis plant, and 
several hundred thousand of those earmarked greenbacks were spent 
here in Santa Cruz County.

The language of the ONDCP's "Drug Description for Marijuana" spells 
out in no uncertain terms just how dangerous marijuana is to the 
human body. It cites frequent "respiratory infections, impaired 
memory and learning ability, increased heart rate, anxiety, panic 
attacks, tolerance, and physical dependence" as common side effects 
and consequences of pot abuse.

As a nation that has no interest in allowing people to ruin their 
lives by smoking a noxious weed, federal law also assigns stiff 
penalties for any citizen foolish enough to come in contact with this 
member of the plant kingdom. If the Feds come calling, possession of 
any amount--even as a first-time offender--could cost you a year of 
your life and $1,000. That's just the possession penalty. Cultivation 
is an entirely different matter. Growing anywhere from 100 to 1,000 
kilograms of herb could get you five to 40 and $2 million in fines. 
Talk about a buzzkill.

The Lowdown on the Big High

In the face of such significant penalties, it's amazing to think that 
anyone is out of the closet about their use of marijuana, but well, 
here we are. Blame the weather. For better or worse, California is 
the epicenter of the national debate about marijuana's role in 
society--legal, medical and recreational--and the policy that's 
crafted in response to it.

Santa Cruz stands at the bleeding edge of these arguments. Pot and 
politics have long been bedfellows in this county, but the 
anniversary of their first date is a matter of some debate. It might 
have been when the university opened in 1965, or when a progressive 
majority overtook the city council in the early '80s, but the 
relationship was definitely private until it was vocally outed in the 
early '90s.

The archives of this political affair can be found on Laurel Street 
at the Compassion Flower Inn. Unique in the frilly world of bed and 
breakfasts for the fact that it was specifically set up to give 
medical marijuana patients a safe place to toke on the road, it's run 
by two women, Andrea Tischler and Maria Mallek, whose sense of 
hospitality has been honed by decades of standing on the front lines 
of the drug debate in Santa Cruz County. For them, the Inn stood at 
the nexus of the two most central tenets of life in Santa Cruz: 
activism and housing costs.

"We decided to open up a bed and breakfast because we were doing 
restorations on the house," Tischler says as we sit down to coffee 
and muffins. "The Inn also gives us an opportunity to be a physical 
presence in the heart of the community and to reach out to the hemp 
and medical marijuana communities and have some visibility."

Within a few moments, activist Theodora Kerry, a long-time proponent 
of marijuana law reform, enters via the back door. She takes a seat 
across the table and pulls out a photocopied history of marijuana 
activism from her satchel.

For these two women, their love of the herb is balanced by a 
deep-seated hatred of the War on Drugs. "The billions we have spent 
have been focused on incarceration has been a waste" Tischler says. 
"It's flooded our penal institutions, separated families and 
shattered a lot of lives ... it's accomplished nothing."

Speaking about the dark days before cannabis clubs, ballot measures 
and vaporizers, Kerry remembers the secrecy that used to surround the 
conversation about marijuana. "If you were in a straight reality job, 
you were really quiet about it," she says in between sips from her 
coffee mug. "By the early '90s people had lived through 10 years of 
the drug war and Reagan and Bush, and in that context, coming out was 
really revolutionary. We were opening up a conversation that was very 
shut down."

Though involved in the first statewide attempt to repeal marijuana 
possession laws in 1973, it wasn't until after the Loma Prieta 
earthquake in 1989 that Kerry began to organize in earnest in Santa 
Cruz. Nine months after the quake, Kerry and her cohorts brought 
noted marijuana policy reform advocate Jack Herer, the author of "The 
Emperor Wears No Clothes," to the Pacific Cultural Center.

"We had lines around the block and they had to open up the side doors 
because the whole area around the Center was overflowing," Kerry 
recalls, "That's how hungry people were to have this conversation."

While dedicated to the ultimate legalization of the plant, Kerry and 
her fellow activists, who by this time had taken the name Holy Hemp 
Sisters, were politically savvy enough to realize that a 
comprehensive overhaul of national drug policy was an impossibility. 
So they began focusing on popularizing the idea that the use of 
marijuana had many therapeutic effects for the chronically ill.

In 1992, due in large part to the efforts of these women, voters in 
Santa Cruz County overwhelmingly approved Measure A, which was 
designed to recognize pot as "safe and effective medicine," and allow 
for its use in medical situations, including treatment for cancer, 
glaucoma and HIV.

In the midst of the campaign for the groundbreaking referendum, two 
local residents Valerie and Mike Corral got busted for growing five plants.

The Corrals' involvement with medical marijuana dates back to 1974 
when Mike grew a few plants in order to treat Valerie's epilepsy, 
which was brought on by a horrific car accident. "I read in a medical 
journal that marijuana was being used to treat lab animals for 
seizures," Mike recalls. "She was on pharmaceuticals, and it wasn't helping."

"I've often referred to it as living underwater," Valerie concurs. 
"It was overwhelming to stay awake or to carry on a conversation or 
even to read and talk to others. The pharmaceuticals themselves were 
debilitating. There is nothing on the streets that I know of that 
really can render a person so paralyzed as the narcotics that they 
use to stop seizures. It was a difficult and overwhelming place to live."

Over the course of the late '70s, the Corrals gradually reduced 
Valerie's intake of pharmaceuticals and ramped up her ingestion of 
marijuana. According to both Corrals, she hasn't had a seizure since.

The Corrals' choice of treatment was a private matter until airborne 
members of the law enforcement community swooped down and uprooted 
the Corrals' five plants. With the urging of Kerry and Tischler, the 
couple mounted a spirited defense of their tiny crop.

"We challenged the laws using medical necessity as defense," Mike 
recalls. "It's hard to satisfy but seven-and-a-half months of 
prosecution later, [then]-district attorney Art Danner decided to 
drop the charges."

"It was probably because of Measure A," Kerry observes. "Without 
Measure A, she was just another bust. There were other medical 
patients who were dealing with it privately and going underground, 
but she aligned herself with our campaign--so she had support."

"That was our first foray into politics," Tischler recalls fondly. 
"We had people that were out and willing to be public. Seventy-seven 
percent of county voters approved the idea that marijuana could be 
medicine and that the law should draw a line between medical and 
recreational drug users."

Local activists didn't lose momentum with the victory of Measure A. 
They made sure that the program that busted the Corrals, CAMP, was 
subject to some serious scrutiny. More properly known as the Campaign 
Against Marijuana Cultivation, CAMP was, and still is, a paramilitary 
task force made up of a coalition of law enforcement agencies charged 
with eradicating any illicit crops of ganja. In the wake of the vote 
on Measure A, the federal government upped its annual contribution to 
the CAMP program significantly, pouring more than $200,000 into Santa 
Cruz County for fiscal year 1993.

For four very public years, from 1993 to 1997, hundreds of people 
joined Kerry and the Corrals in pushing for a rollback of the CAMP 
project. Armed with both helicopters and the money to fly them, the 
CAMP program logged hundreds of hours in the air over Bonny Doon and 
the North Coast as well as closely sweeping the urban corridors of 
the San Lorenzo Valley.

"I routinely voted against the appropriations," recalls Gary Patton, 
who used to warm the Third District Supervisor's seat at the County 
Government Center. "The San Lorenzo Valley Supervisor [Fred Keeley], 
and I usually voted against it because the program resulted in many 
citizen complaints about low flying helicopters. Every year, the 
sheriff at the time, Al Noren, would get up and tell us how great it 
was and there was always citizen opposition."

"Al Noren would never speak with me," Valerie Corral says, recalling 
the ex-sheriff. "He has that right as an individual, but not as a 
representative of the community. He was unwilling to have a regard 
for change. That is an important element for someone to have when 
they work with a community that is always on the brink of it."

As the debate over CAMP intensified, a wide coalition of activists 
including the Green Party, the ACLU and Veterans for Peace joined 
forces to point out the intrusive and alarming practices being 
perpetuated upon rural residents.

With the election of Sheriff Mark Tracy and the help of more 
open-minded politicians like Patton, Keeley and, later, Mardi 
Wormhoudt, Santa Cruz County residents and activists were able to 
open up dialogues and actually force concessions out of the program. 
Urban overflights were cancelled, flight times were cut back from 170 
hours to 60 and minimum altitudes were increased. There was much rejoicing.

Two Novembers after Measure A passed, all of California got to weigh 
in on the medical marijuana debate. More than 55 percent of state 
voters approved of the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, better known as 
Proposition 215.

Primarily constructed to ensure "that patients and their primary 
caregivers who obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes upon the 
recommendation of a physician are not subject to criminal prosecution 
or sanction," Proposition 215 "changed the whole climate" surrounding 
marijuana as a political issue. According to Tischler, "It gave us 
permission to talk about it and try new directions."

But it also flew in the face of federal law enforcement. It 
eliminated many worries for those involved in the medical marijuana 
movement in California, but weed itself still wasn't legal.

"Part of the issue is the misunderstanding of the law," says Santa 
Cruz Police Chief Howard Skerry. "Proposition 215 (and the resultant 
Health and Safety Code section) exempts patients and/or their 
caregiver(s) from criminal prosecution if they meet certain criteria, 
it did not "legalize" marijuana."

But both Measure A and Proposition 215 did open the doors a bit wider 
for the establishment of both stationary marijuana dispensaries and 
growing collectives like WAMM, the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical 
Marijuana. In 1993, WAMM, launched by the Corrals, began distributing 
medical marijuana to patients in the area free of cost.

"WAMM grew from the desire of people who were facing death who 
required medicine and a wanted to be part of something bigger than 
themselves before they died," Valerie Corral recalls.

Starting with three people meeting at the Santa Cruz AIDS Project, 
then moving to the Louden Nelson Community Center before hightailing 
it out to the hills, WAMM has been at the center of the medical 
marijuana movement for most of the last decade. Still run by the 
Corrals, the group gained national notoriety in 2002 when the DEA 
descended upon the groups' North Coast plot in a predawn raid and 
confiscated 167 plants.

Outrage was swift and fervent. City council members passed out pot on 
the steps of city hall, local law enforcement came out in favor of 
the group and public sympathy was overwhelming.

While the DEA eventually released the Corrals and didn't prosecute 
them for drug trafficking and cultivation. The scars from that raid 
are still fresh.

"It was appalling that law enforcement came in under the cover of 
darkness where there was no protection there or even an electric 
fence," says Christopher Krohn, who was mayor at the time. "They 
threw people in the back of a van. It was devastating. I was getting 
phone call after phone call that day."

Now Kerry and Tischler's group, Santa Cruz Citizens for Sensible 
Marijuana Policy, is trying to get another petition on the City 
ballot. This time out, they are bypassing medical issues and going 
straight for the heart of the War on Drugs by targeting the laws 
prohibiting recreational use by private citizens.

The petition asks local law enforcement to assign the lowest priority 
level possible for enforcing the prohibition against marijuana use in 
private homes in the city. Statistics provided by the police 
department indicate that 257 police reports were filed referencing 
marijuana use or possession in 2005.

Though both the city attorney and the police chief have raised 
significant questions about the legality of the referendum, Tischler 
and Kerry see the fight as part of their ultimate goal of eradicating 
all prohibition on the usage of cannabis.

"The medical marijuana issue has eclipsed the whole debate, but it's 
only one step in the process," Kerry says. "Our bigger picture is the 
full legalization of the plant for all its uses."

Citing the power of marijuana activists and the work that they have 
accomplished both socially and legislatively, Supervisor Wormhoudt 
believes that Measure A and Proposition 215 are both examples that 
criminalizing marijuana, particularly medical marijuana, has 
"outlived its period of social acceptance."

"My own sense of it is that we live in a country with a failed drug 
policy," she continues. "We lost the War on Drugs. We lost it 
decisively a long time ago. It's a failed strategy."

On the Beat

Yet even if the plant is legalized, there's still the thorny issue of 
how to get high. Unless you're going to waste a perfectly good apple 
by hollowing out a perfectly bad pipe, you're going to need to visit 
a head shop.

While you can solicit for sex, gamble and drink until dawn in Nevada, 
selling drug paraphernalia, could earn you one to four years in jail 
and a $5,000 fine. Federal laws are even more severe. Just ask Tommy 
Chong. Almost three years ago the counterculture icon pled guilty to 
a single federal count of conspiring to distribute drug paraphernalia 
and received nine months in the pen and a $103,000 forfeiture for 
helping to get his son's business, Chong Glass/Nice Dreams off the ground.

Locally, proprietors of head shops have less to worry about. Four 
stores on Pacific Avenue are happily engaged in the trade of tobacco 
smoking accessories--and business is good.

"One major misconception I had when I began working in this business 
five years ago is that I thought that the tobacco accessory 
demographic was limited to your typical 18 to 25 young adults," says 
Uriah Wilkins, the manager of downtown Santa Cruz's oldest smoke 
shop, Pipeline, which has been open since 1977. "But this is the 
furthest thing from the truth. We get everyone in here, from lawyers, 
politicians, and teachers to moms and dads. We serve two generations 
of this diverse demographic."

Shops like Pipeline also support a handful of very talented artisans. 
"I used to be an electrician," says Bryan Heath, whose company, Jedi 
Glass Works, supplies smoke shops with elaborate and intricate 
smoking utensils. "I ran into a friend who blew glass a few blocks 
away from my work over there and within in a few years I started 
making my own pieces."

Almost a decade later, he's glad that he changed trades. "I love it," 
he continues, "It's fun. I get to make things that make people happy. 
It's way better than being an electrician. I can see myself doing it forever."

While beautiful, it's this sentiment that has been driving the more 
conservative end of the spectrum so insane for so long about this 
debate around marijuana.

"The biggest danger is people abusing it and not striving to better 
themselves or get out of the funk that they are in," says Jerry as he 
recalls many of the clients he's met in his nearly two decades of 
surveying a stoned population as a local pot dealer.

Now serving around 40 clients, some of whom phone weekly--others 
check in around twice a year--Jerry has been slinging weed since high 
school. "I got into this by experimenting with growing a few plants," 
he says wistfully. "I hooked up a few friends and then I realized 
that, yeah, you can grow money."

Since most of the people that Jerry delivers product to are working 
folks, the hours tend to run pretty late. His clientele ranges from 
single mothers in their fifties to young entrepreneurs to even 
younger couples still struggling with midterms.

Making the rounds with Jerry by bicycle and dropping off satchels of 
herb is a mostly pleasant affair. No one ever objects to my presence 
as an accessory at any of the illicit rendezvous--even when I'm 
identified as a reporter.

Trained by years of TV dramas to believe that all drug dealers are 
slick businessmen with itchy trigger fingers, watching Jerry work is 
a revelation. He's friendly, he's funny and he treats his rounds as 
more of a social than financial transaction. Like a therapist or a 
bartender, he spends the visits mostly by asking his customers about 
their jobs and their partners.

Selective about his clientele, most of his customers are long term, 
and as such, Jerry's working environment is so pleasant and relaxed 
that it takes almost 15 minutes to realize that he'd left his 
backpack at the last home we visited. Circling back, we return to 
find the house dark and the cars gone. While the satisfied customers 
are out running errands or grabbing dinner, thousands of dollars' 
worth of bud is sitting unnoticed under their kitchen table. This 
never happens on Miami Vice.

Now a dealer with no product to sling, Jerry suggests talking at a 
local bar. He's buying. Even by cutting the rounds short, he's way 
ahead on the night. At the street level, herb goes for about $50 for 
an eighth of an ounce (roughly 3.5 grams for the metric fans out 
there). Ounces, or ogres as the paranoid like to refer to them over 
the phone (like the FBI doesn't know), run around $400 and pounds 
will set you back around $3,500.

"When it was good, at the peak of the market, I was making $40,000 
cash a year," Jerry says, reclining in his chair after a hectic 
three-hour workday. "It's slowed down. It's a lot more of a buyers' 
market now because everyone and their mom is growing."

Admitting that sometimes the paranoia runs deep, Jerry says Santa 
Cruz is a pretty ideal place to take up the pot trade. "I could see 
doing it in other cities," he says, "but it was easy to get into it 
here. People wanted to smoke it. I grew some. It was just easy. I see 
that there is safety in numbers here. The police have higher 
priorities than me. I'm just in the middle."

Don't Hold Your Breath

Tom Petty is right. Coming down is the hardest part. This tale has no 
real ending. Like many of its users, marijuana is in limbo right now. 
It's ubiquitous but it's still illegal. Despite its pervasiveness, 
it's still taboo, which in the end might add it its appeal. Whatever 
happens with the Feds and their helicopters, or the petition and its 
signatories, the discussion is sure to continue for years to come.

And no matter what the current (or any other) presidential 
administration thinks, a certain portion of the population--from 
grandmothers to high school metal fans--is going to occasionally 
sneak away from their responsibilities and burn one down. Sunsets 
will be watched, guitars will be strummed and someone will get the giggles.

So in the spirit of California's own version of Arbor Day, it's 
appropriate to close out with a primary source. Long before Paul and 
John sang "Got to Get You Into My Life," or Mr. Marley stirred it up, 
Art Tatum played a song called "Knock Myself Out." Out in front of 
Tatum's monstrous piano runs, bassist Chocolate Williams sang the 
following verse loud and proud:

Listen girls and boys I got one stick Give me a match and let me take 
a whiff quick I'm gonna knock myself out, I'm gonna get groovy I'm 
gonna knock myself out, gradually, by degrees.

[sidebar]

FOUR-TWENTY by Henry Jones

While the term "420" is now firmly established in the vernacular of 
cannabis culture, the origin of the term has been clouded by 
misinformation. The most popular urban myth is that 420 was the 
number for the California Penal Code prohibiting marijuana, but it 
turns out that that number is reserved to cite people unlawfully 
obstructing access to public land. Police code 420 doesn't exist in California.

Other theories range from the improbable to the fantastic. Some 
believe that April 20, or 4/20 is the last day to plant marijuana 
seeds, or that marijuana has exactly 420 psychoactive chemicals. 
Neither of these theories add up.

Musically speaking, the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence" 
features the words "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie," but 
this probably refers to the medieval practice of occasionally placing 
live birds into pastry shells and releasing them as entertainment 
during grand feasts.

Bob Dylan's song "Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35," with its familiar 
refrain of "everybody must get stoned," features numbers that 
multiply to make 420, but frankly speaking it's unlikely that many 
stoners did the math on this.

The real origin behind 420 is somewhat less spectacular. In 1971, a 
group of kids at San Rafael High School in the North Bay--who called 
themselves the "Waldos"--began a routine to meet at exactly 4:20 p.m. 
every day after school to get high. "Four-twenty" soon developed into 
a code word that the Waldos could use to talk about marijuana around 
parents and teachers. This history, first reported by High Times, 
relies on old letters written by the Waldos featuring the earliest 
known usage of 420 as verification.