Mendocino voters repeal lenient pot policy

Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

(06-03) 22:44 PDT -- Mendocino County relinquished its crown as the nation's epicenter of pot leniency Tuesday, with voters decisively approving a hotly contested measure to limit residents to six plants apiece under the state's medicinal pot law.

With 85.5 percent of precincts reporting, Measure B had already locked up an unbeatable 55.5 percent of the vote. The measure - which repealed an initiative approved by county voters eight years ago allowing residents to grow as many as 25 pot plants for personal use - needed majority approval to pass.

Other jurisdictions in the United States allow more plants, but they are generally confined to a specific space and must be used medically. Under the eight-year-old Mendocino regulations, the 25 allowable plants can grow as large and thick as possible, and be used as the owner wishes.

When the county's regulations passed as Measure G in 2000, proponents said the rules would simply codify what had been happening for decades in the county - massive pot growth that made Mendocino part of Northern California's renowned "Emerald Triangle."

The generous standards made it easier for people to grow pot to be used as pain-relief medicine, advocates say. But many residents and law enforcement officials complain that the standards were abused by people growing hundreds of plants at home for commercial sale.

Under federal law, possession of marijuana is illegal in any amount. California's Prop. 215, approved by voters in 1996, allows marijuana for medicinal use and the state gives local government authority to regulate use.

Measure B Mendocino
88.5% of precincts reporting
	Vote	%
Yes	5,215	55.5
No	4,178	44.4

E-mail Kevin Fagan at kfagan@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Just a house in the hills - until the raid

Friday, May 30, 2008

(05-30) 04:00 PDT Calpella, - -- Mendocino CountyThe house looked like any other in the hills overlooking Lake Mendocino: neatly painted blue walls, a redwood deck spreading into a yard of raked dirt and stones, a tidy shed to the side of the driveway.

Then the 12-man major crimes task force kicked in the doors one day earlier this month at twilight, screaming, "Police Department, search warrant!" And it became clear this was no house for living.

It had been gutted and transformed into an indoor farm for at least 270 marijuana plants.

Ranging from 1 to 5 feet high, the plants were arrayed throughout the house beneath 27 heat lamps. A wall-size display of 130-watt fans and air-conditioning engines blasted cold air through hundreds of feet of piping to keep the temperature at 71.4 degrees.

And that didn't count the trailer a few hundred feet up the hill, where a similar arrangement nurtured 250 small starter plants. Or the 50-kilowatt diesel generator in that tidy shed fitted with hidden, insulated walls to muffle its around-the-clock roar.

All told, arresting officers estimated it must have cost at least $100,000 to set up the house. The pot had an estimated street value of at least $1 million.

"Pretty typical for what we see around here," said Robert Nishiyama, commander of the Mendocino Major Crimes Task Force, as he surveyed the operation. "It's not really that big."

Authorities destroyed a record 333,000 plants in Mendocino County last year, 100,000 more than the previous year.

Nishiyama and his team hit an operation like this about three times a week. Nishiyama, a special agent with the state Department of Justice, estimates that even if local law enforcement ran raids every day, they would still only get a fraction of the market - and they now seize less than 20 percent.

"It's everywhere," he said. "We don't even bother with the small stuff."

At the raided house, 35-year-old Jason Smith sat morosely on the deck steps, hands cuffed behind his back. He was the only one at the house when it was raided.

"I'm not at liberty to talk about this," he said, gazing up at the deputy guarding him. His eyes hardened.

"I will say this, though," Smith said. "We kill people in other countries for oil, we have pharmaceutical companies abusing people for billions of dollars - and then you have a naturally growing herb that can be used for medicine.

"It doesn't make sense to criminalize it," he said. "No sense at all."

Since local pot regulations were relaxed in 2000, Mendocino County pot cultivation has exploded to new highs - and with it have come new headaches.

Police say there has been a proliferation of home invasion robberies, which they blame on drug dealers ripping off pot growers. In 2000, authorities countywide recorded 1,100 pot-related criminal offenses; last year there were 1,500. Fire officials estimate 40 percent of structure fires are now ignited by super-hot indoor pot-growing lights.

"A decade ago, marijuana was really only grown in the hills," said Ukiah Police Chief Chris Dewey. "Now it's everywhere. We've been arresting growers who came here from Florida, New York, Texas, Chicago - you name it. People are fed up."

-Kevin Fagan

Authorities raid two houses north of Ukiah, Calif., on Wednesday, May 14, 2008, seizing hundreds of marijuana plants and growing equipment worth nearly 100.000. Daily raids are part of the background as Mendocino County residents prepare to decide on controversial Measure B, a proposal to outlaw the growing of more than six medicinal marijuana plants.

Photo by Kim Komenich / San Francisco Chronicle

Pot is burning issue on Mendocino ballot

Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, May 30, 2008

(05-30) 04:00 PDT Mendocino County - --

Marijuana is so ubiquitous here that everyone, from schoolteachers to kids, can tell you when a sinsemilla bud is ripe. From late summer to fall, the county reeks with the skunk-like stench of ready-to-harvest weed. The annual $1.5 billion pot crop constitutes two-thirds of Mendocino County's entire economy.

"You tell people from other parts of the country that folks grow pot all over town, and they think this is just a freak show here," said Ross Liberty, who owns a welding shop in Ukiah. "They're not far off."

Earlier this year, Liberty and others who used to be benign about the issue decided enough was enough. They put Measure B on Tuesday's ballot to repeal the nation's most liberal rules for growing pot, which for eight years have allowed anyone to grow up to 25 plants for personal use. If Measure B is approved by a majority vote, the per-person limit will revert to the statewide limit of six plants.

But then there's the other side.

Opponents of Measure B call it a meat-ax approach to an emotionally volatile issue and say that going after the weed in Mendocino's backyards and spare rooms is wrongheaded at best, cruel at worst. What is really needed, they argue, is a better effort to eradicate large-scale plantations that are hidden in the heavily forested mountains and are guarded by thugs toting assault rifles.

The anti-measure forces are led by an ex-congressman's daughter who was busted and later cleared for growing a medical pot garden.

"We need to harness this gigantic industry, not try to kill it," said Laura Hamburg, whose arrest last fall so infuriated her that she decided to head up the anti-Measure B push. "There's this caricature about this county that we're all hippies sitting around smoking joints, but that's the last thing from reality. Medical users truly need this plant."

The homegrown weed in most of those yards and rooms is medicine to be used by those who grow it, Hamburg said, or sold to the 400 medicinal marijuana clinics in San Francisco, Berkeley and the rest of the state. These grow-farms are not the problem, she insisted - flashy out-of-towners are.

Advocates disagree

But that's a key assertion with which Measure B advocates vehemently disagree. And to illustrate how bad they think neighborhood pot farms have become, they point to a 2004 incident in Ukiah.

That's when a would-be robber leaped the fence of Larry Puterbaugh's back yard and shot and wounded his neighbor, Memo Parker. The man was trying to steal from Parker's pot farm, police said. Puterbaugh had already complained for years about the stench from the hundreds of pot plants over his back fence - but even after the shooting, police did nothing about it. Parker had doctor-signed cards authorizing medicinal growth on the farm.

Parker later pleaded no contest to cultivating too many plants in a separate case. But in 2004, all Puterbaugh could do was fume.

"That's when I began thinking we have to do something," Puterbaugh said. "Why should we be scared in our own neighborhoods, in a quiet town like this?

Measure B backers date the genesis of their troubles to 2000, when 58 percent of the county's voters passed Measure G, which allowed anyone to grow as many as 25 marijuana plants for personal use - far exceeding the state guideline of six plants per person for medicinal use only.

The "personal use" reference, in practice, has meant growing for medical use - but the kicker for critics was that each lot of 25 plants required only a doctor-signed permission card saying the grower would use the pot or that the grower was cultivating it for another patient. Some houses began displaying as many as 12 cards, leading to complaints that the new rule was allowing people to grow commercially for cash, not medicine.

"It's like we kicked the door open and said to the rest of the nation, 'Come on in and grow pot!' " said Mike Sweeney, an environmental activist who is helping direct the Measure B campaign. "Now, what we want to do is slam that door shut. We want people around the country to know that Mendocino has changed its ways."

One who answered Mendocino's siren call is Ukiah Setiva Morrison. After hearing in North Carolina about the area's legendary pot leniency, he changed his name from Ronald Matthews and, in 2005, moved to Ukiah to run a short-lived church called the Hemp Plus Ministry.

"I really believe that cannabis isn't bad for you - stupidity is bad," he said, standing in his garden of 11 outdoor plants in Redwood Valley. Now he is running for county supervisor.

Measure B's proponents and opponents agree on one thing: the necessity for a prohibition on large pot farming operations, some of which sport as many as 500 plants, no matter where they are.

But as for crimping everything back to a six-plant limit? A popular local T-shirt speaks for Measure B opponents. "Let It Grow," it reads below a jaunty pot-leaf drawing.

Hamburg points to her own 39 plants - which were ripped out by police last fall - as an example. They were used as medicine for an intestinal condition as well as for her cancer-survivor mother and two others, and she had doctor-signed growing cards to justify the garden - which the search warrant didn't note, an omission that led a judge to throw out the case in March. It was a typical-size "grow" for the county.

However, Hamburg's political profile was anything but typical, and she thinks that's why she was targeted. Hamburg's father, former Democratic Rep. Dan Hamburg, helped lead the 2000 campaign that liberalized the county's pot laws, and she spearheaded the 2004 drive that passed the nation's first local ban on growing genetically altered food. Hamburg also worked as a reporter at The San Francisco Chronicle in 1997 and 1998.

"I wasn't going to be 'the pot girl,' leading this campaign, but that all changed when 11 deputies tore out my plants and locked me out of my own house," she said. "Now I just want to make sure that never happens to anyone else."

Legalize pot, they say

Hamburg and other Measure B opponents say that instead of limiting pot, Mendocino should be a beacon for the decades-old movement to legalize the $3,000-a-pound weed. The county's liberal guidelines are just that - guidelines tacitly respected by federal officials who still operate elsewhere under U.S. law banning pot of any quantity. But if it were legalized instead of demonized, Hamburg's group maintains, the economically struggling county could tax that $1.5 billion crop and become hugely prosperous.

"This whole fight is like Prohibition," said artist Catherine Magruder, a cancer survivor who says smoking pot erased the pain of chemotherapy. "You can't squish marijuana out of existence, it's too late. So why not figure out, together, how to make it work for all of us? And why not start that movement right here in Mendocino?"

Not surprisingly, considering how firmly pot culture is laced through this county, even Measure B proponents - who include virtually every elected or law enforcement official - say they support medicinal marijuana. The Board of Supervisors and many of those pushing for the rollback supported the lenient rules when they passed in 2000.

But now they say Hamburg and her backers - mainly patients, small-time growers, doctors, the San Francisco office of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Law (NORML) and a former county prosecutor - are deluded.

"What really got to me was when I tried to hire some teenagers for my shop and they laughed at me," said Liberty. "They said they make so much money harvesting pot for growers that they don't need my $8-an-hour jobs.

"Look, they can make $30 an hour, and I see them driving $50,000, tricked-up trucks all over town," he said. "I can't compete with that. Nobody can. How in the world can we attract new business when the workforce just wants to grow or harvest pot?"

There's more at stake here than just local regulations.

"This is the only battle going on in the entire country about marijuana cultivation, and anyone who cares about this issue in the United States is watching it very closely," said Dale Gieringer, California director of NORML.

Lots of money

Marijuana has been a significant presence in this county since the 1970s. Though grapes are the big legal crop here, Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties are fabled as the "Emerald Triangle," considered by many to be the premier pot-growing region in the nation.

But at the same time, the area has an outdoorsy charm that draws not just environmental progressives but families hunting the kind of solitude that can be found only in a Rhode Island-sized county with 88,000 residents and four small incorporated communities. With the collapse of the local timber industry, poverty here is slightly worse than the state average, but the restored Victorians and tidy ranch houses in most towns and county roads reflect recovery more than despair.

The only immediate sign to outsiders that there's more going on here than simple rural living is the preponderance of shops selling pot-growing equipment and the occasional sign extolling the virtues of the herb. One of the first sights greeting drivers rolling into Ukiah is the Adopt-A-Highway sign proudly proclaiming cleanups by the "Medical Marijuana Patients Union."

"We definitely go our own way," said longtime resident Randy Bream, leaning against the till at his Mendocino Hobbies shop in Ukiah. "Look, I call myself a conservative, and I don't care who grows pot as long as they don't push it on me or my kids.

"What matters for me is that there are friendly people here. On Memorial Day, the city puts flags up and down the main street. All this fighting over pot? I wish they'd just hurry up and decide whether it's legal so we can stop talking about it."

Inside Uphill battle: Authorities say they manage to seize only 20 percent of Mendocino County's marijuana crop. A8

Info on B

For more information on Measure B:

Text of Measure B: www.yesonbcoalition.org/fullmeasureb.php.

E-mail Kevin Fagan at kfagan@sfchronicle.com.

Marijuana 101: School teaches ins, outs of pot

Justin Berton, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, April 21, 2008

(04-20) 18:22 PDT Oakland -- Ryan and Matthew Epperley awoke at 4 a.m. in Redding, loaded their Dodge Durango with clothes for the weekend and arrived in Oakland on a Saturday morning just in time to attend their first class at Oaksterdam University.

The brothers were among 20 people enrolled in the two-day course that, by Sunday evening, would teach them how to own and operate a pot club in California. They'd learn how to grow their product indoors, harvest it and cook with it, and hear from several lecturers on the legality of such a practice.

Ryan, 30, resembled Larry the Cable Guy with his well-worn baseball cap and a sleeveless shirt that revealed a shoulder tattoo of a skull and dagger. He was awake late one night watching television when he saw a report on Oaksterdam.

"I jumped right up and wrote down the phone number," Ryan said. "I knew right then, if we can get in on the ground floor and this thing takes off - we'll make a killing."

Ryan is not alone in his exuberance. Almost 12 years after California voters passed Proposition 215, the state initiative that allows dispensaries to sell marijuana to people with medical recommendations from a doctor, pot clubs have become a lucrative business. About 500 clubs in California bring in an estimated $870 million to $2 billion in revenue annually, according to the State Board of Equalization.

Yet the mixed legal messages over pot clubs - California allows it, but the federal government does not - is what caused Ryan's brother, Matthew, to get in the car and join his older brother.

Unlike Ryan, Matthew viewed a pot club business with caution. The 27-year-old said the only pot club in Redding had been quietly shut down three times, and the owners lived in constant fear of being raided and sent to prison. He was hesitant to open a shop if the consequences were too severe.

"I want to see if it's worth sticking our neck out for," Matthew said on the first day of classes. "I've got a wife and two kids at home. But I don't want to lose everything I have and go to jail over it."

Horticulture, law lessons

When Oaksterdam owner Richard Lee opened the school in November, inspired by a similar operation in Amsterdam, he did it to help educate future club owners but also to pull back the curtain on pot clubs. Lee has grown and sold marijuana for 17 years and has never been arrested, a clean record he credits to his transparent practices.

"We're doing this to show our cities we can be good neighbors," Lee told the class. "That we've got nothing to hide. That we can run a business on the up-and-up, and it's nothing to fear."

Oaksterdam University has held eight classes and graduated 160 students. The response has been so overwhelming that a Los Angeles chapter is opening this month, and Lee said he's about to sign a lease on another Oakland space that could hold 45 students every weekend, charging $200 for the course and $75 for textbooks.

Danielle Schumacher, the university's chancellor, told the class she figured at least one undercover narc had taken the course.

Aside from the Epperley brothers, the April class included three middle-aged men from Shasta County who grew outdoor plants and were looking to bolster their "grow skills"; an older, extremely polite and well-coiffed gentleman who wore a cell phone device on his right ear and was most interested in pot's effects on sickle-cell anemia; three men under 25 who kept to themselves; and three female students, none of whom fit the profile of Nancy Botwin, the suburban mom played by Mary-Louise Parker who sells pot for a living in the Showtime series "Weeds."

In a narrow classroom decorated with an American flag, Chris Conrad, a quick-talking attorney who has been trying to legalize marijuana since 1998, summarized the history of government interventions he said conspired to keep marijuana a controlled substance.

"How many of you knew there was a report that went to the White House that recommended the legalization of pot in this country?" Conrad asked the class.

Two students knew about the Shafer Commission, which was convened by President Richard Nixon and which Conrad said recommended legalization (though it only recommended decriminalizing marijuana for personal use).

Oaksterdam University's most popular class is horticulture, taught by Ilia Gvozdenovic, a growing expert from Marin County. He explained that for about $700 in supplies, students could build a "grow hut" and get their operation started.

After Gvozdenovic showed the class how to properly mix nutrients, a debate broke out among students over whether to wait eight weeks to harvest or 8 1/2 weeks. Gvozdenovic said that was a subjective decision for the grower.

"The plants will talk to you," Gvozdenovic said. "They'll tell you when the time is right."

Earlier, attorney Laurence Lichter, who has represented club owners and doctors in federal court, told students that if the feds caught them with 100 plants, they would face a five-year minimum sentence. One thousand plants results in a 10-year minimum.

But Lichter also noted that it's been a few years since anyone in the Bay Area has been prosecuted by the feds. Under Prop. 215, anyone with a doctor's recommendation can grow for personal use - 12 immature plants or six mature plants. To distribute marijuana, one needs to be either a primary caregiver - a difficult standard to meet for the typical individual - or part of cooperative.

As Lichter put it, "It's tough to be a caregiver, but it's easy to grow collectively."

In Oakland, which has the most lenient stance toward marijuana in the state, each person is permitted to grow 72 plants indoors, far higher than the 12-plant maximum state guidelines recommend. Lichter said if a grower in Oakland gathers three friends, all of whom are entitled to 72 plants, they can grow 288 together. Each plant yields about 2 to 4 ounces, which sells for anywhere from $200 to $400 an ounce, depending on the strain, potency and demand.

This was all sounding very juicy to Ryan Epperley, who was smiling and nodding during this part of Lichter's presentation. Ryan's brother, Matthew, raised his hand.

"So," Matthew asked, "if I was to open a dispensary, there's still nothing stopping the feds from coming in and closing me down?"

"The feds," Lichter told Matthew, "can take your house for one plant."

Helping sick people

Students enrolled for a variety of reasons. Tom, a middle-aged sex abuse counselor from Angels Camp in Calaveras County who did not want to give his last name because he works with children, enrolled to learn how to draw a greater yield from his six plants. Tom said he started growing marijuana after his girlfriend, who works at a hospice, told him about the elderly patients who can't take Vicodin or morphine due to the side effects. Tom doesn't smoke pot - "I wish I could, but it turns me into an idiot" - and he's not high on pot clubs.

"I think pot club owners are profiteers and scumbags," he said. "Cutting out loopholes just to make their millions."

Even though Tom voted for Prop. 215, he described the medicinal argument behind the law as "disingenuous."

He had signed up to learn how to grow better pot and cook it so he could give it away. "If I didn't know sick people, I wouldn't be here," he said.

A 53-year-old student named Sheryle represented another contingent: pain sufferers who are fed up with their meds.

Sheryle, an Oakland business owner who did not want her last name used because she feared reaction from customers who may read this article, was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and arthritis at age 35, she said. She took all the pain medications her doctor prescribed, but felt zonked out during the day and restless at night. The meds also were damaging her liver.

"I don't like getting high," Sheryle said. "I smoked, maybe, a joint in high school."

But last year, she ate a pot cookie offered by a friend, and the effects were stunning: She got the REM sleep she craved and felt productive during the day. It worked as an anti-inflammatory. Her liver damage was put on hold.

Sheryle started growing her own plants but, like a lot of novices, couldn't yield the maximum amount.

"Being able to sleep has been the biggest enhancement in my life," she said. "You might think it's a small thing, but being able to take my dogs out for a walk - that's a great joy to me."

After the class picture was taken Sunday, owner Richard Lee gave students a 17-page take-home exam. If they passed it with a 75 percent score or better and returned it to the university within two weeks, they'd get a certificate vouching for their education.

Outside the class, Matthew said he felt better about opening a club in Redding.

"A lot of people need it," Matthew said. "We don't have one in our community, so why not make it the safe place it should be, where people can come get their medicine? I mean, I'd like to open it right in the middle of downtown Redding, right where everyone can see it, just so they know we've got nothing to hide."

Ryan liked the idea. "Downtown, right next to the courthouse."

"Once you get public support," Matthew said, "it makes it harder for the feds to come in and close it down.

"When I get home," Matthew added, "the first thing I'm going to do is go down to the Human Resource Center, apply for a business license and make myself presentable."

Online resources

Learn more about Oaksterdam University at www.oaksterdamuniversity.com.

E-mail Justin Berton at jberton@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle