You Must Be Ana-High! EVERY SUMMER FOR THE PAST FIVE YEARS, the Anaheim Convention Center, a swirly tower of concrete and blue-tinted glass, transforms itself into a mecca of marijuana. This magical event, the world's largest of its kind, lasts exactly two days and happens just across the street from the Disneyland Resort. It's called the Kush Expo. On display inside the four-hall, football field-sized facility are dozens of vendors hawking products ranging from the latest vaporizers to bongs, soil nutrients and hydroponic growing equipment. There's the annual Kush Cup Awards, offering recognition for best indica, sativa and hybrid strains; oil; wax; hash; edible chocolate; vape pen; and tube bong-to name but a few categories. Then there's the Hot Kush Girl Contest, in which bikini-clad lasses with green numbers spray-painted on their thighs compete for up to $500 and a gift bag. [continues 3561 words]
A few months after Gary Webb killed himself with his dad's old pistol, I stood shirtless in my back yard, staring at the full moon. The sky was black and cloudless, the moon blurry. Earlier that night, I'd poured myself several splashes of single-malt scotch. I shook my fist in the air and screamed. I'd been a mess ever since Dec. 12, 2004, when the Sunday-morning edition of the Los Angeles Times hit my porch. As usual, I had opened the paper to the last page of the news section, where the Times tended to bury its most important stories. "Gary Webb, 49, wrote series linking CIA and drugs," read the headline, and suddenly I realized I was reading an obituary. Webb, the article stated, who "wrote a widely criticized series linking the CIA to the explosion of crack-cocaine in Los Angeles, was found dead in his Sacramento-area home Friday. He apparently killed himself." [continues 3874 words]
One of the leading figures in Orange County's movement to legalize marijuana used to arrest people for smoking it. As a cop in Redondo Beach during the 1980s and 1990s, Diane Goldstein worked in the police department's special investigative unit, which essentially functioned as a narcotics squad. She loved being a cop, enough that she became the city's first female officer to reach the rank of lieutenant. After nearly three decades on the force, she retired in 2004. It was then that she started to question whether going after drugs was the right career choice. [continues 379 words]
It might be a stretch to say the history of America's underground marijuana trade is encapsulated in the story of Donald Hoxter. Not by much, though. Few people can say they've smuggled as much as 10 tons of marijuana across both the Mexican and Canadian borders per year. Or that they were one of the first hippies in the Pacific Northwest to pioneer America's homegrown crop in the early 1980s, some 15 years before marijuana became legal--first in California, then in more than a dozen other states--for medical purposes. [continues 4045 words]
Internal Justice Department Emails Shed New Light On Obama's Perplexing Potpocalypse Next month, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to testify on Capitol Hill at the invitation of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) about the Obama administration's ineffable policy on medical marijuana. He'll have a lot to explain: When Obama ran for his first term as president, the former recreational pot smoker signaled he would not interfere with states such as California that allow sick residents to smoke cannabis. Yet in November 2011, the White House unleashed a major crackdown on the Golden State's biggest cash crop, threatening landlords and growers with criminal penalties and the seizure of their properties, as well as shuttering countless storefront pot dispensaries. [continues 1181 words]
The Arrest of 215 Agenda's Mark Moen Has OC's Medical-Pot Community Wondering If It Has a Prayer of Avoiding Trouble With the Cops. Whoever was driving the white Honda Civic looked like he was in a rush. Traffic was light in the northbound lane of Highway 101, so California Highway Patrol officers J.A. Slates and C. Cotroneo had no trouble spotting the speeding vehicle. In the southbound lane, Slates slammed on the brakes, swerved through the grassy median and pulled a screeching U-turn, burning rubber. Cotroneo switched on the radar, clocked the Honda pushing 80 mph, turned on the lights and hit the sirens. [continues 4462 words]
Taking the High Road With One of OC'S Burgeoning Medical-Marijuana Delivery Services The young couple look like they've just woken up from a nap--or perhaps a more amorous bedroom activity. The girl, slender and pale with a cute upturned nose, has long curly hair swept over her shoulder. She wears a pair of tight-fitting, yoga-style gray sweat pants and an indigo-colored top. Her boyfriend, who is shirtless with black slacks, is a handsome, tanned kid with a slicked-back blond mane and an uncanny resemblance to Leonardo DiCaprio. Yoga Girl is a college student from Los Angeles who grew up in Newport Beach and has just moved back home for the summer, renting an apartment a few blocks from the beach. She's counting out $20 bills on a coffee table while her boyfriend stretches out on a futon. [continues 3744 words]
Director William A. Kirkley Rediscovers the Dark Side of OC's Summer of Love The upscale crowd that gathered at Costa Mesa's Aire Global Cuisine on April 16 for the Newport Beach Film Festival Director's Dinner were well-prepared to mingle, network and, most of all, take advantage of the restaurant's generous open bar. What they probably weren't prepared for was the onscreen unveiling of Orange County's secret history as the nation's onetime epicenter for LSD. [continues 1482 words]
Ten Years After California Legalized Medical Marijuana, OC's War on Cannabis Continues All Richard "Shaggy" Quell and his girlfriend wanted to do was shower affection on their wounded cat, Kushy. The pet had just survived an operation after losing a vicious fight with a fellow feline. When they got the call on April 17 that Kushy was ready to go home, they rushed to the veterinarian and returned to their Anaheim apartment at about 7 p.m. Waiting for Quell in the parking lot of his apartment complex was a uniformed Anaheim police officer. [continues 4313 words]
A former CIA pilot says secret flights to El Toro could explain a Marine officer's `suicide' When we first spoke, a decade ago, the fear in his voice--the staccato pace, the tremor--was unmistakable. "I can't talk to you," he said. "This is all classified." He answered just one question: if he told me what he knew, he'd go straight to federal prison for violating U.S. national security laws. Then he hung up the telephone. Two weeks ago, I tracked the man to his home in rural Pennsylvania. This time, he didn't hang up on me. The terror in his voice was gone, replaced by the cheerful nonchalance that maybe just comes with being 69 years old and knowing that your kids have finished college, you're well into retirement, and it's too late for anyone to ruin your life for talking to a reporter about matters that powerful people would rather keep secret. [continues 5158 words]
How the Brotherhood of Eternal Love Became OC's Hippie Mafia Thumper knew it was time to run away from home when he saw his dad's car in the driveway. He was walking home from Laguna Beach's Thurston Middle School, heading up the hill to his house, reflecting on the fact that, months after the Summer of Love, his mom and dad weren't quite finished beating the hell out of each other. His dad was vice president of a major perfume manufacturer, rich, and angry. His parents had separated four years earlier and now were beginning the second round of a bruising reconciliation. Dad had come home with a 5-year-old kid from a relationship with another woman. Thumper's stepbrother was there, during all the arguments that would follow, "tucked into a corner," he says. [continues 8148 words]
The fate of Orange County medical-marijuana activist Marvin Chavez rests with the California Supreme Courtothe same court that unanimously ruled on July 18 that a sick Californian carrying pot and a prescription, doctoris note or any other form of official-seeming medical permission cannot be charged with marijuana possession. That would seem to boost Chavezis chances of staying out of jail. The Orange County Patient/Doctor/Nurse Support Group founder was released from prison in April 2000 pending an appeal of his conviction on several counts of selling marijuana to undercover cops who posed as sick patients. The state Supreme Court is scheduled to hear that appeal within the next few months. [continues 155 words]
OC War Against Medical Marijuana Still Rages Excuse Marvin Chavez if it all seemed like a bad flashback. Santa Ana police officers raided his home at about 9 p.m. on Sept. 6 and confiscated 46 live marijuana plants and "numerous" dried plants. It was the third time in as many years that Chavez had found himself playing a reluctant host to cops in his home -- and the latest proof that Orange County law-enforcement authorities refuse to comply with California's overwhelmingly supported medical-marijuana law. [continues 792 words]
FBI Documents Link An Ex-Laguna Cop And Drug Runner To An Irvine Executive With Ties To The CIA The CIA has always denied it used drug traffickers to raise cash for Ronald Reagan's 1980s war against the Nicaraguan Sandinista government. But FBI documents recently released to the OC Weekly show that a former top agency official met throughout that period with Ronald J. Lister, an ex-Laguna Beach cop who claimed to be the CIA's link between the South American cocaine trade, the Nicaraguan contras and LA's most notorious drug trafficker. [continues 3188 words]
Alan Bock Says The Medical-marijuana War Is Over, And The Good Guys Won Alan Bock may know more about pot than your average Rastafarian. As senior editorial writer for The Orange County Register, Bock has spent much of the past several years following the never-ending battle over Proposition 215, the medical-marijuana initiative approved by California voters in November 1996. Bock covered the 1998 trials of David Lee Herrick and Marvin Chavez, co-founders of the Orange County Cannabis Co-op; despite the passage of Prop. 215, both were convicted of selling marijuana and sentenced to several years in prison. (Herrick's conviction was overturned after he spent two years in jail, and Chavez was released on bail last year, pending his appeal). Last month, Bock published Waiting to Inhale: The Politcs of Medical Marijuana (Seven Locks Press), a book on Prop. 215 and the medical-marijuana movement. And he recently returned from Washington, D.C., where he sat in the U.S. Supreme Court as justices heard arguments in a case involving the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Collective. Bock says the Supreme Court hearing convinced him that there are still conflicts between the five-year-old Prop. 215 and federal law, but that the war is over in California, and medical-marijuana advocates have won. [continues 883 words]
The Sad Fate Of Orange County's Medical-Marijuana Movement Larry Mollat has a big idea. A self-described "reformed drug smuggler" and "ex-con," Mollat says he's "an outlaw who's come in from the cold"--so far into the warmth that he wants to teach the county Board of Supervisors to grow pot. It's a compelling prospect: the Colorado transplant with long, graying hair describing for the suits on the Board of Supervisors a system he promises can produce four ounces of marijuana out of one plant after stems and seeds have been discarded. Under Mollat's plan, all that pot would bud under the watchful eyes of county officials; flow into a local cannabis buyers' club; and from there, get into the hands of the blind, the halt and the lame: medical-marijuana users qualified under 1996's Proposition 215. [continues 854 words]
When the letter arrived, David Lee Herrick was sitting on his bunk during a lockdown at California's Salinas Valley State Prison. He opened it, scanned the first few pages, and decided he couldn't bear the pressure. He passed the letter to his bunkmate. "You've been reversed, man." For a moment, Herrick thought he had either heard wrong or was the victim of a sick practical joke. The letter was from the California Court of Appeals and concerned Herrick's May 1998 conviction on two counts of selling marijuana. Herrick's alleged "customer" was a terminally ill California resident who had a doctor's note allowing him to smoke cannabis under Proposition 215, the medical-marijuana initiative passed into law by state voters in November 1996. [continues 3832 words]
Like the enigmatic psycho killer in the penultimate act of a hackneyed horror flick-the maniac who mysteriously returns to life as soon as the hero turns his back-Orange County's war on medical marijuana just won't die. It dispatched its latest victim with stunning severity on Jan. 29. To perform the honors, distinguished former county prosecutor Carl Armbrust took a break from his retirement to attend the sentencing of Marvin Chavez, the medical-marijuana activist convicted last November of selling marijuana to undercover cops. [continues 728 words]
In the eyes of the law, Marvin Chavez is a convicted felon. In the words of the man who busted him, now-retired Orange County Deputy District Attorney Carl Armbrust, Chavez is a "street drug dealer" who ran a "sophisticated drug operation" and "hid behind the law." Chavez's crime was providing marijuana to terminally ill and disabled Orange County residents. And unlike the police and prosecutors whose efforts over the past 12 months led to his conviction last month on three marijuana-related felony charges, Chavez is anything but sophisticated. A straight-forward man by nature, the 42-year-old Santa Ana resident's chief crime was that he believed in the goodwill of the law-enforcement community and seriously misunderstood the legal complexities of Proposition 215, California's 1996 "Compassionate Use" initiative. [continues 1562 words]
The timing couldn't have been better for Marvin Chavez, the medical-cannabis advocate who faces several years in state prison if convicted on 10 counts of felony pot distribution. On Aug. 4, Chavez rejected an offer by Deputy District Attorney Carl Armbrust that would have given him five years of probation-and no jail time-in return for a promise not to distribute pot to members of his organization (read: sick people). It seemed like a good deal, but just 24 hours later, Superior Court Judge Robert Fitzgerald, who the previous week had ruled that Chavez could not use Proposition 215-the state's medicinal-marijuana initiative-as a legal defense in his upcoming trial, removed himself from the case so he could go on vacation. [continues 87 words]
