A Different Kind of Reefer Madness

When Todd McCormick was arrested last week and charged with cultivating more than 4,000 marijuana plants at the home he rented in Bel-Air, Richard Cowan, former national director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, called him a hero.

McCormick reportedly was growing marijuana for buyers’ clubs around California; growing pot for the ill and dying. He even was experimenting with different strains of cannabis, trying to create symptom-specific plants: specialized highs for all of life’s lows.

McCormick’s amateur agribusiness isn’t heroic. It’s exploitative and self-serving, as are the buyers’ clubs that have sprouted up across California.

Smoking pot helps me control my epilepsy. I take prescription medication that doesn’t always control the auras or sensations that warn me of an impending seizure. Every so often, I smoke pot to dissolve those migraines and floating sensations. I have no idea why it works, because there’s no body of clinical research to explain it. I discovered this drug on my own. My doctor is supportive, but like me, he is uncertain about the law and not willing to put his approval in writing (for whatever that would be worth.)

When Proposition 215 legalized the medicinal use of marijuana last year, I was relieved. Finally, I could get occasional relief from my own backyard, without fear of prosecution. Finally, I wouldn’t be subsidizing gangs and drug cartels. With the passage of Proposition 215, I could throw a few seeds in the sunshine and remove myself from the drug economy.

I was wrong. A world of buyers’ clubs has sprouted up in California, offering relief at the same prices an illicit dealer would charge. MSNBC recently ran a flattering feature on San Francisco Cannabis Buyers’ Club founder Dennis Peron. I had mixed feelings when I saw that. I was glad that a man with national recognition and clout is legitimizing medical marijuana. And I was profoundly disappointed that he saw an open marijuana marketplace as the perfect solution. A new pot economy is sprouting up.

Proposition 215 has resolved nothing. Peron has some small protection in his fame. But if I plant a seedling, does my landlord risk losing everything in asset forfeiture? I can’t play fast and loose with someone else’s property. Will my confession about marijuana use come back to haunt me? Pot is Peron’s business. For me, it’s like a bottle of aspirin: there if I need it, although I don’t usually. I don’t want to dedicate my life to reefer activism; I just want to grow a plant or two without fear. Medical marijuana legislation has not helped me.

Activists like McCormick and Peron are pushing in the wrong direction. In seeking their own glorification, they aren’t helping the rest of us. Marijuana needs no storefront or street corner. It requires no club. But if I grow marijuana, I endanger my freedom and the freedom of others. I’m stuck and frustrated.

With the passage of Proposition 215, I believed common sense had come to California. I thought, wrongly, that both Republicans and Democrats would seize on this opportunity to relegate marijuana to the garden, where no gangs with guns, activists or entrepreneurs were waiting to take their cut. But asset forfeiture laws and everyday uncertainty ratchet up the risk of growing a few plants for personal use. So some Californians are willing to pay people like McCormick to take risks for them.

Forget all the talk of cloning and strains and complex growing systems. Pot thrives on sunlight and soil and water. If pot is truly legal and I have a few seeds and some time, marijuana in California is literally dirt cheap. Why pay the $60 or so that buyers’ clubs charge for their eighth-of-an-ounce baggies? For production costs? Production would be free if I felt safe in planting my own garden. Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, Gov. Pete Wilson and other state officials should support a person’s right to garden on a small scale without fear.

I would gladly call Peron and McCormick heroes if they had lobbied law enforcement officials for a fair and clear interpretation of Proposition 215, an interpretation that protected individuals’ rights. Instead, they just stepped into the drug dealers’ shoes and congratulated each other.

Pot is not so crucial to my health that I must use it. And I cannot in good conscience support these new pot pioneers. I’d rather wait. When the time is right and California law enforcement officials come to their senses, I’ll throw a few seeds in the dirt, reap a harvest that’s free and live a little more comfortably.