RENEE BOJE - TAKING OFF TO THE GREAT WHITE NORTH

A Medical Marijuana Advocate & Grower Flees Prosecution In The US For
Freedom In Canada

On July 29th, 1997, while leaving the home of her friend Todd McCormick,
Renee Boje was stopped by two police officers. Handcuffed and read her
rights, she was brought to a local fire station where 60 agents of the DEA,
the IRS's criminal investigative unit, and the LA County Sheriff's
Department waited in riot gear to raid her friend's Bel Air home. Renee had
become the first arrest in the federal government's operation against a man
that the local press would later dub "the Pot Prince of Bel Air.

While this may sound like just another chapter in the US war on drugs, it
is much more than that. In a move that could set an astounding new
precedent, Renee, facing charges of conspiracy to cultivate and distribute
marijuana, fled to Canada. Today while one of her supposed co-conspirators
is locked in isolation awaiting appeal and another lies dead, denied the
marijuana that allowed him to keep down his AIDS medication, Renee is
waiting to hear whether she will be returned to the US to face a 10 year
mandatory minimum sentence or whether our neighbors to the north will grant
her political asylum.

Renee's story begins in a popular Hollywood cafe/art gallery where she
first met Todd McCormick. It was April 1997; Californians had just passed
Proposition 215 legalizing medical marijuana and McCormick was sitting in
the middle of the room smoking what Renee remembers as a "really big
joint." Intrigued by the fact that he could be so bold, Renee introduced
herself and the two began a conversation about medical marijuana.

McCormick is a long-time medical marijuana activist. By the age of ten, he
had suffered 9 different bouts with bone cancer. The top five vertebrae of
his neck are fused and he has one hip that is the size of a ten-year-old
boy's. McCormick's mother began giving him marijuana, with a doctor's
blessing, at the age of nine and he has used it ever since to manage the
pain of his condition.

In 1995, McCormick opened the first San Diego cannabis buyer's club. In
early 1997 his new project was a book entitled How to Grow Medical
Marijuana. With a $200,000 advance from publisher and fellow activist Peter
McWilliams, McCormick was conducting research for the book in his rented
Bel Air mansion. The night that he met Renee, who had recently graduated
with a fine arts degree from Loyola Marymount University, he asked her if
she would be interested in doing some illustrations for his book. Renee
agreed and thus began her relationship with the "Marijuana Mansion Man," a
relationship that would end up with her in jail less than four months later.

When the Feds raided McCormick's home, it was the culmination of a
whirlwind five-day investigation. For the next 72 hours, Renee was held at
the Los Angeles Federal Prison for Women where she claims she was
strip-searched fifteen times, sometimes under the leering gaze of male
officers, all the while being denied access to legal council. When she
finally was released, Renee was charged with possession, cultivation,
intent to distribute, and conspiracy.

The press surrounding the case caused her to lose her job and for most of
the next year, Renee says, "my phones were being tapped" and "there were
men sitting outside my house." Even after all charges against her were
temporarily dropped in October of 1997, she was still being followed by the
Feds. The DEA was continuing to aggressively pursue its case against
McCormick and Renee was a pawn in their game.

In May of 1998, nearly ten months after she was first arrested, Renee's
attorney Kenneth Kahn called to tell her that he needed to see her
urgently. In a meeting the next day, Kahn informed Renee that the charges
against her were most likely going to be reinstated, and in a very
professionally-risky move, he advised her to flee to Canada. After three
days of meditation, Renee decided to take his advice. Telling her friends
and family that she was taking a trip to pursue a photography project, she
packed a bag, gave away the rest of her possessions, and headed for Vancouver.

Once in Canada, Renee traveled across the country, worked odd jobs to make
a few dollars, and eventually ended up in Montreal where she learned
through an anonymous e-mail tip that bounty hunters were hot on her trail.
On July 23rd, 1998, the US government had dropped the other shoe. In a raid
on the offices of McWilliams' Prelude Press and three other locations
throughout the Los Angeles area, the DEA arrested McWilliams and several
others bringing the total number of people indicted in the case to nine.
Renee's charges had been reinstated, just as her attorney had feared, and
the Feds desperately wanted Renee back in custody.

Renee immediately dyed her hair and fled back across Canada. Arriving in
Vancouver broke and exhausted, she turned to the only people she felt were
likely to help her, members of Canada's medical marijuana community. Renee
was given shelter in a home with a medical marijuana garden that supplied
cannabis to the Vancouver Compassion Club. Unfortunately it didn't take
long for her troubles to catch up with her.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police raided the house where Renee was staying
on February 15th, 1999. Her outstanding warrants were discovered and she
was quickly rushed off to the Supreme Court in Vancouver for a fast track
extradition to the United States. In Canada, however, Renee was given
access to legal council much more quickly than in the States. Luckily her
lawyer, Alex Stojicevich, was able to convince a judge to hear her case
before sending her back to the US to face trial and an almost certain ten
year sentence in Federal prison.

Renee used her temporary reprieve to retain a second lawyer named John
Conroy who, as a founder of NORML Canada, was very interested in her case.
Conroy helped Renee file for political asylum and agreed to represent her
through this long, complicated process. On February 9th, 2000, British
Columbia Supreme Court Justice Michael Catliff ruled that Renee must be
returned to the United States. Conroy appealed the decision and now Renee's
case sits with the Canadian Justice Minister, Anne McLellan, who has stated
that she will not make a decision until June.

So what are Renee's chances of actually being granted political asylum?
Well that is not such an easy question to answer. Upon first consideration
you might think her chances were along the lines of the old snowball in
hell. After all the United States is Canada's largest trading partner
meaning that the Canadian government is usually very reticent to thumb its
nose at the US. Secondly, Renee has not managed to win any of the rounds of
this drawn out fight. It looks as if the law is against her.

However, there are a few points that weigh heavily in Renee's favor.
Firstly, Anne McLellan is taking an awfully long time in rendering her
decision. While her self-imposed deadline is now set sometime in June,
initially she said that she would have a decision by April 17th, 2000. In
the thirteen months since her first deadline, Minister McLellan has been
deluged with briefs and letters in support of Renee. Amnesty International,
NORML, and many other organizations have filed briefs on her behalf. Actor
and marijuana activist Woody Harrelson wrote to McLellan asking her to
"please show compassion for a wonderful young lady...who has never been
violent or hurt anyone, who simply believed that what was going on in that
house in Bell Air in 1997 was perfectly legal.

"I beg you to give Renee a chance, to let her remain in a country that is
genuinely free, and not to allow a bullying, all powerful government, that
has lost all connection to it's people (and which I am ashamed to call my
own) to take ten years of her young life away from her.

"Please, please, show some compassion toward Renee and don't allow her to
become another statistic in a money-making, hypocritical war against good
citizens."

The second point in Renee's favor is that Canada has much more liberal laws
regarding marijuana use than does the United States. Last April the
Canadian Health Ministry, known as Health Canada, went so far as to issue
regulations that will make Canada the first nation in the world to create a
government regulated system for medical marijuana. Health Minister Allan
Rock said, "Canada is acting compassionately by allowing people who are
suffering from grave and debilitating illnesses to have access to marijuana
for medical purposes." Add to this the fact that Renee's lawyer John Conroy
will be before the Canadian Supreme Court next year arguing cases from
Ontario and British Columbia challenging the constitutionality of laws
prohibiting recreational use of marijuana; you might begin to get the
impression that Renee might have a chance after all.

Lastly, not to be forgotten, is the fact that while it may not do so very
often, Canada does have a history of occasionally defying the United
States. One such occasion, of course, was Canada's granting of political
asylum to the Vietnam War era draft dodgers.

So what is it that is keeping Renee from being granted her asylum? Well,
things may not have been as simple as Renee and her co-defendants have made
them out to be.

First of all, the government's claim that McCormick's operation was part of
a larger conspiracy is supported by evidence that McWilliams seems to have
been funding the growing of marijuana in three other locations besides
McCormick's Bel Air home. Marijuana plants were found in McWilliams' Laurel
Canyon home as well as two houses in Chino and Van Nuys connected to a man
named Scott Hass. In one of the houses overseen by Hass, the police found
equipment for the manufacture of hashish, but Hass defends himself by
saying that he was simply experimenting with different ways to deliver
medical marijuana.

While McCormick and Hass claim to never have met each other and in fact to
both have had no knowledge of the other, this is not legally necessary to
prove a criminal conspiracy. By law, conspirators don't need to actually
know each other, they merely have to know that they are part of a larger
operation. But was there a larger operation?

Scott Imler, president of the LA Cannabis Buyers' Club (an organization of
which McWilliams was a member), seems to think so. He claims that
McWilliams approached him wanting "to enter into a contract with [the
Buyers' Club] for the sale of marijuana at $4,800 per pound." Imler and
other Club workers also claim that McWilliams said that he wanted to become
"the Bill Gates of Medical Marijuana." McWilliams denied having suggested
any sale, and said of the Bill Gates quote that he was simply joking. Both
Renee and McWilliams' Attorney have indicated a belief that Imler may have
been the one to tip off the Feds to McCormick's growing operation.

The government's case is not without its own inconsistencies, however. For
instance, the government's claim that McCormick was growing 4,116 plants
with a street value in excess of $20 million dollars is a bit of an
exaggeration. In fact, the majority of the plants that the Feds found in
McCormick's home were dormant cuttings, planted nearly one hundred apiece
in two foot by one foot boxes - hardly mature 'plants'. This is perfectly
consistent with McCormick's claim that he was doing crossbreeding
experiments to determine which strain of cannabis produced the most
effective cannabinoid for the treating of a particular medical symptom.
Also the government has failed to adequately address why, if in fact he was
involved in a criminal conspiracy, was McCormick so open about his actions?
Many of his plants were on his front porch easily visible from the street
in a neighborhood that boasts Elizabeth Taylor and President Reagan as
residents.

In the end it is important to keep everything in this case in perspective.
For one, the most damning evidence that the government claims to have
against Renee is a video on which she is seen watering and moving
McCormick's plants for a little over an hour. Even supposing that
McCormick, who according to California State law had a legal right to grow
marijuana, was in fact breaking the law, does Renee's watering of his
plants merit a ten-year sentence in Federal prison?

Two, what real harm were these people doing? Even if they were planning to
sell the marijuana to California buyers' clubs, should this be a crime? The
United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the Oakland Buyer's
Club's right to operate stating that a patient's right to health care
superceded the Federal government's need to regulate the drug trade.

And lastly, we need to look at the behavior of our Federal government.

The Federal government refuses to recognize the validity of laws duly voted
into being by the citizens of the state of California and many other states
as well.

The Federal government has charged a group of medical marijuana activists
with a variety of crimes involving marijuana and they deny them the right
to mention medical necessity as a defense, claiming it would "serve only to
confuse and mislead the jury."

The Federal government has locked away Todd McCormick, a man doing
legitimate medical research on the premise that he might be intending to
sell the by-product of his research to an organization that is legally
allowed to distribute this product. The Feds deny him his chosen,
doctor-prescribed medicine, a medicine that he has been taking for over 20
years. And when a drug test shows that he may have been continuing to take
that medicine while in jail waiting appeal, they confine him to isolation.

The Federal government convicted Peter McWilliams, a man fighting a battle
with cancer and AIDS, of being a drug kingpin for his financing of medical
marijuana research. The Feds deny him the use of doctor prescribed
marijuana as a means of keeping down his AIDS medication, and as a result,
he dies, choking on his own vomit while awaiting sentencing.

The Federal government, in 1997 prosecuted more people for drug offenses
not related to trafficking than it did for murder, rape, and all other
sexual offenses combined. There is a marijuana arrest every 40 seconds in
the US and one in six people in prison are there for marijuana related
charges. The US spends $17 million dollars a day building more prisons, and
yet still there is not enough room. Rapists and murders are paroled to make
room for the flood of incoming drug offenders.

At a time when, by some estimates, it costs the federal government over
$150,000 a year to lock up a prisoner, why are we putting so many drug
offenders behind bars? In a nation in which 15,289 murders were reported in
1997; where there is an average of 2,147 bombings or attempted bombings a
year; where over 60% of the population can expect to be raped or physically
assaulted in their lifetime, does our country's war on drugs make sense?
Renee Boje certainly doesn't think so. Hopefully, her case can convince the
Canadian government as well.

If you want to help Renee you can write letters to Minister McLellan
in support of her petition. See www.Reneeboje.com for more
information.