420: EXPLORING THE CULTURAL HISTORY OF MARIJUANA ON THE DAY (AND
TIME) IT MATTERS THE MOST

The problem with writing about pot is that due diligence dictates
that you get baked beforehand. So ... Check. Is there any food around here?

Marijuana is a drug plant. If you smoke it, you get lit, and then
everything is different for a bit. It's an occasional habit for many,
for some, it's a lifestyle, and others rebuke it with mighty fervor.

Criminalized by a number of federal laws starting with the 1937
Marijuana Tax Act, weed used to be thought of as an industrial plant.
Harvested and processed to make cheap paper, cloth and rope,
Washington grew it, his buddy Jefferson wrote on it and nearly 200
years later, our brave boys used hemp parachutes to safely come down
behind enemy lines.

While it makes great cloth and threatens the profit margins of the
petrochemical industry, the real reason for the federal government's
disapproval lies in the flowers. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a
complex compound capable of altering perception and metabolism, makes
up a healthy percentage of pot's resinous, trichome-flecked flowers.
Technically called sinsemilla, but better known as bud outside of
reggae tunes, these unfertilized flowers have been a part of American
society since the jazz age.

Appropriated by the beats, explicitly enjoyed by the hippies and
talked up by Snoop, these flowers have also played an enormous role
in determining the cultural reality of Northern California in
general, and Santa Cruz in particular. It was here on the West Coast
where the nerdier nurturers amongst the Aquarians first went into the
hills to bend botany to their will and develop incredibly powerful
strains like Kona Gold and White Widow. You can't print it, but
there's a brand out of the frozen north called "Alaskan Matanuska Thunderf**k."

One of the government's chief gripes about marijuana is that in order
to supply the vast multitudes who inhale (and enjoy it), a
multinational, multibillion dollar criminal economy has emerged. Even
with all the discussions surrounding its potential medical benefits
and relative harm of marijuana being conducted by academics,
scientists, activists and policy makers, the man still brings the
hate down on the herb.

Marijuana cessation is an important portion of the War on Drugs,
which merged with the War on Terror about five years back. Last year,
the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) distributed $12.5
billion to other federal agencies that attempt to eradicate drugs in
the United States. Many millions of those earmarked funds were spent
trying to stop the cultivation, transportation, distribution,
inhalation or ingestion of any portion of the cannabis plant, and
several hundred thousand of those earmarked greenbacks were spent
here in Santa Cruz County.

The language of the ONDCP's "Drug Description for Marijuana" spells
out in no uncertain terms just how dangerous marijuana is to the
human body. It cites frequent "respiratory infections, impaired
memory and learning ability, increased heart rate, anxiety, panic
attacks, tolerance, and physical dependence" as common side effects
and consequences of pot abuse.

As a nation that has no interest in allowing people to ruin their
lives by smoking a noxious weed, federal law also assigns stiff
penalties for any citizen foolish enough to come in contact with this
member of the plant kingdom. If the Feds come calling, possession of
any amount--even as a first-time offender--could cost you a year of
your life and $1,000. That's just the possession penalty. Cultivation
is an entirely different matter. Growing anywhere from 100 to 1,000
kilograms of herb could get you five to 40 and $2 million in fines.
Talk about a buzzkill.

The Lowdown on the Big High

In the face of such significant penalties, it's amazing to think that
anyone is out of the closet about their use of marijuana, but well,
here we are. Blame the weather. For better or worse, California is
the epicenter of the national debate about marijuana's role in
society--legal, medical and recreational--and the policy that's
crafted in response to it.

Santa Cruz stands at the bleeding edge of these arguments. Pot and
politics have long been bedfellows in this county, but the
anniversary of their first date is a matter of some debate. It might
have been when the university opened in 1965, or when a progressive
majority overtook the city council in the early '80s, but the
relationship was definitely private until it was vocally outed in the
early '90s.

The archives of this political affair can be found on Laurel Street
at the Compassion Flower Inn. Unique in the frilly world of bed and
breakfasts for the fact that it was specifically set up to give
medical marijuana patients a safe place to toke on the road, it's run
by two women, Andrea Tischler and Maria Mallek, whose sense of
hospitality has been honed by decades of standing on the front lines
of the drug debate in Santa Cruz County. For them, the Inn stood at
the nexus of the two most central tenets of life in Santa Cruz:
activism and housing costs.

"We decided to open up a bed and breakfast because we were doing
restorations on the house," Tischler says as we sit down to coffee
and muffins. "The Inn also gives us an opportunity to be a physical
presence in the heart of the community and to reach out to the hemp
and medical marijuana communities and have some visibility."

Within a few moments, activist Theodora Kerry, a long-time proponent
of marijuana law reform, enters via the back door. She takes a seat
across the table and pulls out a photocopied history of marijuana
activism from her satchel.

For these two women, their love of the herb is balanced by a
deep-seated hatred of the War on Drugs. "The billions we have spent
have been focused on incarceration has been a waste" Tischler says.
"It's flooded our penal institutions, separated families and
shattered a lot of lives ... it's accomplished nothing."

Speaking about the dark days before cannabis clubs, ballot measures
and vaporizers, Kerry remembers the secrecy that used to surround the
conversation about marijuana. "If you were in a straight reality job,
you were really quiet about it," she says in between sips from her
coffee mug. "By the early '90s people had lived through 10 years of
the drug war and Reagan and Bush, and in that context, coming out was
really revolutionary. We were opening up a conversation that was very
shut down."

Though involved in the first statewide attempt to repeal marijuana
possession laws in 1973, it wasn't until after the Loma Prieta
earthquake in 1989 that Kerry began to organize in earnest in Santa
Cruz. Nine months after the quake, Kerry and her cohorts brought
noted marijuana policy reform advocate Jack Herer, the author of "The
Emperor Wears No Clothes," to the Pacific Cultural Center.

"We had lines around the block and they had to open up the side doors
because the whole area around the Center was overflowing," Kerry
recalls, "That's how hungry people were to have this conversation."

While dedicated to the ultimate legalization of the plant, Kerry and
her fellow activists, who by this time had taken the name Holy Hemp
Sisters, were politically savvy enough to realize that a
comprehensive overhaul of national drug policy was an impossibility.
So they began focusing on popularizing the idea that the use of
marijuana had many therapeutic effects for the chronically ill.

In 1992, due in large part to the efforts of these women, voters in
Santa Cruz County overwhelmingly approved Measure A, which was
designed to recognize pot as "safe and effective medicine," and allow
for its use in medical situations, including treatment for cancer,
glaucoma and HIV.

In the midst of the campaign for the groundbreaking referendum, two
local residents Valerie and Mike Corral got busted for growing five plants.

The Corrals' involvement with medical marijuana dates back to 1974
when Mike grew a few plants in order to treat Valerie's epilepsy,
which was brought on by a horrific car accident. "I read in a medical
journal that marijuana was being used to treat lab animals for
seizures," Mike recalls. "She was on pharmaceuticals, and it wasn't helping."

"I've often referred to it as living underwater," Valerie concurs.
"It was overwhelming to stay awake or to carry on a conversation or
even to read and talk to others. The pharmaceuticals themselves were
debilitating. There is nothing on the streets that I know of that
really can render a person so paralyzed as the narcotics that they
use to stop seizures. It was a difficult and overwhelming place to live."

Over the course of the late '70s, the Corrals gradually reduced
Valerie's intake of pharmaceuticals and ramped up her ingestion of
marijuana. According to both Corrals, she hasn't had a seizure since.

The Corrals' choice of treatment was a private matter until airborne
members of the law enforcement community swooped down and uprooted
the Corrals' five plants. With the urging of Kerry and Tischler, the
couple mounted a spirited defense of their tiny crop.

"We challenged the laws using medical necessity as defense," Mike
recalls. "It's hard to satisfy but seven-and-a-half months of
prosecution later, [then]-district attorney Art Danner decided to
drop the charges."

"It was probably because of Measure A," Kerry observes. "Without
Measure A, she was just another bust. There were other medical
patients who were dealing with it privately and going underground,
but she aligned herself with our campaign--so she had support."

"That was our first foray into politics," Tischler recalls fondly.
"We had people that were out and willing to be public. Seventy-seven
percent of county voters approved the idea that marijuana could be
medicine and that the law should draw a line between medical and
recreational drug users."

Local activists didn't lose momentum with the victory of Measure A.
They made sure that the program that busted the Corrals, CAMP, was
subject to some serious scrutiny. More properly known as the Campaign
Against Marijuana Cultivation, CAMP was, and still is, a paramilitary
task force made up of a coalition of law enforcement agencies charged
with eradicating any illicit crops of ganja. In the wake of the vote
on Measure A, the federal government upped its annual contribution to
the CAMP program significantly, pouring more than $200,000 into Santa
Cruz County for fiscal year 1993.

For four very public years, from 1993 to 1997, hundreds of people
joined Kerry and the Corrals in pushing for a rollback of the CAMP
project. Armed with both helicopters and the money to fly them, the
CAMP program logged hundreds of hours in the air over Bonny Doon and
the North Coast as well as closely sweeping the urban corridors of
the San Lorenzo Valley.

"I routinely voted against the appropriations," recalls Gary Patton,
who used to warm the Third District Supervisor's seat at the County
Government Center. "The San Lorenzo Valley Supervisor [Fred Keeley],
and I usually voted against it because the program resulted in many
citizen complaints about low flying helicopters. Every year, the
sheriff at the time, Al Noren, would get up and tell us how great it
was and there was always citizen opposition."

"Al Noren would never speak with me," Valerie Corral says, recalling
the ex-sheriff. "He has that right as an individual, but not as a
representative of the community. He was unwilling to have a regard
for change. That is an important element for someone to have when
they work with a community that is always on the brink of it."

As the debate over CAMP intensified, a wide coalition of activists
including the Green Party, the ACLU and Veterans for Peace joined
forces to point out the intrusive and alarming practices being
perpetuated upon rural residents.

With the election of Sheriff Mark Tracy and the help of more
open-minded politicians like Patton, Keeley and, later, Mardi
Wormhoudt, Santa Cruz County residents and activists were able to
open up dialogues and actually force concessions out of the program.
Urban overflights were cancelled, flight times were cut back from 170
hours to 60 and minimum altitudes were increased. There was much rejoicing.

Two Novembers after Measure A passed, all of California got to weigh
in on the medical marijuana debate. More than 55 percent of state
voters approved of the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, better known as
Proposition 215.

Primarily constructed to ensure "that patients and their primary
caregivers who obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes upon the
recommendation of a physician are not subject to criminal prosecution
or sanction," Proposition 215 "changed the whole climate" surrounding
marijuana as a political issue. According to Tischler, "It gave us
permission to talk about it and try new directions."

But it also flew in the face of federal law enforcement. It
eliminated many worries for those involved in the medical marijuana
movement in California, but weed itself still wasn't legal.

"Part of the issue is the misunderstanding of the law," says Santa
Cruz Police Chief Howard Skerry. "Proposition 215 (and the resultant
Health and Safety Code section) exempts patients and/or their
caregiver(s) from criminal prosecution if they meet certain criteria,
it did not "legalize" marijuana."

But both Measure A and Proposition 215 did open the doors a bit wider
for the establishment of both stationary marijuana dispensaries and
growing collectives like WAMM, the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical
Marijuana. In 1993, WAMM, launched by the Corrals, began distributing
medical marijuana to patients in the area free of cost.

"WAMM grew from the desire of people who were facing death who
required medicine and a wanted to be part of something bigger than
themselves before they died," Valerie Corral recalls.

Starting with three people meeting at the Santa Cruz AIDS Project,
then moving to the Louden Nelson Community Center before hightailing
it out to the hills, WAMM has been at the center of the medical
marijuana movement for most of the last decade. Still run by the
Corrals, the group gained national notoriety in 2002 when the DEA
descended upon the groups' North Coast plot in a predawn raid and
confiscated 167 plants.

Outrage was swift and fervent. City council members passed out pot on
the steps of city hall, local law enforcement came out in favor of
the group and public sympathy was overwhelming.

While the DEA eventually released the Corrals and didn't prosecute
them for drug trafficking and cultivation. The scars from that raid
are still fresh.

"It was appalling that law enforcement came in under the cover of
darkness where there was no protection there or even an electric
fence," says Christopher Krohn, who was mayor at the time. "They
threw people in the back of a van. It was devastating. I was getting
phone call after phone call that day."

Now Kerry and Tischler's group, Santa Cruz Citizens for Sensible
Marijuana Policy, is trying to get another petition on the City
ballot. This time out, they are bypassing medical issues and going
straight for the heart of the War on Drugs by targeting the laws
prohibiting recreational use by private citizens.

The petition asks local law enforcement to assign the lowest priority
level possible for enforcing the prohibition against marijuana use in
private homes in the city. Statistics provided by the police
department indicate that 257 police reports were filed referencing
marijuana use or possession in 2005.

Though both the city attorney and the police chief have raised
significant questions about the legality of the referendum, Tischler
and Kerry see the fight as part of their ultimate goal of eradicating
all prohibition on the usage of cannabis.

"The medical marijuana issue has eclipsed the whole debate, but it's
only one step in the process," Kerry says. "Our bigger picture is the
full legalization of the plant for all its uses."

Citing the power of marijuana activists and the work that they have
accomplished both socially and legislatively, Supervisor Wormhoudt
believes that Measure A and Proposition 215 are both examples that
criminalizing marijuana, particularly medical marijuana, has
"outlived its period of social acceptance."

"My own sense of it is that we live in a country with a failed drug
policy," she continues. "We lost the War on Drugs. We lost it
decisively a long time ago. It's a failed strategy."

On the Beat

Yet even if the plant is legalized, there's still the thorny issue of
how to get high. Unless you're going to waste a perfectly good apple
by hollowing out a perfectly bad pipe, you're going to need to visit
a head shop.

While you can solicit for sex, gamble and drink until dawn in Nevada,
selling drug paraphernalia, could earn you one to four years in jail
and a $5,000 fine. Federal laws are even more severe. Just ask Tommy
Chong. Almost three years ago the counterculture icon pled guilty to
a single federal count of conspiring to distribute drug paraphernalia
and received nine months in the pen and a $103,000 forfeiture for
helping to get his son's business, Chong Glass/Nice Dreams off the ground.

Locally, proprietors of head shops have less to worry about. Four
stores on Pacific Avenue are happily engaged in the trade of tobacco
smoking accessories--and business is good.

"One major misconception I had when I began working in this business
five years ago is that I thought that the tobacco accessory
demographic was limited to your typical 18 to 25 young adults," says
Uriah Wilkins, the manager of downtown Santa Cruz's oldest smoke
shop, Pipeline, which has been open since 1977. "But this is the
furthest thing from the truth. We get everyone in here, from lawyers,
politicians, and teachers to moms and dads. We serve two generations
of this diverse demographic."

Shops like Pipeline also support a handful of very talented artisans.
"I used to be an electrician," says Bryan Heath, whose company, Jedi
Glass Works, supplies smoke shops with elaborate and intricate
smoking utensils. "I ran into a friend who blew glass a few blocks
away from my work over there and within in a few years I started
making my own pieces."

Almost a decade later, he's glad that he changed trades. "I love it,"
he continues, "It's fun. I get to make things that make people happy.
It's way better than being an electrician. I can see myself doing it forever."

While beautiful, it's this sentiment that has been driving the more
conservative end of the spectrum so insane for so long about this
debate around marijuana.

"The biggest danger is people abusing it and not striving to better
themselves or get out of the funk that they are in," says Jerry as he
recalls many of the clients he's met in his nearly two decades of
surveying a stoned population as a local pot dealer.

Now serving around 40 clients, some of whom phone weekly--others
check in around twice a year--Jerry has been slinging weed since high
school. "I got into this by experimenting with growing a few plants,"
he says wistfully. "I hooked up a few friends and then I realized
that, yeah, you can grow money."

Since most of the people that Jerry delivers product to are working
folks, the hours tend to run pretty late. His clientele ranges from
single mothers in their fifties to young entrepreneurs to even
younger couples still struggling with midterms.

Making the rounds with Jerry by bicycle and dropping off satchels of
herb is a mostly pleasant affair. No one ever objects to my presence
as an accessory at any of the illicit rendezvous--even when I'm
identified as a reporter.

Trained by years of TV dramas to believe that all drug dealers are
slick businessmen with itchy trigger fingers, watching Jerry work is
a revelation. He's friendly, he's funny and he treats his rounds as
more of a social than financial transaction. Like a therapist or a
bartender, he spends the visits mostly by asking his customers about
their jobs and their partners.

Selective about his clientele, most of his customers are long term,
and as such, Jerry's working environment is so pleasant and relaxed
that it takes almost 15 minutes to realize that he'd left his
backpack at the last home we visited. Circling back, we return to
find the house dark and the cars gone. While the satisfied customers
are out running errands or grabbing dinner, thousands of dollars'
worth of bud is sitting unnoticed under their kitchen table. This
never happens on Miami Vice.

Now a dealer with no product to sling, Jerry suggests talking at a
local bar. He's buying. Even by cutting the rounds short, he's way
ahead on the night. At the street level, herb goes for about $50 for
an eighth of an ounce (roughly 3.5 grams for the metric fans out
there). Ounces, or ogres as the paranoid like to refer to them over
the phone (like the FBI doesn't know), run around $400 and pounds
will set you back around $3,500.

"When it was good, at the peak of the market, I was making $40,000
cash a year," Jerry says, reclining in his chair after a hectic
three-hour workday. "It's slowed down. It's a lot more of a buyers'
market now because everyone and their mom is growing."

Admitting that sometimes the paranoia runs deep, Jerry says Santa
Cruz is a pretty ideal place to take up the pot trade. "I could see
doing it in other cities," he says, "but it was easy to get into it
here. People wanted to smoke it. I grew some. It was just easy. I see
that there is safety in numbers here. The police have higher
priorities than me. I'm just in the middle."

Don't Hold Your Breath

Tom Petty is right. Coming down is the hardest part. This tale has no
real ending. Like many of its users, marijuana is in limbo right now.
It's ubiquitous but it's still illegal. Despite its pervasiveness,
it's still taboo, which in the end might add it its appeal. Whatever
happens with the Feds and their helicopters, or the petition and its
signatories, the discussion is sure to continue for years to come.

And no matter what the current (or any other) presidential
administration thinks, a certain portion of the population--from
grandmothers to high school metal fans--is going to occasionally
sneak away from their responsibilities and burn one down. Sunsets
will be watched, guitars will be strummed and someone will get the giggles.

So in the spirit of California's own version of Arbor Day, it's
appropriate to close out with a primary source. Long before Paul and
John sang "Got to Get You Into My Life," or Mr. Marley stirred it up,
Art Tatum played a song called "Knock Myself Out." Out in front of
Tatum's monstrous piano runs, bassist Chocolate Williams sang the
following verse loud and proud:

Listen girls and boys I got one stick Give me a match and let me take
a whiff quick I'm gonna knock myself out, I'm gonna get groovy I'm
gonna knock myself out, gradually, by degrees.

[sidebar]

FOUR-TWENTY by Henry Jones

While the term "420" is now firmly established in the vernacular of
cannabis culture, the origin of the term has been clouded by
misinformation. The most popular urban myth is that 420 was the
number for the California Penal Code prohibiting marijuana, but it
turns out that that number is reserved to cite people unlawfully
obstructing access to public land. Police code 420 doesn't exist in California.

Other theories range from the improbable to the fantastic. Some
believe that April 20, or 4/20 is the last day to plant marijuana
seeds, or that marijuana has exactly 420 psychoactive chemicals.
Neither of these theories add up.

Musically speaking, the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence"
features the words "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie," but
this probably refers to the medieval practice of occasionally placing
live birds into pastry shells and releasing them as entertainment
during grand feasts.

Bob Dylan's song "Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35," with its familiar
refrain of "everybody must get stoned," features numbers that
multiply to make 420, but frankly speaking it's unlikely that many
stoners did the math on this.

The real origin behind 420 is somewhat less spectacular. In 1971, a
group of kids at San Rafael High School in the North Bay--who called
themselves the "Waldos"--began a routine to meet at exactly 4:20 p.m.
every day after school to get high. "Four-twenty" soon developed into
a code word that the Waldos could use to talk about marijuana around
parents and teachers. This history, first reported by High Times,
relies on old letters written by the Waldos featuring the earliest
known usage of 420 as verification.