Pubdate: Sun, 23 May 2010
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2010 The Sacramento Bee
Contact: 
http://www.sacbee.com/2006/09/07/19629/submit-letters-to-the-editor.html
Website: http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: Peter Hecht
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

SACRAMENTO POT FARMER'S MOM WENT TO JAIL FOR WHAT HE DOES LEGALLY

Down a rutted dirt road from Garden Highway and the Sacramento River 
levee, organic farmer David Tat Chow cultivates a crop that sent his 
hippie mother and stepfather to state prison.

On his tiny, hardscrabble plot, he tends to apple trees, radishes, 
bell peppers, tomatoes, crookneck squash   and a few dozen marijuana plants.

He grows for medical pot users on a farm federal agents spent years 
trying to seize over a couple of ounces of weed.

California now brims with legal marijuana dispensaries, pot doctors 
and a burgeoning industry serving tens of thousands of medical 
cannabis users. A November ballot measure seeks to legalize 
recreational marijuana use   and small private cultivation   for 
adults over 21.

Chow's family saga speaks volumes about changes in marijuana 
politics, enforcement and social acceptance.

These days, Chow invites American Indian speakers, fellow growers and 
other interested guests to his farm for classes on marijuana cultivation.

He leads the sessions in a soft voice, tinged with grief. He tells of 
his mother, who died of breast cancer in 1993, after returning from 
prison. He tells of a protracted fight as a young man to save the 
property from federal seizure.

"My parents were made an example," he said. "(The authorities) said, 
'If you grow marijuana, we're going to put you in prison   and we're 
going to take your property.' It was 21/2 ounces of marijuana and 
they served 21/2 years in prison."

It started in 1989 when heavily armed narcotics officers, with 
multiple vehicles and battering rams, surged onto the 2.75-acre Full 
Circle Farm. The working ranch included turkeys, a few cows, organic 
row crops and 20 marijuana plants.

They arrested Marsha Chow, a wildflower seller and food bank 
volunteer, and her husband, Richard Johnson, a dreadlocked 
Rastafarian and decorated Vietnam combat veteran.

The parents were sentenced to three years in prison in a plea deal 
that kept the son from also being prosecuted.

Chow, then 19, was left to hold things together.

After the state case, federal agents raided the farm, intent on 
seizing the property under a federal forfeiture law.

Authorities said Marsha Chow and Johnson were drug dealers, on 
probation for felony marijuana convictions in Tehama County. They 
said the packaging equipment, scales and a semiautomatic weapon at 
the farm indicated serious criminal activity.

The case drew the attention of Bee columnist Jim Trotter, who took up 
for the hippie growers. "This law has been used extensively in recent 
years to seize the boats, airplanes and estates of big-time drug 
dealers," Trotter wrote after visiting the farm in 1990. "... If 
there is any drug wealth associated with this place, it isn't readily 
apparent."

Sacramento lawyer Donald Heller, a former federal prosecutor, said 
the U.S. Justice Department during the 1980s and early 1990s waged 
aggressive campaigns against even small-time drug offenders.

"The bonus at the time was the forfeiture   and seizing property," 
said Heller, now a criminal defense attorney. He said authorities 
today would be unlikely to deploy resources in a similar case.

Chow fought a legal battle for nearly five years before writing a 
$10,000 check   an inheritance from his grandfather   to settle the 
case and keep the farm in 1994. A few months earlier, his mother had 
died of breast cancer. His stepfather passed away in 2000.

"The time I lost with my mother is worth 100 times more than the 
$10,000 I spent," he said.

Today Chow, a welder and construction worker injured in a fall from a 
roof, staples physicians' recommendations for marijuana for himself 
and other medical users to the side of a splintered work shed.

It is his notice he is following the law under California's 1996 
Compassionate Use Act for medical marijuana.

Last weekend, people who had known his parents dropped in on Chow's class.

Michael Tamburelli, 53, returned to the farm where he once bought 
wildflowers and vegetables from Marsha Chow. He said he also had 
known Johnson "as a Rasta guy who was real mellow.

"They weren't selling weed," Tamburelli said. "Hell, they didn't have 
enough weed."

He added: "I'm just glad the farm is still here and 'Tat' (David 
Chow) is doing what he is doing now."

Chow started his class by displaying handwritten notes from his 
mother. She described "a small self-sufficiency farm" selling organic 
fruits and vegetables at farmers markets.

She touted organic growing and railed against pesticides. "We are 
concerned about a vanishing tradition of living on the land," she wrote.

Chow told her story before he instructed visitors in how to tend to 
one of his "Purple Gum Indica" plants.

He is unable to escape the bitter irony that his parents paid dearly 
for what he now does legally.

"It is so ridiculous that educated people can justify putting people 
like my mother in prison," he said. "Marijuana is just a plant. It's 
just a plant."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom