Pubdate: Sat, 26 Aug 2000
Source: Times-Standard (CA)
Copyright: 2000 The Times-Standard
Contact:  930 Sixth St. Eureka, CA 95501
Fax: 707-441-0501
Website: http://www.times-standard.com/front/frontpage.html
Author: Jacob Lehman, The Times-Standard

GROWER WON'T BE CHARGED

The District Attorney's Office has decided not to charge Steven Tuck in 
connection with the more than 800 marijuana plants he and others were 
growing in the Wilder Ridge area, said Deputy District Attorney Nandor Vadas.

Tuck said the plants were being grown under the name of the Humboldt 
Research Institute for about 120 people with medical marijuana recommendations.

On July 24, sheriff's deputies, led by Sgt. Wayne Hanson, entered the 
Wilder Ridge property, detained several people while they acquired a 
warrant, and seized 839 marijuana plants, several guns, books and 
paperwork. Tuck has vowed to sue the sheriff's department over the incident.

Vadas said that while the District Attorney's Office takes the case 
seriously, it decided not to prosecute Tuck because "we believe he was 
misinformed to some extent" about the local interpretation of California's 
medical marijuana law, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, commonly called 
"215."

"It was appropriate for law enforcement to take the plants," he added.

Whether growers can produce medical marijuana for large numbers of patients 
has been disputed in several Humboldt County cases and will probably become 
an issue in civil lawsuits.

Tuck, who says he is terminally ill and was using his extensive education 
to develop new strains of marijuana, has been an outspoken advocate of 
large-scale growing of medical marijuana.

"Without people doing what were doing, 215 is a joke," he said. "It's like 
standing in a hospital and handing someone with pneumonia a loaf of bread 
and saying 'you have permission to go grow some penicillin.' "

Sheriff Dennis Lewis, Hanson and members of Hanson's unit were not 
available for comment.
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