cannabisnews.com: U.S. Drug Net Snares State-Backed Grower





U.S. Drug Net Snares State-Backed Grower
Posted by CN Staff on March 10, 2003 at 07:30:02 PT
By Dick Polman, Inquirer Staff Writer
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer 
Oakland, Calif. - Ed Rosenthal is saddled with two public images these days. The first Ed is the soccer dad who wears Eddie Bauer slacks and pads around his Victorian home in socks and sandals; the second Ed is the convicted drug kingpin who faces five years in the pen for having thumbed his nose at the U.S. government.Ed's fans embrace the first image. But Ed's detractors tend to carry guns and badges, and that is why his time as a free man is dwindling toward zero.
"I want to stay out of jail," he said, because he knows what jail would mean. No more Grateful Dead CDs on his kitchen boom box. No more time in the greenhouse with his rare orchids. No more quick jaunts with his wife, Jane, to concerts and gallery openings. No more San Francisco skyline glinting silver in the distance. No more hugs from total strangers who think he's starring in a nightmare scripted by Franz Kafka.And no more growing marijuana for sick people to smoke - which is why the feds took him down. Miffed by the fact that he was nurturing hundreds of plants in an Oakland warehouse near the docks, they busted him a year ago (he opened the door naked at 6 a.m., and saw 15 police officers armed to the teeth). They convicted him a month ago, and they intend to sentence him - five years, mandatory minimum - this spring.More important, they are waging a national war against medical marijuana, running roughshod over the nine states that have legalized it - and Rosenthal is the prize casualty. They view marijuana as a scourge, with no exceptions. They're not impressed that Rosenthal had been cultivating starter plants for 31/2 years as a deputized city official. They want to send the message that a 58-year-old man with a son at Columbia and a daughter in private school is no better than a street dealer.Rich Meyer, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, said: "Marijuana is illegal, period. And marijuana is not medicine. We can't just obey the laws that we like, because that's a recipe for chaos." Created a martyr? Californians, who legalized marijuana for sick people in a 1996 referendum, have discovered that the Bush administration has no intention of respecting their decision. The DEA has been raiding the pot dispensaries - most notably last autumn in Santa Cruz, after which the mayor, as a protest, personally handed out marijuana to medical patients on the steps of City Hall - and a dozen medical-marijuana growers in the state have been convicted in federal court.But, in Rosenthal's case, the feds may have created a martyr to the cause. They convicted him as a common drug dealer without allowing jurors to hear any evidence that he was growing pot for medical reasons (because federal law doesn't recognize medical use). For that reason, nearly half the jurors have renounced their own verdict.In her kitchen, juror Marney Craig said: "What I saw in court was a nice Jewish man who could be a friend of mine. It feels horrible to have been so manipulated. We have to live with the knowledge of what we've done to Ed. And what about the voters of California, passing medical marijuana? How can [Washington] come in and say, 'Your opinion doesn't count for anything'?"Rosenthal seems pleased with his status of cause celebre. People hug him on the street. He drives up in his silver Cougar, and he's treated like Sinatra at the Copa. When he shows up at the pot dispensaries in downtown Oakland, sick people in wheelchairs roll by to pay their respects. Plant-lovers accost him, speed-rapping about "cannabinoid receptors" and other fine points of growing. Too juicy a target Rosenthal is reliving the 1960s and digging it. He refers to his plight as "the ultimate phase of activism - like the Berrigan brothers," invoking the Roman Catholic priests who were jailed for their antiwar actions. He thinks he's a classic symbol of what can go wrong when "fanatic ideologues" in Washington try to prevent the states from making their own decisions about the health of their citizens.He now has five lawyers trying to keep him out of jail, and he insists that "the fickle finger of fate just happened to stop at my door." But that's not exactly true. Co-owner with his wife of a publishing company, he has been writing for decades, in books and magazines, about marijuana cultivation. He openly believes that pot should be legal, that the current laws "are hollow and rotten to the core," and that the medical-marijuana battle could soften the public for a subsequent legalization crusade.Well, that kind of talk is catnip to the DEA, which answers to an antidrug hard-liner, Attorney General John Ashcroft. (Although Ashcroft's boss, President Bush, did say as a candidate in 1999 that, on the issue of legalizing medical marijuana, "each state can choose that decision, as they so choose.") Rosenthal was too juicy a target to pass up.DEA agent Meyer said: "If someone is going to say, 'I want to grow all the pot I want, and here are my books about it,' - well, thank you, sir, for making my job easier. If you want to be such an advocate, you shouldn't be surprised if we pay you a visit... . And Rosenthal makes it clear that 'medical marijuana' is just a beachhead for the larger attempt to make this drug legal."As for the jurors' complaints that they were denied crucial evidence about Rosenthal's true identity, Meyer said: "In our system, the jury sees whatever is deemed legally appropriate. They saw everything they were entitled to see. That's our legal system. It's all we have, for better or worse."But the ticked-off jurors are writing a letter to the judge, imploring him to find a way around the five-year mandatory minimum sentence. Jury foreman Charles Sackett, sipping tea the other day, said: "A lot of us didn't eat or sleep for a week after the trial. I've been devastated that I wasn't given the whole truth. It's totally appalling that they can bend and twist things. They expected me to play fair as a juror, but they weren't playing fair with us."Expect to see some of these jurors testifying on Capitol Hill soon; three California congressmen, including one conservative Republican, are pushing a bill that would permit a "medical defense" in federal marijuana cases that are prosecuted in states where the drug is dispensed. (Maryland is currently debating whether to become the 10th state. The Republican governor supports the concept of pot as pain reliever, in part because his brother-in-law recently died of cancer.)Meanwhile, Oakland's dispensaries remain open, seemingly undeterred by the Rosenthal case. But Meyer said: "They should not be surprised at all if we pay them a visit."As for Rosenthal, who would prefer his denim jacket to prison scrubs, he's trying to see the humor in all this: "When my son first got into Columbia, I told him to go meet Meadow. You know who I mean - Meadow Soprano, who goes to Columbia on The Sopranos. Whose father is a crime kingpin, always in trouble with the feds. But now I've come to realize, my son is Meadow."Source: Philadelphia Inquirer (PA)Author: Dick Polman, Inquirer Staff WriterPublished: Monday, March 10, 2003Copyright: 2002 Philadelphia Newspapers IncContact: Inquirer.Letters phillynews.comWebsite: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/Related Articles & Web Sites:Ed Rosenthal's Trial Pictures & Articleshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/trialpics.htmPictures from WAMM Protesthttp://freedomtoexhale.com/eventpics.htmBillboard Campaign Urges Support for Pot Guruhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15666.shtmlThe Mandela of Marijuana? http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15595.shtmlHigh Crimes? - Dateline NBC - Transcriptshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15530.shtml 
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Comment #9 posted by FoM on March 11, 2003 at 09:26:37 PT
Off Topic: Bomb Test Article
http://www.naplesnews.com/03/03/florida/d910000a.htm
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #8 posted by Nuevo Mexican on March 11, 2003 at 00:22:00 PT
Blair has been exposed, and bush will follow....
We've all gone through alot here together at c-news, good things are about to happen! The amount of work and love you put into this labor of love is incredible by the way! That is one thing everyone here agrees on! 
History is at a turning point, and we'll live to see a better planet, as their is already a new reality that we're creating as we focus on Peace and the absence of war. ITN and Link are great alternatives to the right wing pablum they run between consumer directives. It amazes me who extreme everything is, little middle ground, and now it's bush whose right, you're either with bush or against him, and 90 percent of the world is officially declared their opposition. Did you think you'd ever see the mass rejection of the 'preznit' as Ari calls him? Smart-mobbing the war:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/magazine/09ANTIWAR.html?ex=1048324576&ei=1&en=f383449cc4c6132a Observer Comment Extra: the dirty tricks memo 
And nation shall speak peace unto nation 
http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,910726,00.htmlcontrast Schroeder to Bush/Blair:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=N2XIN104EPZ5ECRBAEKSFFA?type=ourWorldNews&storyID=2355375
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Comment #7 posted by jsklimpz on March 10, 2003 at 17:55:43 PT:
Want em gone? Impeach them!!
http://www.votetoimpeach.org
go here to vote and the spread the word!!! Get these idiots out of office now before they ruin us all.
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Comment #6 posted by FoM on March 10, 2003 at 13:39:58 PT
Nuevo Mexican
I just wanted to mention that I watch News World International much of the time. I also watch World Link TV. I really appreciate the news they show. They don't have many bells and whistles but what they bring us is good informative news. I really don't have time to do much reading but I do appreciate people following the war so closely like you do. I watched a program on the problems in Israel last night. Very balanced reporting. Thank goodness for the Net and Direct TV!
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Comment #5 posted by FoM on March 10, 2003 at 12:08:18 PT
Nuevo Mexican 
I think Indymedia is doing a good job. I just don't have much extra time these days to do much more then I am with CNews. Keep up the good work. If we neglect the big newspapers no one will write a letter. Letter writing is important even though that isn't the purpose for CNews but for Mapinc. Gaining knowledge about cannabis and cannabis laws is what I want for CNews. 
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Comment #4 posted by Nuevo Mexican on March 10, 2003 at 11:54:56 PT
300 students protest Ridge by walking out!
Blair High School occupation for Tom Ridge visit:
http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=54746&group=webcast
FOM: please browse Indymedia.org, as the real news is published here, occasionally the print media gets the scoop, but here are where ALL the stories are posted. If you click on the newswire on the right hand side of the website, you will have your work cut out for you as the major media post their stories here as we no longer go to CNN or MSNBC for our news, as it is just more corporate spin. As you know, corporate media is pumping 'all war, all the time, and there is no need to 'lure' readers with articles about Cannabis as we are all riveted to the war reality/matrix the mass media has spun around us. Indymedia.org is our media, as C-news is 'our' non-corporate' news for cannabis issues, and is fast becoming the fuse for the grand finale of media implosion, self-destructing as it no longer covers real news, but is in the busiessof manufacturing news, and with it, consent, as Noam 
ChOmsky describes it. Boycott major media and it will wither, try not to read major media, as your 'hits' tell the masters we are still waiting for their 'drip, drip, drip, policy of feeding us the least for our maximum attention. know what I mean?
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Comment #3 posted by John Tyler on March 10, 2003 at 11:02:17 PT
Meyer said
It is kind of a rule, go for the leaders or other high profile people, jail and/or ruin them in hopes the followers will hide in fear.
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Comment #2 posted by afterburner on March 10, 2003 at 11:01:38 PT:
Well Said, malleus2
"In Germany they first came for the Communists, 
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. 
Then they came for the Jews, 
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. 
Then they came for the trade unionists, 
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. 
Then they came for the Catholics, 
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. 
Then they came for me - 
and by that time no one was left to speak up." 
-- Pastor Martin NiemöllerLet's not allow the history of fascism to repeat itself. ego destruction or ego transcendence, that is the question.
[ Post Comment ]


Comment #1 posted by malleus2 on March 10, 2003 at 08:49:30 PT
I think Meyer handed the defense some more ammo
To quote Mr. Meyer:DEA agent Meyer said: "If someone is going to say, 'I want to grow all the pot I want, and here are my books about it,' - well, thank you, sir, for making my job easier. If you want to be such an advocate, you shouldn't be surprised if we pay you a visit... . So, for publicly expressing his opinions as is his First Amendment right, Mr. Rosenthal is deliberately targeted for governmental scrutiny? Looks like that is what Mr. Meyer is saying, doesn't it?I hope that this Meyer fellow is dragged into the next trial to explain his remarks in detail to another jury. Because if the sole reason for the government's initiation of its' case against him was based upon Rosenthal's (supposedly Constitutionally protected) free speech, then they have really put their foot in it this time. The feds have already lost twice on that ground. First with the docs who were threatened by McCaffrey for daring to talk about MMj, and who then forced the feds to back off, then the latest bit with Jeff Jones.The US is facing the worst economic crunch in decades. Not since the beginning of the Reagan years have we seen such a downturn. Businesses are quietly imploding, unemployment is inching upwards, states have budget crunches forcing them to release the non-violent prisoners early (makes you wonder why they were there at all, no?), all signs of a worsening situation.Yet the US government has the bucks to chase down sick people and those helping them.I once knew a Russian Jew who taught with her stories from her homeland what the true meaning of the word 'pogrom' meant. That's exactly what's happening here in the US: a pogrom. And we're the Jews, this time. Shalom aleicham, everybody.(I wonder if Mr. Meyer is Jewish?) 
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