Indoor Cultivators Learn to Blend With Suburban Neighbors

The first two of a dozen people arrested last year in connection with a spate of area homes converted into hot-houses for growing marijuana have pleaded guilty and await sentencing in federal court.

Yet authorities who suspect a San Francisco-based crime syndicate backed these residential enterprises said indoor marijuana cultivation is on the rise. With high-profile busts, the illegal growers have learned to disguise these large-scale operations, authorities said.

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When his new boss at Ragingwire Inc. ordered Gary Ross to take a drug test, the recently hired computer tech had no doubt the results would come back positive for marijuana.

But along with his urine sample, Ross submitted a doctor's recommendation that he smoke pot to alleviate back pain - a document he figured would save him from being fired. It didn't, however, and Ross was let go eight days into his tenure because the company said federal law makes marijuana illegal no matter the use.

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"They're just a couple of nice kids from Berkeley who wound up being the victims of their own success."

That's how lawyer and longtime family friend Harold Rosenthal summed up the case against his clients Winslow and Abraham Norton, the brothers charged last week with moving an estimated $49 million worth of pot through their marijuana dispensary just outside Hayward over the past three years.

And, believe it or not, the brothers paid state and federal taxes on all of it.

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Why D.A.R.E? The Oct. 7 article, "Upvalley schools get funds to battle drug use," has prompted this first-time letter from me.

The article relates that statistics show the students of St. Helena and Calistoga are at a frightening number in their use of drugs and alcohol. Further, these statistics are significantly higher than the statewide averages. Shirin Vakharia of the Napa County Department of Health and Human Services revealed that drug use is dropping across California, however St. Helena and Calistoga students have a high rate of drug use and binge drinking.

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Federal Bar on State Law to Hinder Defense

Two Modesto men who ran a medical marijuana clinic on McHenry Avenue will have a difficult time mounting a defense against federal drug charges if they cannot talk about the pain relief the drug can provide or their efforts to ensure that the California Healthcare Collective complied with state laws.

But they won't have to go to trial Nov. 13 in U.S. District Court in Fresno. Judge Lawrence J. O'Neill on Wednesday pushed the trial back to April 15, giving the defense a few more months to challenge a prosecutors' contention that the voters' decision to legalize medical marijuana has no place in federal court.

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In response to "Don't worry about my marijuana tea" (Oct. 22, Letters): Marijuana tea is illegal. Federal law, thankfully, supersedes California's Proposition 215, a law that was bought and paid for by special interests. California voters were duped by legalizers wanting to smoke pot without consequence. Instead of drinking marijuana tea, I would like to see drug legalization advocates drink some truth serum. Californians have been had!

David Whiting

Turlock

[end]

So Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he was joking (Page 3A, Oct. 30) when he proclaimed pot was not a drug but a leaf. Too bad, as a popular Republican governor he might have the bipartisan clout to move the state closer to decriminalizing marijuana. And he would save California much-needed law enforcement time and dollars in the process.

Janice Hough

Palo Alto

[end]

LONDON-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says marijuana is not a drug, a British magazine reported Monday. But his spokesman said the governor was joking.

Schwarzenegger told the British edition of GQ magazine that he had not taken drugs, even though the former bodybuilder and Hollywood star has acknowledged using marijuana in the 1970s and was shown smoking a joint in the 1977 documentary "Pumping Iron."

"That is not a drug. It's a leaf," Schwarzenegger told GQ. "My drug was pumping iron, trust me."

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The death of 23-year-old Adan Ruiz, whose body was discovered Sept. 17 along the side of Highway 154, is connected to the massive marijuana farm found just days later outside Lompoc, according to Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown.

Additionally, investigators said Wednesday, both are part of a larger narcotics organization that could span the entire state.

Nine suspects in the growing operation and homicide investigation were traced to a motel in Carpinteria and questioned, officials said. They were found to be undocumented immigrants and were turned over to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, Brown said.

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EDITOR'S NOTE -- Abigail Fairson, a fifth-grade student at Yucca Valley Elementary School, won the school's Red Ribbon Week essay contest with the following piece.



Wouldn't it be awesome if alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs didn't even exist? Those things can physically and emotionally damage people. Without them everyone in our world would be healthier and happier. Drugs, tobacco and alcohol not only hurt the people who use them, they also hurt the people around them.

It has been clearly proven by many scientists that tobacco is very harmful. Unfortunately, smoking can cause lung cancer and people can die. When someone smokes, the smoke from the cigarette is inhaled by people close by (second-hand smoke). This is very bad for those people's bodies.

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When The Associated Press released a story that reported Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said marijuana is "not a drug," press secretary Aaron McLear was quick to announce Schwarzenegger was joking.

During an interview with Piers Morgan, a judge of "America's Got Talent," the governator had said he'd never taken drugs, even though he has admitted to smoking marijuana and the 1977 documentary film, "Pumping Iron," showed him inhaling.

So Schwarzenegger quipped, "That is not a drug. It's a leaf. My drug was pumping iron. Trust me."

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Congress Nixed Outrageous Prison Terms for Crack Offenders, but the Decision Should Be Applied Retroactively.

For years, judges, academics, defense lawyers and even the U.S. Sentencing Commission -- the federal agency charged with responsibility for developing fair sentencing guidelines -- have condemned as unfair and unfounded the laws passed by Congress in the late 1980s that punish crack cocaine offenses much more severely than crimes involving powder cocaine. Average crack sentences have been about 10 years; powder cocaine sentences, seven years. Most notoriously, the laws wallop those who deal in as little as 5 grams of crack with the same five-year mandatory minimum prison term as those caught dealing 500 grams of powder cocaine. Lawmakers have stubbornly refused to close this 100-1 ratio.

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DARE, one recent casualty of city budget cuts, may be gone for good, depending on the outcome of Napa school officials' talks this year to discuss the needs and effectiveness of the program.

"There is certainly a strong chance of phasing out DARE," said Napa Valley Unified School District Superintendent John Glaser. DARE, Drug Abuse Resistance Education, brings police officers into local elementary schools to teach children about drugs and violence. While the program has been in place here for 19 years, those children may be forced to find their information elsewhere, as city budget cuts eliminated the program in nearly all elementary schools this year.

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A UCLA Scientist Targeted by Animal Rights Militants Defends Her Research on Addiction and the Brain.

For years, I have watched with growing concern as my UCLA colleagues have been subjected to increasing harassment, violence and threats by animal rights extremists. In the last 15 months, these attempts at intimidation have included the placement of a Molotov cocktail-type device at a colleague's home and another under a colleague's car -- thankfully, they didn't ignite -- as well as rocks thrown through windows, phone and e-mail threats, banging on doors in the middle of the night and, on several occasions, direct confrontations with young children.

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To the Editor:

The author of the article titled "It's time to bring back prohibition" on Oct. 25 thinks America should restart alcohol prohibition?

Did she bump her head?

Why punish responsible citizens for the actions of irresponsible citizens?

Stan White

Dillon, Colo.

[end]

To the Editor:

I would like to take this chance to respond to the pleasant and, oh, what's the word, completely delusional letter to the editor concerning the alcohol policy in the Oct. 25 issue. The author's reasons for not accepting a medical amnesty are perhaps the flimsiest arguments I have ever heard.

First, it states that if there was a medical amnesty program people would call the EMTs just so they wouldn't get written up. I'm sure that the program does not include a clause that says that anyone who has contact with the EMTs cannot be written up.

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To the Editor:

In response to the author's article titled, "It's time to bring back prohibition," I would like to refute many of her statements. She seems to imply that alcohol use is something new, that instead of being made almost 9,000 years ago in China out of rice and honey, it is something only recently discovered. The effects of alcohol are widely known and widely documented; excessive alcohol, like many things, can be detrimental to your health.

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To the Editor:

What the author of the prohibition article in last week's issue forgets is that not all of us have "a moral society with high living standards." You can never understand what some people have been through, what they continue to go through.

I'll take an artificial high over a natural low any day. Something else the author forgets is that alcohol prohibition was what gave us Al Capone and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. We've tried prohibition. Now it's time to admit there might be another way.

Our police shouldn't arrest people because of their potential for crime. It's well past time to give drug users a chance to use their intoxicants of choice responsibly, so we can empower citizens with these millions of dollars instead of criminals and gangsters.

Jay Hunter

Pittsburgh, Pa.

[end]

To the Editor:

There is a very good reason for allowing only adults to vote. Children are not able to understand the nuances which convert many black and white situations into various shades of gray.

Read the naive article from the Oct. 25 opinion section on prohibition, wherein she calls for a return to alcohol prohibition. Her reasoning for this position comes straight out of a DARE class she took in grade seven: Drugs are bad, okay? Alcohol is a drug. Therefore, alcohol is bad and will keep you from reaching your full potential, mkay?

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A few weeks ago a guy called to discuss one of my weekly ditties, wherein I essentially advocated for the legalization of marijuana. Not because I think everyone should smoke it (who would eat all the pills and drink all the vodka?), but because it doesn't make sense to fill up our prisons with pot smokers and growers, and there is a good argument to be made for taxing it. Especially when you can generate millions in much-needed government funds you could use for parks, libraries, schools and pork for the proverbial barrel.

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