cannabisnews.com: Reefer Madness





Reefer Madness
Posted by CN Staff on June 12, 2006 at 18:47:25 PT
Book Review By Stephen Amidon 
Source: Salon
USA -- During those rare moments I find myself feeling uneasy about the course of the war on terror, I take consolation by looking back at America's unconditional victories in our two previous crusades against abstractions -- the war on poverty and the war on drugs. As far as poverty goes, it seems incredible now to think that there was ever a time when Americans had to worry about health insurance, affordable housing or quality education. No wonder we're deconstructing safety nets faster than a bankrupt circus. 
As for drugs, that victory has been even more decisive. Ever since Richard Nixon ordered an "all-out war, on all fronts" against narcotics over a 1972 Oval Office cocktail with H.R. Haldeman, the drug menace has been swept from the land. One need only look at the millions of POWs we have taken in daring raids on such hotbeds of enemy activity as Detroit, East St. Louis, Ill., and Newark, N.J. Or the 10-year prison sentence handed down to enemy propagandist (and MC5 manager) John Sinclair for selling not one, but two joints. Or the imprisonment of comedian Tommy Chong for engraving his countenance on glass bongs -- a man who, as his prosecutor pointed out in her closing arguments, "was a bad example because he made fun of drugs and cops in his movies." You'd have to be smoking something to worry that a government that conducted these campaigns will falter in securing us from Islamic terrorists. OK, seriously -- do people actually believe in the war on drugs anymore? Did they ever? If so, I suggest they read Dean Kuipers' "Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went up in Smoke," which captures the paranoid absurdity of our current drug laws as well as does any book in recent memory. This well-researched, compassionately written study of the 2001 killings of pot activist Tom Crosslin and his lover, Rollie Rohm, by FBI and police snipers on their Michigan farm is a memorable portrait of the war on drugs at its ugliest. It is also a timely reminder of the dangers inherent in ceding our basic civil rights to combat a nebulous menace. By the time of the deaths of Tom and Rollie, Rainbow Farm had become a popular outpost for the pro-legalization movement in America, listed by High Times magazine as "fourteenth on the list of twenty-five Top Stoner Travel Spots in the world." Scene of regular festivals with names such as Roach Roast, Hemp Aid and WHEE (World Hemp Expo Extravaganza), it provided refuge to citizens of the nation's floating pot underworld, who would simply arrive with a tent and some weed to stay for as long as necessary. There were few rules, though hard drugs were not allowed, and no one was permitted to sell dope of any sort, including marijuana, on the premises. Sharing pot, on the other hand, was definitely encouraged. Guns were forbidden and cops might be allowed in every now and then to keep the place from being raided, though they were followed by drummers to alert partyers. Rainbow Farm was, in other words, a sort of stoner utopia, a mini-Woodstock where the rules of the straight world did not pertain. At first glance, Tom was an improbable Prospero for this enchanted isle in the farm country of southwest Michigan. Born in working-class Indiana, he practiced a rough-and-ready brand of libertarianism that had a lot more to do with good old boy hell-raising than with allegiance to radical politics. "Tom was making revolution, but not with the political design that was then driving the radical left," writes Kuipers. "He was just against hassle. He was really like a Goldwater conservative: against government intrusion into the private lives of Americans and laws governing drugs and helmets and sodomy and guns." In other words, he liked bikes, bar brawls and getting high. He also liked men, which often made for an uneasy fit in his blue-collar world, especially when he started a construction business that forced him to deal with people who didn't have much truck with the gay life. Two things changed Tom forever. First was meeting Rollie, a shy, handsome young man who'd just emerged from a mistaken marriage that had produced a son. It was love at first sight, especially for Tom, who soon took Rollie under his wing, where he would remain until FBI marksmen separated them forever. The second transformative event was Tom's purchase of 34 acres of beautiful land that he soon dubbed Rainbow Farm, not to denote any sort of gay political agenda -- Tom was never much for that -- but rather to signify his and Rollie's belief in the inclusive, tolerant microsociety they planned to build on their small patch of the upper Midwest. It would be "a new world, an entire universe, that could contain them all -- his friends, his family, the people he loved -- and anyone else who felt like he did -- the freaks and hairies, the ex-cons, dissenters and one-percenters, the dishonorable discharges, closeted gays, potheads and hippies." The farm had no specific agenda other than to become a laid-back Emersonian arena of self-discovery. "This is a place about alternative lifestyles," Kuipers quotes Tom as often saying. "Being gay is just one of 'em. Smoking pot is just one of 'em. There's a bunch more, and this is a place where people can be free." For a while, it seemed to work. In the mid- to late '90s, Rainbow Farm functioned more or less according to plan, its main problems being financial -- the festivals tended to cost a lot more than they raked in. Acts such as Chong, Merle Haggard and Big Brother and the Holding Company would perform, along with various luminaries on the legalization circuit, who would deliver speeches about the salubrious effects of marijuana. Frisbees filled the summer sky; the tractors were painted in psychedelic colors; there was a dog named Thai Stick; the hill in the middle of the farm was dubbed Mount This. Darker elements also descended, Altamont style -- in this case the Michigan Militia, whom Tom hired to work security at some festivals (provided they left their guns at home) and who one night famously managed to chase off a nosy state trooper. This involvement with the militia movement reflected a worldview that stubbornly resisted easy classification. "Tom's position on pot was basically a right-wing critique," writes Kuipers. "He thought drugs should be legal not because the government should provide some kind of utopian experience; he thought drugs should be legal because policing them was unconstitutional." In those post-Waco days, it was reasonable that such a person would form an alliance with the anti-government militia so active in his state. As Kuipers points out, the "hemp movement meshed perfectly with the work of the patriot and militia movements, despite the apparent clash of values over guns." It wasn't long before these strange bedfellows drew the critical attention of the Man. Tom's Inspector Javert proved to be a buttoned-down local prosecutor named Scott Teter, whose aversion to a bunch of countercultural types minding their own business on private property blossomed into an obsessive desire to nail Tom at all costs. Tom's arguments that no hard drugs were allowed on the property, and that the sale of narcotics was forbidden, fell on deaf ears. Teter, after all, represented a system that insanely sees pot as the equivalent of crack cocaine but finds rotgut vodka and cigarettes perfectly acceptable. After a few years of unsuccessfully trying to gather evidence using undercover cops, the prosecutor decided to stage a bogus tax raid whose sketchy justification would make even Alberto Gonzales blush (OK, maybe not). Led by the state police's South West Enforcement Team, or SWET, the raiders found Tom's paperwork to be perfectly in order, though they also stumbled upon a few racks of hydroponic pot in the basement. Not only were Tom and Rollie arrested on felony manufacture charges, but Rollie's beloved son, Robert, was taken into foster care. Neither of these results, however, met the real goal of Teter's campaign. What he really wanted was to get his hands on Rainbow Farm itself under the broad asset forfeiture laws brought in by Ronald Reagan, whose Omnibus Crime Bill of 1984 basically said that law enforcement agencies could keep the money from the sale of any assets they seized during drug raids. The suspect did not even have to be guilty -- and in most cases in which he or she was proved innocent, the procedure for getting back seized property was so onerous that many simply gave up. According to Kuipers, Michigan was among the worst practitioners of this unconstitutional obscenity, nicknamed "collars for dollars." "Michigan's prosecutors and local fuzz aggressively pushed the logic of asset seizure all the way out to the limits of constitutionality and then beyond, out into a cop fantasyland where even thought-crime might cost you your life's honest work." The moment Teter's men found those budding plants in Tom's basement, Prospero stood to lose the paradise he'd sweated over for the past decade. Unfortunately for everyone, Tom was not one to take such an affront lying down. The militia man emerged from the stoner's warm haze. Having lost his Fourth Amendment protection against illegal search and seizure, he decided to exercise his Second Amendment right to bear arms, getting his hands on some assault rifles and letting it be known that the farm had been mined and booby-trapped. (It was not.) That now-familiar American danse macabre, the barricade standoff, developed. Believing they were outgunned, the local authorities called in the FBI. Kuipers details the inevitable conflagration with chilling matter-of-factness. Any outrage a nation might have felt over the killing of two gay stoners was buried by the events of 9/11, which happened within a week of the raid. Although it will be hard for any reader not to feel the injustice and sheer waste of these deaths, it is also difficult to direct all of one's outrage at the cops on the ground. Feeling besieged and friendless, Tom and Rollie had clearly decided to make some sort of desperate last stand. They were, after all, armed with semiautomatic weapons. What's more, after burning down many of the farm's structures, they had fired several times at the police, striking both a helicopter and an armored vehicle. Tom's blustering threats of larger weaponry must have also played in the minds of the foot soldiers who found themselves on what seemed like foreign soil a hundred miles east of Chicago. The blame, rather, lies with the prosecutors who hounded Tom and the lawmakers who have decided to wage war against a naturally occurring weed. Their persecution of Tom caused him to "become a dreadful enemy: a loving, well-intentioned man who had looked into the heart of the law and found himself erased." In 1967, London Times editor William Rees-Mogg famously quoted Alexander Pope in an editorial on the looming imprisonment of the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for simple possession: "Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?" In the case of Tom and Rollie, the butterflies were not only broken but nuked, steamrollered and buried a mile beneath the earth. Drug war ideologues argue that one of the reasons smoking pot is bad for you is that it makes you paranoid. Having read "Burning Rainbow Farm," you realize that it is not the pot that makes people freak out but rather our government's insane campaign against it. Note: Michigan's Rainbow Farm was a utopia for stoners, gays and dissenters. Then America's anti-drug insanity erupted in its ugliest form. Source: Salon (US Web)Author: Stephen Amidon Published: June 13, 2006Copyright: 2006 SalonWebsite: http://www.salon.com/Forum: http://tabletalk.salon.com/Feedback: http://tinyurl.com/m3nugRelated Articles & Web Site:Tom and Rollie Memorial Pagehttp://freedomtoexhale.com/rb.htmBook Focus on 2001 Rainbow Farm Shootinghttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread21865.shtmlFamily Files Lawsuit in Rainbow Deathhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17896.shtml
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Comment #10 posted by OverwhelmSam on June 14, 2006 at 16:18:09 PT
My Letter Is Sent
I'll call just before the vote.Chet Edwards D Tex. is a drug warrior. He has voted against this bill every time. It's about time for him to retire for political life. He's still living in the '50s.
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Comment #9 posted by FoM on June 13, 2006 at 20:27:20 PT
Taylor121
Thank you. I really appreciate you and others posting important information like this. I don't get a lot of e-mail so it's easy for me to miss them. 
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Comment #8 posted by Taylor121 on June 13, 2006 at 20:21:21 PT
Tell Congress to Support Medical Marijuana Now!
Dear Friend:The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote later this month on the 2006 Hinchey-Rohrabacher medical marijuana amendment, and we need your help to send a clear and overwhelming message to Congress to stop prosecuting medicinal cannabis patients! Click on the following link for a pre-written letter:http://capwiz.com/norml2/issues/alert/?alertid=8836426&type=COIf passed, the 2006 Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment would prevent the Justice Department and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from federally prosecuting state-authorized medical cannabis patients and their providers. NORML is asking you to take two actions to help shelter these seriously ill patients from the government's war on cannabis consumers.ACTIONS TO TAKE1) E-mail your Representative2) Forward this alert to your friends and family.Responding to growing conflict between states and the federal government over the issue of medical marijuana, Reps. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) will offer an amendment later this month to the Science, State, and Justice spending bill to forbid the U.S. Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from spending any federal tax dollars to target and prosecute patients who possess or use medicinal cannabis in compliance with their state laws. Eighty percent of the American public supports the physician-supervised use of cannabis as a medicine, and they do not wish to see their tax dollars wasted by those in Congress who would target the sick and dying in their overzealous war on drugs. Last year, 161 members of Congress voted in favor of Hinchey-Rohrabacher, but we need 57 more members to join with them to stop Washington's war on patients.Sincerely,Allen St. Pierre
Executive Director
Member, Board of Directors
NORML/NORML Foundation
director norml.org____________________________________The MPP also has an action center. Check out http://action.mpp.org
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Comment #7 posted by ekim on June 13, 2006 at 18:55:06 PT
come on mayan -- just a little futher well make it
Tuesday, June 13, 2006 
What's the matter with Kansas?I don't go to big music festivals anymore. I don't really enjoy huge crowds and nowadays the police take all the fun out of attending. 
According to Douglas County Jail records, more than 80 people from 28 states were arrested on alcohol and drug violations during the festival, which police had warned would be more heavily patrolled than in past years.
What is the point of this? Don't the local LEOs have actual criminals to track down? Surely even in Kansas there is property crime and murders and rapes and drunk drivers that really do endanger the public more than a bunch of kids who want to get a little high and listen to music. Maybe even engage in such subversive behavior and dancing and sliding in mud. I mean really, do these young people look dangerous to you? You'll notice they were charged with violations, not causing trouble. Read that as simple possession and the police misconduct as described in the forums was appalling. Unwarranted searches of campsites without the the campers even being present for the search. Profiling of concert goers for road searches. Patrolling the parking lots with drug dogs. Hard to believe they still call this a free country. And yet they get away with it because no one complains. Apparently the ACLU can't find someone willing to be named a plaintiff to test the constitutionality of the blanket searching. It almost makes me wish I had gone. The hippies of the 60s would never have sat still for this. We would have been demanding the ACLU take the case.The festival organizers paid the state $30,000 for use of the park and $8,000 for water-line improvements. Their festival was ruined by these guestapo tactics. They should get a refund. And next time you wonder why young people have no respect for the law, remind yourself of how little respect they get from law enforcers.
http://lastonespeaks.blogspot.com/
http://www.lastonespeaks.blogspot.com/
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Comment #6 posted by ekim on June 13, 2006 at 18:41:27 PT
Hello siege - we lost all our paper mills in Kal
Action alert - Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendmentResponding to growing conflict between states and the federal government over the issue of medical marijuana, Reps. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) will offer an amendment later this month to the Science, State, and Justice spending bill to forbid the U.S. Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from spending any federal tax dollars to target and prosecute patients who possess or use medicinal cannabis in compliance with their state laws. Eighty percent of the American public supports the physician-supervised use of cannabis as a medicine, and they do not wish to see their tax dollars wasted by those in Congress who would target the sick and dying in their overzealous war on drugs. Last year, 161 members of Congress voted in favor of Hinchey-Rohrabacher, but we need 57 more members to join with them to stop Washington's war on patients.
Sincerely,Allen St. Pierre
Executive Director
Member, Board of Directors
NORML/NORML FoundationThis is the fourth attempt for this provision in as many years. Write your representative now!Here's the result of the vote on this amendment from 2005. [does M. Simon care to comment?]
http://www.drugwarrant.com
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Comment #5 posted by mayan on June 13, 2006 at 18:23:44 PT
We'll Never Forget
The way this world is headed, I wonder if Tom and Rollie aren't better off. Regardless, we'll never forget them. The 9/11 inside job has sent most of the world in a very dangerous direction and it just seems to get worse by the day. I know I won't care to live in a world that's not free.Liberty or death.THE WAY OUT IS THE WAY IN...The Vermont Green Party says 9/11 Truth/Impeachment is vital to the existence of Our Constitutional Republic: 
http://vermontgreenparty.org/open_endedclosure3e.htmQuestions And Answers With Green Party Congressional Candidate, Carol Brouillet: 
http://www.yourbbsucks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10698Dr. Steven Jones PowerPoint Presentation from Chicago Keynote Speech (scroll down):
http://www.911blogger.com/2006/06/dr-steven-jones-powerpoint.html More Recordings From Chicago:
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=184999/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB - OUR NATION IS IN PERIL:
http://www.911sharethetruth.com/
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Comment #4 posted by mai_bong_city on June 13, 2006 at 10:35:17 PT
about flowers and birds and farms and things
this story hit me hard this morning, like it was waiting, i guess. i feel weary and very sad about such awful atrocities going on daily, i suppose.
before i became a sick person i was a recreational drug user....now it's just all....different to me - but suffering and pain and death is universal, maybe. it seems relentless to me.
i wish they were still here, i wish the farm was, and all those who didn't make it to that place where we were free from harm and intolerance and violence and ...pain.
it's probably evident i am not feeling too very well...i just wanted to manage a hello and voice my displeasure with the current state of affairs. maybe tomorrow morning will be a better one, i so long for some kind of encouraging news at last, some giant leap forward overnight. i will keep hoping.
and a special note to MaxFlowers - how sweet and kind, the birds that sing, and lovely nature's blooms in spring.....Namaste~*
mbc
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Comment #3 posted by siege on June 13, 2006 at 06:54:58 PT
Ron comment
In Tn. the dept of forestry said it takes from 5 to 7 acres of trees to do what 1 acre of hemp will do, for paper.
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Comment #2 posted by Sam Adams on June 13, 2006 at 06:50:58 PT
comment
"As far as poverty goes, it seems incredible now to think that there was ever a time when Americans had to worry about health insurance, affordable housing or quality education. No wonder we're deconstructing safety nets faster than a bankrupt circus. "Hmmmm, well, back in those days, you didn't NEED health insurance. The unregulated, plant-based medicines were dirt cheap. Doctors were cheap. The cost of living was cheap!  No massive, centralized agency like the federal government was needed to provide affordable housing - it was everywhere. Quality education? If your town didn't provide it, you could move to one that did. Or your church provided it.Our health care system? I'd give it about another 10 years before it implodes completely. 
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Comment #1 posted by ekim on June 12, 2006 at 19:11:51 PT
please support MI Norml 
Dean Kuipers
Deputy Editor
Los Angeles CityBeat
5900 Wilshire Blvd., #2211
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 938-1700 x 207
deank lacitybeat.com_______________________________________________________________________MISHAWAKA, IN
Saturday, June 172:00 PM to 3:30 PM  ANOTHER BOOKSTORE
100 Historic Center
Mishawaka, IN 45644
Contact: Patty 
574-254-1411
anotherbookstore sbcglobal.net_______________________________________________________________________KALAMAZOO, MI
Sunday, June 18  2:00-4:00 PM BARNES AND NOBLE, KALAMAZOO
6134 South Westnedge
Portage, MI 49002
Contact: Mike Culp
269-324-1433
crm2588 bn.comAuthor's Reception afterward:Bell's Eccentric Café
355 E Kalamazoo Ave.
Kalamazoo, 49007
(269) 382-5712
5:00 PM to Whenever 
Hors d'oeuvres and cash bar with superb Bell's beer_______________________________________________________________________DETROIT, MI
Monday, June 197:00 PM to 9 :00 PM  BOOK BEAT
26010 Greenfield Rd
Oak Park, MI 49237
Contact: Cary Loren
248 968-1190_______________________________________________________________________BIRMINGHAM, MI
Tuesday, June 206:45 PM arrival
7:00 PM to 8:00 PM  BORDERS
34300 Woodward
Birmingham, MI 48009
Contact: Amy Stanton
586-726-1178
astanto1 bordersgroupinc.com_______________________________________________________________________GRAND RAPIDS, MI
Wednesday, June 217 :30 PM arrival
8:00 PM to 9:00 PM  RIVER BANK BOOKS
86 Monroe Center NW
Grand Rapids, MI 49503
Contact: Debra Lambers
616-451-0851
debra riverbankbooksgr.com_______________________________________________________________________ANN ARBOR, MI
Thursday, June 226 :45 PM arrival
7 :00 PM to 8 :00 PM  AUNT AGATHA'S TRUE CRIME BOOKSTORE
213 South Fourth Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48140
Contact: Robin 
734-769-1114
wengas aol.com
 LANSING, MI
Friday, June 237:10 PM arrival
7 :30 PM to 8:30 PM  SCHULER BOOKS AND MUSIC
2820 Towne Center Blvd
Eastwood Shopping Center
Lansing, MI 48912
Contact: Whitney Spotts
517-316-7495
amanda schulerbooks.com
http://www.minorml.org
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