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