Today I am going to come out of the closet as a Bi-Coastal pot consumer. I lead two lives; one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast.

In Fort Lauderdale, I own a townhouse where I have resided for over a quarter of a century. In this community, I am a lawyer and a spokesman for NORML, very active in drug law reform. But I cannot practice what I preach. That would be illegal.

In California, however, I found a small town near Berkeley, east of San Francisco Bay, where I may retire. It is Walnut Creek, a hamlet, I understand, that has more open public spaces than any other village in America. There, I may eventually choose to grow my own pot. I am allowed to do so.

In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where I practice law, and get people out of trouble for growing pot, I have to defend people who do what I am entitled to do in California legally. You see, the rules are different here. Life can thus be a bit conflicted.

In early 2006, my Florida roommate, after learning he was HIV positive, decided to move back to his hometown of San Francisco. As a pot consumer, he realized he could now get a medicinal recommendation for marijuana and grow pot legally under California law. The Florida laws are not so kind or generous. Cultivation of any amount is a second degree felony.

We went to San Francisco together, to a community I have visited and loved since the early 1970’s, from my first spectacular drive up the Pacific Coast highway. We found and rented a small apartment in the Haight.

It has been thirteen years since California voters enacted Proposition 215, which allowed citizens to utilize marijuana for medical purposes if a person had a legitimate need. As a recovering cancer patient, I more than qualified for a medical marijuana recommendation.

I sought out a legitimate physician, not one running a medical marijuana mill. I came with a full set of medical records tracking my unenviable medical past, including recent spinal surgery. The doctor thoughtfully reviewed with me the medical risks associated with the use of cannabis. Not that I did not have a little experience. I mean, I am 60 years old this year. My friends’ kids go to Bonnaroo. I lived through Woodstock.

After the screening, my physician then appropriately certified me as an individual who could benefit from the medical use of cannabis. Just like that, I became patient number 380206011. I then proceeded to a medical dispensary, proudly armed with a State of California Medical Marijuana Identification Card.

As a California patient, I am empowered to acquire cannabis lawfully at medical dispensaries. Under the California Health and Safety Code, I am also entitled to grow up to six plants of my own in my little apartment on the bay. I do not have to hide them from the authorities.

I joined the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative, and was issued a Growers Certificate. It affirms that any herbs I cultivate at home would be grown for my personal medical use. I was now at liberty to grow my own medicine. It is still called pot in Florida. We call it medicine in California.

Today, therefore, the same medicine I can consume lawfully in California I have to prevent people from going to jail for in Florida. It makes no sense. Fourteen states and scores of communities across our country have either decriminalized or ‘medicalized’ marijuana. It is not good enough. Americans still face one very large federal stumbling block.

A state may pass its own laws, but so too may the federal government pass laws which preempt those state laws. In the case of marijuana, that is what Washington has done. Our federal government claims marijuana is not medicine. As such, it criminalizes all marijuana possession, use, or cultivation, regardless of what the states do.

At first, patients were lucky. In 2003, the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government had no right to arrest or prosecute medical marijuana patients- as long as what they possessed was for personal use. The United States Supreme Court reversed that ruling in 2005. Thus, as we sit here today, in 2009, federal law enforcement officials can prosecute medical marijuana patients, even if state authorities will not; even if they reside in a state where medical marijuana use is protected by state law.

Under our Constitution, the police power of the state is to be exercised by the state. California authorities are not disobeying federal laws by not enforcing them. They are not legally obligated to do so. Nor is Florida obligated to follow California laws. Just because you have a medical right to possess cannabis in California does not give you a legal right to grow or possess it in Florida. Though some clients of mine have tried, you can’t get stopped for smoking in Miami Beach and pull out a medical marijuana card from Santa Monica. It won’t fly. Tell it to your bondsman.

Welcome then to my conflicted life. I am permitted to grow my own medicine lawfully in my California apartment. If I were to do that in Florida, police could raid my house and the Florida Bar could seize my card. Instead of representing a grower, I would need a lawyer to represent me. Florida would not care that I am patient number 380206011 in California. What is wrong with that picture?

The cannabis I purchase in a dispensary in Berkeley I can carry in my car and consume in my living room. If I am flying back to Florida though, I cannot carry it with me. That would be a federal crime. But if I am relaxing at an airport bar in either San Francisco or Fort Lauderdale, I can order and consume Crown Royal and Coke. What I can’t get on both coasts is justice. That is far more elusive, and does not come in a bottle.

One national reform group has spent 40 years trying to stem the tide of repression and advance the rights of marijuana consumers. They say it is normal to smoke pot. Their name is NORML, the National Organization to Reform the Marijuana Laws. If there was ever a time to be part of their effort, it is now, as the new administration in Washington has said they are going to put an end to the drug war madness. They have said they will end the raids on medical dispensaries.

We need to see that deed and action follows words and promises.

We need to send a message to our legislators that the silent majority of Americans support vast and overriding changes to repressive drug laws which have incarcerated too many for too long. Join NORML in that effort.

We need to show that moral authority is on our side. Spread the word and you will spread the seed.

First published at http://kentvent.blogspot.com/

On July 1st of 2008, Florida enacted a new law which enhanced penalties for marijuana grow houses. Authorities heralded it as the ‘Marijuana Grow House Eradication Act.’ It is just another excuse to lock decent people up for longer times.

There are some provisions of the act which bring back the dark days of the draconian Rockefeller drug laws in New York, legislation which sent small marijuana growers to jail for thirty years. Some might first be getting out today.

Law enforcement argued that they needed the new law because of the increasing number of grow houses operating in the state and violent crime which tend to be associated with these operations. Sure they did.

“Grow houses are not only furthering this dangerous drug trade within our state, they are bringing violent crime into our neighborhoods,” said Attorney General McCollum. “This new law will help protect our families and communities.” No, it won’t.

There was no accompanying empirical or independent study or statistical backup to lend truth to the public statements of Mr. McCollum. Nor was there any journalist anywhere in the state that took him to task or asked for documentation to sustain his claims. They just regurgitated and repeated the pablum they were fed by law enforcement.

The new law makes it a second-degree felony to grow 25 or more plants, no matter how small or large those plants are. Baby seedlings or mature daddies, 25 plants can get you 15 years. It used to take 300 plants to reach that harsh a penalty. Put it in perspective. If you lived in California, and you were given a medical marijuana card, you would be allowed to grow up to six plants of your own. Thus, if the cast of Real World was growing its own medicine in San Francisco they could film some great episodes. If they were doing it in St. Pete, Florida, they could be doing those episodes for the next 25 years from the State Penitentiary.

The Florida law also changed to make it a first-degree felony to grow 25 or more plants in a home with children present. That penalty is now 30 years. Already, I am representing a 50 year old gentleman, who was a schoolteacher in Miami for 20 years; who retired because of a disability. He grew his own pot in an outdoor shed behind the garage, apart from his children, used it for himself, and knew nothing about the law. He is now facing the rest of his life in jail.

“Marijuana is the most commonly used illegal drug in America and we must take a stand against the for-profit growers who were previously exploiting higher thresholds,” said one of the bill’s sponsors. “By lowering the number of plants necessary for criminal charges, we’ve given Florida’s authorities valuable tools in the fight against these criminal operations,” he foolishly added. No, they have not given law enforcement any more tools. They have just given decent people longer sentences for essentially innocent conduct.

Many of the larger grow houses I have seen over the past 30 years as a criminal defense lawyer are truly marijuana cultivation operations designed solely for entrepreneurial reasons and major marketing. Exclusive homes in gated communities worth hundreds of thousands of dollars have been rented, sealed, and converted into home grown hydroponic laboratories.

When they are inadvertently discovered, law enforcement makes an entry only to find no one lives there, and the place was being used to solely grow pot which would be commercially marketed for a profit. If pot is going to be against the law, you can understand that type of operation being targeted. Greedy people violating the law go to jail.

The new law enhances penalties. The difference in changing the law is significant, because what the legislature has done is gone from targeting entrepreneurial operations to including individuals simply trying to cultivate their own medicine. The less you grow, the more you are likely to now face a greater penalty.

Two of the individuals I currently represent are domestic partners who purposely started a grow house in their backyard exclusively because, at the age of 45, they did not “want to go purchasing pot on the streets in their car during the dark of night.” My client said they thought this was the smart and safest way not to commit a crime, but to “tend to their own garden.” And the price they pay for a safer way to acquire pot is a speedier way to go to jail for a longer time.

Another individual I represent who was growing pot is an artist. He and his wife have two children. They are painters. They paint, they smoke, they raise their children. At six a.m. one morning last summer, agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency knocked on their door to say they were investigating grow houses.

Separating wife and husband, they argued they smelled pot and had a right to enter. They warned the couple that “if they did not cooperate,” they would have to take their children to the local family services agency, the typical bureaucratic disaster in this city that it is in your own. They reminded them that under the new law they could lose their children and face 30 years in prison. The couple had no guns, ran no gangs, and committed no violent acts. They grew some weed to fulfill a passion they had engaged for 20 years. These are the types of people these new laws target.
In this operation, the one law enforcement authorities bragged about as Operation D Day, sixteen agencies combined on one single day in Florida to bust 150 grow houses which would have netted purportedly $41 million worth of marijuana plants. I guess we will never know now. Overall, on that day, April 28, over 9,000 plants were seized and 135 arrests were made throughout the state.

A review of the county wide press releases said very little about finding any guns, weapons, AK-47s, or rifles. About ten guns were found in South Florida, and a bullet proof vest. If you were Noel Llorente, you might have needed one.

Mr. Llorente, you see, lives in Opa-Locka with his wife, Isabel. He was leaving for work when unmarked cars pulled up, DEA agents jumped out, yanked him out of his vehicle, threw him down with guns drawn, handcuffed him, and then stormed into his home searching for drugs, smashing in the front door along the way. Panicked, Isabel tried to call 911. Agents grabbed the phone from her. A few minutes later, agents realized they were in the wrong house. Whoops!

“Sorry, they told me, Sorry,” Noel Llorente said. Then the agents went on their way. “So it goes,” said the Little Prince, “so it goes.”

Marijuana is, of course, against the law in Florida. The agencies had a right to make the arrests, conduct the seizures, and raid the grow houses. They were doing their job enforcing the law. We cannot castigate them for doing their duty. We can condemn, censure and criticize the legislators who enhanced the penalties for the acts, instead of adjusting the laws to respond to the practical realities of marijuana use.

Authorities correctly point out there is an emerging trend that identifies an increasing number of indoor cannabis operations statewide. One law enforcement officer said that the number is growing exponentially, at a rate they will never catch up to. Well, does that also not say to those same agents of justice that people see their prosecution as an injustice? If so many are defying the law, should we not be reducing the penalties rather than enhancing them?

I understand that law enforcement correctly stated that many ‘Cuban nationals’ were arrested in this operation, intimating that it is all part of a foreign conspiracy.

I understand too, that each county sheriff talked about how some of these major grow houses have led to more serious crimes.

I understand also that if Floridians were allowed to grow their own plants in their own backyards without the threat of law enforcement breaking in their doors and taking away their children there would be no need for Cuban nationals or terrorism.

Finally, I understand how the terrible law terrifies the decent citizen and creates the very terrorism the government seeks to end. There is a very simple way to end the problems these law enforcement officers want to cease. Legalize the pot they criminalize. Medicalize it as over a dozen states have now done.

Thomas Jefferson once said that “That government which governs least governs best.” And like his friend, George Washington, not to shabby an American himself, Thomas Jefferson was a hemp farmer.

Maybe America today needs more cultivators and more grow houses, not less. Maybe like the patriots who threw tea off a British ship in a Boston harbor, the families who have grow houses in their backyards are today’s revolutionaries. Maybe tomorrow, history will prove them right.

Who knows, if I am right, maybe someday someone will make a TV show about it and call it ‘Weeds’. Then the show will win awards, people will laugh at it, and we will all look up and say how stupid these laws were. After all, families who grow together, grow together.

Norm Kent is a Fort Lauderdale criminal defense and constitutional rights attorney who can be reached at Norm@normkent.com. Norm also blogs publicly about legal issues at www.kentvent.blogspot.com

By Norm Kent, Esq., NORML Board Member*

“Look outside the window, there’s a woman being grabbed. They’ve dragged her to the bushes and now she’s being stabbed. Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain. But Monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game. And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody.
Outside of a small circle of friends.”

–song by Phil Ochs

Duval Street is the epicenter of Key West, home to Sloppy Joe’s, Hemingway’s and a host of bars and hotels which have for a century captured the spark and soul of this land of the lost.

The Environmental Circus is gone, Valladares’ News Stand is history, and though La Te Da still stands, Larry Formica and his pink Cadillac have long since passed. Where a beat up wooden dock and a collage of cultures once gathered on historic Mallory Square, cruise ships now pour out thousands of tourists in flowered shirts onto the city’s main streets.

Fantasy Fest still wreaks havoc to the city every fall, but the Pirate image of this out of the way city has been lost for a long time now, to t shirt shops and condos; to name hotels and tourist traps. The heart of the city, Duval Street, has seen some of its landmarks become chain pharmacies, and cheap coffee shops like Shorty’s and Dennis Pharmacy have become convenience stores.

Walking down Duval Street in 2008 you are more likely to find a foreign exchange student from Slovakia peddling a bike for extra cash than you are to stumble upon a runaway teen from New York hustling a street corner for change. The times they are no longer changing. The times they have changed.

The temperature on October 17, 2008 in Key West was its typical and tropical 75 degrees. Ladies were sunning themselves bare-breasted at the Pier House’s private beach. Fishermen were working the pier, vacationers on mopeds criss-crossed the narrow streets, and more than one drunk stumbled down an alleyway. After all, it is still Key West.

But the heat on Duval Street was about to get hotter.

The shops on Duval Street opened their doors as usual, with no threats of a hurricane brewing. Merchants, if anything, were readying themselves for the annual, sin-filled festival of self-ordained decadence, Key West Fantasy Fest. On that date, many of them, head shops, were selling rolling papers, glass pipes, bongs, and other products designed to enhance the “right of happiness,” a constitutional right not too often protected by our courts.

The stores had signs all over them saying the products are for ‘legal and tobacco use only.’ But this distressed the new mayor, concerned that his little town was sending the wrong message: “You know that you don’t really smoke tobacco out of those things.” He sounded like Sarah Palin telling us how you could see Russia ‘from my house here in Alaska.’

The misguided mayor of this island city disapproved of the displays and set to do something about it. So he called the feds. You see, under broad Florida state laws, those pipes are legal. Not so under federal law. Understandably, this confuses the average citizen. Heck, it confuses lawyers too.

Title 21, Chapter 13 of federal law states: “Drug paraphernalia means any equipment, product or material of any kind which is primarily intended or designed for use in manufacturing, compounding, converting, concealing, producing, processing, preparing, injecting, ingesting, inhaling, or otherwise introducing into the human body a controlled substance …”

Supported by the local district attorney, the Mayor found his answer. On this quiet morning in October, federal authorities from 16 different agencies, aided by local and state operatives, converged on Duval Street and the neighboring streets where head shops dispensed their products lawfully, or so they thought.

Store by store, law enforcement entered with badges and guns, uniforms and crates- that’s right, crates- to cart away and confiscate the inventory of these stores to the waiting Budget U Haul Rent-a-Truck conspicuously parked in the center of the street.

Systematically, the feds sucked up any items they deemed as contraband that they say could be used to violate Title 21. The items taken then were rolling papers, lighters, ash trays, bongs, catalogues, pipes, and anything they say could potentially be used to violate the law. There was no order or determination of probable cause by a jurist, no ruling by a court that the items were illegal, just law enforcement officers with cartons and guns.

Furthering their operation, these officers then seized all the financial records of the stores, including their receipts and credit card purchases. That means if you have visited Key West lately and you purchased one of those glass pipes, the Feds now know where you live too. Your credit card number is now sitting in a federal database as a drug paraphernalia consumer. No, there was no judicial hearing on that either.

As a matter of fact, no one was charged with a crime, but the feds carted off 11,920 items defined as drug paraphernalia under the federal law, with an estimated value of three quarters of one million dollars. Not a bad haul for one sleepy, sunny morning in Key West.

Since the raids, at least two stores have summarily closed their doors, their inventory entirely depleted. Said Abby Frew, the owner of a shop called Energy: “The financial loss was too great. Stay open? I don’t think so. They took all my stuff.”

“I wanted to clean up the city’s image,” said Mayor Morgan McPherson. “I did not like what I saw in the windows of all those stores.” He added that if the business people don’t like it, they “call their congressman.”

He cleaned it up all right. Aided by a complicit federal government following their own set of laws, he kicked the businesses out without due process of law. He disgraced its community, screwed its businessman, and advanced a disgusting partisan personal political agenda. In the old Key West, he would have been recalled and reviled. In the new Key West, he becomes a hero.

An enlightened mayor might have called the chamber of commerce or invited a community discussion to discuss alternatives. The mayor might have used code enforcement and local ordinances to mandate zoning changes. Instead, he called and asked the Feds to do what city cops were not allowed to do.

Moti Elfasi, an Israeli by birth, is one of those businessmen whose inventory was seized. Having lived in Key West for a decade, he loves the atmosphere and the community of the island. But his head is spinning over what happened to him.

Here is what he told local reporters: “I don’t understand America. They gave me a license in Key West. I paid my taxes. I obeyed the law. Florida said it was okay to sell the things. But now people from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration come in and take everything away from me without even a notice to remove it first.”

It’s more than that, Moti. You detrimentally relied upon the representations of Key West city representatives that you could lawfully do what you were doing. Day by day, hour by hour, Key West city police patrolled your business, and no one told you that you could not do what you were doing. You have been operating openly and legally for years. You paid your taxes. You had an occupational license. You employed your neighbors. Now you got screwed.

Key West is not the first city to deal with this conflict between state and federal laws, nor will it be the last. California is of course the epicenter of this cosmos of confusion, with the feds neither recognizing medical dispensaries nor Prop 215. Just last week, our government pushed the envelope even further, raiding head shops in San Diego.

Across this country, over the past few years, other shops across this country have been systematically and surreptitiously raided, and their products also seized. Meanwhile, pipes and paraphernalia are now being marketed nationally, expanding rapidly in convenience stores from coast to coast. Find one repressive right wing mayor in the right town with the wrong agenda and you could conceivably become the target. Ask Tommy Chong. It’s still happening on a wider scale.

What happens to the products which are seized?

Agents quietly warn the businessmen to suck up the forfeiture and not challenge it in court. The advisory goes something like this: “Most likely we will just destroy this stuff as contraband, but if you attempt to challenge it, well there is no saying we won’t come back and arrest you.” Facing a not-so-veiled threat of criminal prosecution, the stores live with the bankruptcies, seizures, and loss of their products. The feds say they will “destroy the contraband.” More likely, some of them will use it at their bachelor parties.

These raids may deprive stores of their inventory, but our government abandons fundamental principles. Our citizens lose their rights. Lawyers are denied the opportunity to meaningfully contest the seizures. One more chink is carved into the heart of liberty.

If the past stays true to form, these unconscionable seizures will not make the national news. Politicians are too complacent, the drug law reform movement is too weak, and the massive pot smoking public is too disorganized, probably more concerned about getting high on those products designed for legal purposes only.

As for those merchants, outside of a small circle of their friends, no one cares.

*Orginally published December 28, 2008 at http://www.kentvent.blogspot.com/

UPDATE!!! UPDATE!!!

You can now watch Friday’s excellent 20/20 segment on Rachel Hoffman here. I also have an expanded essay on this tragic situation here.

Rachel Hoffman is dead.

Rachel Hoffman, like many young adults, occasionally smoked marijuana.

But Rachel Hoffman is not dead as a result of smoking marijuana; she is dead as a result of marijuana prohibition.

Under prohibition, Rachel faced up to five years in prison for possessing a small amount of marijuana.  

Under prohibition, the police in Rachel’s community viewed her as nothing more than a common “criminal,” and threatened her with years in jail unless she cooperated with them as an untrained, unsupervised confidential informant.

Under prohibition, the law enforcement officers responsible for placing Rachel in the very situation that resulted in her murder have failed to publicly express any remorse — because, after all, under prohibition Rachel Hoffman was no longer a human being deserving of such sympathies.

On Friday, ABC’s 20/20 shed a national spotlight on the tragedy surrounding Rachel Hoffman’s untimely death — and the tragedy that is marijuana prohibition. 

Are pot users criminals? The tragic case of Rachel Hoffman
via ABC News

After being caught twice with a “baggie” of marijuana, 23-year old Rachel Hoffman was reportedly told by police in Tallahassee, Florida that she would go to prison for four years unless she became an undercover informant.

The young woman, a recent graduate of Florida State University, was murdered during a botched sting operation two months ago.

… “The idea of waging a war on drugs is to protect people and here it seems like we’re putting people in harm’s way,” said Lance Block, a lawyer hired by Rachel’s parents.

The Florida Attorney General’s office says it is reviewing the procedures and protocol of the Tallahassee police.Rachel’s case also has raised new questions about state and federal laws related to marijuana possession.

“I’m calling her a criminal,” Tallahassee police chief Dennis Jones told 20/20, who maintains that both drug dealers and drug users are considered criminals to his department.

Under Florida law, possession of more than 20 grams of marijuana is a felony.

Rachel was also found in possession of two ecstasy pills, a felony under Florida law no matter the quantity because it “has a high potential for abuse and has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.”

The Tallahassee police chief says Rachel was suspected of selling drugs and she was rightly treated as a criminal.

California: A statewide sentencing reform measure, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act (NORA), has qualified to appear on the November 2008 ballot. If enacted, the proposal would amend the penalty for marijuana possession from a misdemeanor to an infraction – similar to a traffic ticket. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, which is backing the measure, “This single change will protect some 40,000 people a year convicted of simple marijuana possession from the serious and life-long collateral consequences of a criminal record.” You can learn more about NORA by clicking here.

California: Via: California NORML — Senate Resolution SJR 20, which seeks to halt federal law enforcement from prosecuting state-sanctioned medical cannabis patients and dispensaries, is expected to be voted on by the full Senate imminently. Californians may contact their state Senator via NORML’s online advocacy system here.

New York: The state Assembly passed legislation this week, A 4867B, which seeks to allow qualified patients to grow and possess medical cannabis under a doctor’s supervision. The proposal is now before the Senate Rules Committee which, unfortunately, has only hours to act on the bill before the legislature adjourns for the year. For further information on how you can become involved in this effort, please click here.

Florida: Governor Charlie Crist signed legislation into law this week enhancing criminal penalties for marijuana cultivation. As enacted, House Bill 173 (The Marijuana Grow House Eradication Act), allows judges to sentence those who cultivate more than 25 plants in their home to up to 15 years in jail (or up to 30 years in jail if a child is present.) NORML podcaster Russ Belville examines the obvious futility and unintended consequences of this new law here.