cannabisnews.com: $80 Million Pot Farm Busted





$80 Million Pot Farm Busted
Posted by CN Staff on August 19, 2004 at 12:35:12 PT
By Glenda Anderson, The Press Democrat
Source: Press Democrat
Upper Lake -- Investigators raided a sprawling pot farm Wednesday in northwest Lake County, seizing 20,000 marijuana plants grown in open view of passing motorists on Highway 20.The farm, owned by a well-known medical marijuana activist with a penchant for pushing the boundaries of California's drug laws, would have yielded a crop worth more than $80 million when it matured this fall, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Richard Meyer said.
"Marijuana is a very lucrative business," Meyer said. "In my opinion, greed is the driving force, not compassion."The 20-acre farm would have produced the largest medical marijuana crop in the world, according to an August article in High Times, a magazine devoted to marijuana cultivation.DEA agents arrested medical marijuana activist Charles "Eddy" Lepp on marijuana cultivation charges, Meyer said. Twelve other people also were arrested during the raid, he said. Their identities and details of their arrests and charges were unavailable.The farm's precise rows of pot plants and drip irrigation system resembled a corporate Wine Country vineyard more than an outlaw pot field. Row after row of knee-high plants could be seen from Highway 20, which skirts the farm just 50 yards away across an open field. To the rear of the property, plants were as high as 8 feet tall, law enforcement agents said.Lepp made no pretense of hiding the pot farm, touted as the "World's Biggest Medi-Garden" in a headline on the August cover of High Times.A minister in the Universal Life Church, Lepp is "devoted wholeheartedly to one thing: proving that our federal government has no right to prevent anyone from using marijuana," the magazine wrote in a January story headlined "The Man Who Would Change the World."Members of his "ministry" bought shares of the marijuana crop, Lepp's wife, Linda Senti, said Wednesday."They're not his plants. Eddy and I had plants, but the other plants were patients' plants," Senti said.She said the crop had more than 1,000 shareholders."They're going to suffer a lot. That was a year's supply of medication for them," Senti said.Lepp has become something of a celebrity in medical marijuana circles. He has lobbied Lake County supervisors to set medical marijuana standards, and he smoked pot openly outside the Federal Building in Santa Rosa during a 2002 demonstration in support of medical marijuana.In 1997, Lepp and another man were arrested with 131 pot plants in Lake County. Lepp's co-defendant pleaded guilty to illegal cultivation, but Lepp went to trial in Lake County and was found innocent, largely because he is a medical marijuana patient.Two years ago, federal agents seized about 350 plants from Lepp and Senti, but they were never arrested. Senti said they've sued the federal government to recover the plants.Lepp's farm, about a mile east of Upper Lake, was hardly a secret in Lake County."It's been controversial here for a long time," said lifelong Upper Lake resident Mickey Strong, owner of B.J.'s Beauty Boutique. "We tried to get him (Lepp) out before, but he keeps showing up like a bad penny."Local law enforcement officials have known about the operation long before the August story in High Times, said an investigator who spoke on condition of anonymity.A task force of local, state and federal officers raided the ranch early Wednesday morning. They planned to work into the night ripping the plants out of the ground.The crop was expected to fill two 40-cubic-yard trash bins. Officials kept some of the plants for evidence and planned to destroy the rest by burying them in trenches.Lepp repeatedly has said he has the legal right to grow marijuana under a law approved by California voters in 1996, which exempts from prosecution patients and caregivers who possess or cultivate marijuana for medical treatment.But the law does not make it legal to sell marijuana, Meyer said. Nor is marijuana a legitimate drug under federal law, he said."I don't know where they get this idea marijuana is a life-saving medicine," Meyer said.Senti said her husband was not selling the marijuana. Instead, she said, the pot was owned by patients who lease the land from him.Lepp's Upper Lake neighbors, most of them aware of the garden, had mixed reactions about medical marijuana."I see the value in it," said Meyo Marrufo, owner of Native Ways, an Indian arts and crafts store in downtown Upper Lake. She said it could have helped her uncle when he was dying of AIDS."Live and let live," said longtime Upper Lake resident Joann Madia outside a store on Main Street.The women in B.J.'s Beauty Boutique on Wednesday afternoon were of a different mind."It destroys the brain," Lucy Anderson said of the plant.Note: Medical marijuana activist, 12 others arrested; 20,000 plants seized along Highway 20.Source: Press Democrat, The (CA)Author: Glenda Anderson, The Press DemocratPublished: Thursday, August 19, 2004Copyright: 2004 The Press DemocratContact: letters pressdemo.comWebsite: http://www.pressdemo.com/Related Article & Web Site:Eddys Medicinal Gardenshttp://www.eddysmedicinalgardens.com/DEA Raids Lepp's Pot Farmhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19362.shtmlCannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml 
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Comment #24 posted by gloovins on August 20, 2004 at 01:40:51 PT
Meyer
is very undereducated...btw, you see this..?Court allows use of marijuana as evidenceCHET BROKAWPIERRE, S.D. - The 177 pounds of marijuana found in a car trunk after a routine traffic stop near Rapid City can be used as evidence against the two people in the car, a split state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.The driver, Touray Akuba, voluntarily consented to the search by a South Dakota Highway Patrol officer, the high court said in a 3-2 decision. And Kaisha Paul, the woman riding with Akuba, had no standing to challenge Akuba's consent to the search, the justices said.But the two dissenting justices said the search should be considered an unconstitutional search and seizure. Law officers should be required to have reasonable suspicion of criminal activity before they can request permission to search a vehicle, the dissent said.In addition, the facts indicate the trooper might have stopped the car Sept. 2, 2002, on Interstate 90 because it was driven by a black man with out-of-state plates, Justice Richard Sabers wrote in his dissent.Highway Patrol Trooper Matt Oxner stopped the vehicle, a rental car with Oregon license plates, after spotting it traveling 68 mph in a construction zone with a speed limit of 65 mph, according to court records.Akuba told the trooper he and Paul were driving from Seattle to Chicago, and Oxner told Akuba that he would give him only a warning ticket for speeding. Oxner, who had a drug-sniffing dog in his patrol vehicle, also asked Akuba for permission to search the car for drugs.A videotape running during the conversation reveals that Akuba consented several times to the search. The trooper opened the trunk and found four duffel bags containing 177 pounds of marijuana.Circuit Judge John J. Delaney of Rapid City ruled that the marijuana found in the trunk could not be used as evidence against Akuba and Paul because Akuba never voluntarily consented to the search. The judge said the trooper had no reasonable suspicion of a crime, so his questions about drugs were impermissibly intrusive.The intrusive questions, along with a threat to use the drug dog, resulted in an illegal detention that meant Akuba's consent to the search was not voluntary, Delaney ruled.But the Supreme Court's majority opinion said the trooper clearly had cause to stop the car for speeding and could ask questions while writing the warning ticket and checking Akuba's driver's license. Akuba was not being illegally detained when the search request was made, so his consent was voluntarily, the justices said."An officer need not have reasonable suspicion that a vehicle contains contraband before asking to search it," Justice Steven Zinter wrote for the majority.Akuba clearly consented to the search, did not limit what parts of the car could be searched and did not object when the trooper opened the trunk, Zinter wrote.But in his dissent, Sabers said recent court decisions have given law officers almost unlimited authority to expand traffic stops into drug investigations. Officers should be required to have reasonable suspicions of criminal activity before asking to search vehicles, he said."It is past time for this court to act to protect the Fourth Amendment rights of motorists and their passengers from the fishing expeditions of law enforcement officers," Sabers wrote.Sabers said he believes the circuit judge was correct to rule that the search was illegal and the marijuana could not be used as evidence.
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Comment #23 posted by FoM on August 19, 2004 at 23:04:23 PT
mayan
You're welcome for the article on Marc Emery. It sure was one I didn't want to post though but had too. I hope he gets through this time ok. He is strong willed it seems to me so he should be alright I would think.
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Comment #22 posted by siege on August 19, 2004 at 21:37:03 PT
A minister in the Universal Life Church,
Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993
Enrolled Bill (Sent to the President)H.R.1308SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.   This Act may be cited as the 'Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993'.
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Comment #21 posted by FoM on August 19, 2004 at 21:02:54 PT
DPFCA: Eddy Lepp Released 
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 19, 2004 - Medical marijuana farmer Eddy Lepp was released on bail today after being charged with manufacture & distribution of marijuana. "It's kind of amazing," sighed a friend who was among the 30 visitors at Eddy's farm when he was raided. Thirteen others were arrested, but have not been charged. Supporters rallied in Eddy's support at the SF Federal Building and at his farm in Lake County, where his 20-acre garden now lies bare. "Eddy never hid what he was doing," said California NORML coordinator Dale Gieringer, "If the government doesn't like it, they should come up with a better idea to provide patients safe & affordable access to medicine."Dale Gieringer (415) 563-5858 // canorml igc.org
2215-R Market St. #278, San Francisco CA 94114
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Comment #20 posted by Max Flowers on August 19, 2004 at 18:18:16 PT
Excellent point, warhater
I know a woman whose mother died of brain cancer. Suspected as the culprit: black hair coloring as done by, yep you guessed it, the friendly neighboorhood hairdresser
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Comment #19 posted by FoM on August 19, 2004 at 18:17:27 PT
I Posted a Short CP article About Marc Emery
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread19364.shtml
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Comment #18 posted by mayan on August 19, 2004 at 18:01:39 PT
FoM...
Thanks for the article on Emery. Passing a joint is trafficking? I don't know why he pleaded guilty to it but I'm sure he had a reason. Oh well, they've just turned him into a martyr. Regarding the pot farm..."I don't know where they get this idea marijuana is a life-saving medicine," Meyer said.Perhaps from seeing lives saved because of it? Where do they get these idiots?The way out...ANALYZING THE 9/11 REPORT:
http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=693 Arrests at Ground Zero (Part 2)
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/archive/scoop/stories/a9/d9/200408191412.6d3dc314.htmlThe Air Defense Failures of 9/11:
http://www.septembereleventh.org/airdefense.phpThe 9/11 Tragedy: Official Story...or Inside Job?
http://www.insidejob-911.com/Paul Thompson's Complete 9/11 Timeline: 
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline
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Comment #17 posted by warhater on August 19, 2004 at 17:55:46 PT:
Priorities are Out of Whack
We seem to get a new terrorist warning every month and our federal government is busy making sure people with life threatening diseases don't get their medicine. Remember the summer of 2001. As terrorists where busy planning the 9/11 attacks our federal government was busy busting Rainbow Farms. I wish they would go catch some criminals.On the "It destroys the brain" comment:
Rather than parrot some 1950's propaganda on pot that has since been disproven about about 1000 times, perhaps the women at B.J.'s Beauty Boutique should look into what they are huffing when they get their hair and nails done. I worked in the chemical industry for years. The levels of chemicals floating around in those boutiques would never be tolerated in an industrial workplace.
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Comment #16 posted by runruff on August 19, 2004 at 17:01:42 PT:
addictions
Cannabis in non-addictive but soft, over paid, over empowered, bureaucratic jobs are highly addictive.Meyer is obviously deficit in character and moral compositon.Namaste
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Comment #15 posted by Virgil on August 19, 2004 at 16:55:53 PT
Comment7
I believe the government has a statute that counts every plant as weighing one pound. They do not actually weigh plants.They robbed these people that have the blessing of California and established law in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that will take a corrupted act from the Supreme Court to change. They need prosecution, then again Busch needs impeachment and conviction and Congress needs to be summarily dismissed by the voters and also convicted and sentenced.I guess now I should call treason, tyranny, and theft.
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Comment #14 posted by FoM on August 19, 2004 at 16:37:05 PT
Pot Advocate Headed To Jail 
August 19, 2004 SASKATOON  - The president of B.C.'s Marijuana Party is going to prison. On Thursday, a judge in Saskatoon sentenced Marc Emery to three months in jail for trafficking. 
Emery pleaded guilty to passing single marijuana joint to someone else in a downtown park. He has ten other marijuana-related offences on his record and many are for trafficking in connection with his marijuana seed business. In the past Emery has only received a fine. But this time the judge said he is sending Emery to jail to teach him a lesson. Emery's lawyer, Leanne Johnson, says the judge did what he had to do given her client's record. "However I do have an issue with the length of the sentence. I think three months is a bit of overkill perhaps for passing one joint to one person." Johnson says she will try to appeal but she doesn't know if it would even be heard before Emery finishes his sentence.Copyright: CBC 2004 http://sask.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=sk_emery20040819
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Comment #13 posted by FoM on August 19, 2004 at 16:21:05 PT
Fox News is Talking About Marijuana
It will be coming on soon.
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Comment #12 posted by global_warming on August 19, 2004 at 14:52:22 PT
Dollars
"The farm, owned by a well-known medical marijuana activist with a penchant for pushing the boundaries of California's drug laws, would have yielded a crop worth more than $80 million when it matured this fall, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Richard Meyer said. "That's $80 million DEA inflated and imaginary dollars.I really am starting to feel a bit sorry for these DEA people, for they are know that the gravy train is coming to a halt. The more they squeeze the people, just makes this current action more visible and noticed. This disservice to justice, to the American people to the sick, and to what the DEA was originally designed to do, cannot serve good judgment, and Mr. Meyers will have to relive all the torment that he is causing in this country.It is said that no prayer will go unanswered, be assured that like a prayer, a curse, shall also not go unanswered, for the pain that this man Meyers and his people is inflicting, is causing a cry that will be heard to the heavens,..and will come back to be answered, may God help you Meyers.
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Comment #11 posted by FoM on August 19, 2004 at 14:01:27 PT
News in Brief from California's North Coast
August 19, 2004Upper Lake, Calif. - A raid of a pot farm in rural Lake County on Wednesday yielded nearly 20,000 marijuana plants, said a spokesman with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.The marijuana would have been worth more than $80 million when it was harvested this fall, according to agency spokesman Richard Meyer.DEA agents arrested medical marijuana activist Charles "Eddy" Lepp on marijuana cultivation charges, Meyer said. Twelve other people also were arrested during the raid."Marijuana is a very lucrative business," Meyer said. "In my opinion, greed is the driving force, not compassion."Lepp made no attempt to hide the plants. The farm's precise rows of pot plants and drip irrigation system resembled a corporate wine country vineyard more than an outlaw pot field. Row after row of knee-high plants could be seen from Highway 20, which skirts the farm just 50 yards away across an open field. To the rear of the property, plants were as high as 8 feet tall, law enforcement agents said.Lepp's wife, Linda Senti, said Wednesday, "They're not his plants. Eddy and I had plants, but the other plants were patients' plants." She said the crop had more than 1,000 shareholders. "They're gonna suffer a lot. That was a year's supply of medication for them," Senti said.Copyright: 2004 The Associated Presshttp://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/politics/9444302.htm
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Comment #10 posted by cloud7 on August 19, 2004 at 13:53:44 PT
...
This bust has the same flavor as Operation Pipe Dreams a while back. No one involved thought they were working outside the law. Their businesses/operations were well known, public, and in the open. The feds need some headlines to justify their continued carnage and so they go after the weakest, easiest pickings. There are so many reasons this bust is wrong. Shameful.
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Comment #9 posted by FoM on August 19, 2004 at 13:46:21 PT
I've Waited To Comment
When I'm upset I get very quiet until I can't think what to say. What in the world is going to happen next? I mean that too. Prohibionists and Anti-Prohibionists have about butted heads for the last time. What is insanity?***Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
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Comment #8 posted by medicinal toker on August 19, 2004 at 13:25:57 PT
Meyer
"I don't know where they get this idea marijuana is a life-saving medicine," [snip]Apparently Meyer lives in a world where no one ever gets sick. Obviously he has no family or friends.But if he did, how would he feel if they were ill and crying with pain and all the DEA-approved medications did not work?This man is scum. But his days of menacing the sick and dying are running out quickly. He'll be lucky to get a job cleaning up dog poop when this is all over.
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Comment #7 posted by dongenero on August 19, 2004 at 13:24:13 PT
interesting pics
So they conservatively guess 1 lb per plant? Check out the image of the jack boot thug digging up plants. From what I can see every plant around him and for 200 yards behind him is knee high. So, there's 1 to 2 ounces per plant rather than 1 pound.
There is one outdoor growing season to supply these medicinal cannabis patients. At 1 -2 ounces per plant it will take 8 - 16 plants to get a pound. (The U.S. Government supplies 6 pounds per year to the people remaining on their own medical cannabis program!)
That would be 48 -96 plants per patient for a one year supply.
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Comment #6 posted by Sam Adams on August 19, 2004 at 13:21:43 PT
Pictures
Ha! At least Porky had to put down the doughnut and get an honest day's work in at the farm...Tote that bale! Work that row!Sorry, this is so tragic I have to laugh, how else can you deal with it?
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Comment #5 posted by FoM on August 19, 2004 at 13:07:48 PT
Pictures from Article
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/front_photos/pot.chung.jpghttp://www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs.dll/misc?url=/misc/zoom.pbs&Site=SR&Date=20040819&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=408190317&Ref=AR&Profile=1033
$80 Million Pot Farm Busted
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Comment #4 posted by Sam Adams on August 19, 2004 at 13:03:01 PT
Greed?
So Mr. Lepp is greedy and making millions? What kind of car does he drive? What's the value of his house? Does he have a $20 million house in Florida? Does he throw parties in Italy with hookers & ice sculptures for his wife? No, those are the corporate criminals that are mostly left alone by the pigs.How interesting that they compare this "outlaw" farm with WINE vineyards, producing a legal drug that kills thousands per year.btw, the California wine industry was almost completely wiped out by Prohibition in the 20s, it took what, about 50 years for them to rebuild it. Stupid pigs.Where do we get the idea that cannabis is a life-saving drug? Gee, I don't know, the medical report from 2 days ago that it shrinks tumors?  Maybe the IOM report from Meyer's own government? Doublethink - it's poison I tell you!I wonder, does Meyer get laid? Hey baby, I'm a DEA spokesman. He can't be getting laid. I'd bet anything he's a truly sick, warped individual at home.
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Comment #3 posted by dongenero on August 19, 2004 at 12:50:23 PT
comments
Well, I'm sure glad they had the lady at the beauty shop weigh in with her expert analysis on medical cannabis!!???
"It destroys the brain"
Let me guess what else..hmmm...."causes the niggra to think he's as good as a white man", "causes the niggra to rape white women", "causes the white woman under its influence to lay with the niggra", "turns people into homicidal maniacs", causes musicians to add notes into the music to create that abomination known as jazz". 
God help our country.As for Meyers' quote; "I don't know where they get this idea marijuana is a life-saving medicine,"...You're spoksman for the DEA. Perhaps you should take some responsibility for educationg yourself rather than sticking your head in the sand....or in the talking points.I've had it with this garbage. Time for the Supreme Court to step in and do the right thing.....end this sham of the DEA.
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Comment #2 posted by BigDawg on August 19, 2004 at 12:43:33 PT
"It destroys the brain..."
... of prohibitionists.
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on August 19, 2004 at 12:42:01 PT
I Thought it was a $1000 a Plant?
That's what I have heard in my area.
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