EDDY LEPP BUSTED BY DEA

Lepptomania, n. 1. Extreme stubbornness in the belief that state law
is sovereign over federal law with respect to medical marijuana. 2.
(obsolete) Intransigence associated with enlarged gonads.

On the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 18, word started ricocheting around
that Eddy Lepp was being busted by DEA agents at his Upper Lake
spread. Thus ended a common topic of speculation in medical mj
circles: "Why doesn't Eddy Lepp get busted?" Eddy was growing
thousands of plants -- more than 32,000, according to the confiscators
-- with no effort at concealment. "It looked like a Christmas tree lot
across Highway 20 from his home," according to journalist Pat
McCartney, who had visited Eddy 11 days before the bust.

Charles Eddy Lepp is a 53-year old Vietnam vet who has had
post-traumatic stress, chronic back pain, skin cancer, degenerative
arthritis and coronary bypass surgery. His clinical lepptomania onset
when California voters legalized marijuana for medical use in 1996.
The next summer Lepp was arrested by Lake County narcs for growing 51
plants in his yard. He said he was growing for himself and two other
qualified patients, and that he intended to donate the surplus to the
San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club. A Lake County jury acquitted him.

"The reason they couldn't convict me was that they looked at me and
saw themselves, their mother, their brother, their sister," Lepp said
at the time. "I told them, 'I've done nothing wrong. I'm like you.'
I'm a white middle class goddamn war hero, military intelligence. I
have letters of support from the V.A., with combat duty in Vietnam in
1972. Ninety percent of what's wrong with me can be traced to my
service years.

"I need marijuana. When I take pain pills -- I'd have to take hundreds
a month -- it tears me up. I get bad when I drink alcohol. On weed,
I've never met anyone who doesn't like me."

Lepp was permitted to grow in relative peace for a few years; then in
August, 2002 Lake County narcs called in the DEA to raid him. They
confiscated 266 plants but declined to file charges -- re-enforcing
Lepp's view that the law was really on his side. (Lepp is suing the
DEA for return of property and $67 million in damages.)

Lepp's confidence that state law prevails was re-enforced further in
March 2003 when a Superior Court judge ordered the California Highway
Patrol to return marijuana seized from Lepp during a traffic stop. The
CHP claimed that to hand over the controlled substance would violate
federal law. Lepp, representing himself, had made a state's rights
argument. (He's suing the CHP, too.)

The clincher for Lepp came in October 2003 when the U.S. Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals ruled in U.S. v. Raich and Monson that the federal
government had no jurisdiction in cases not involving interstate
commerce, i.e., when marijuana is grown in California for consumption
by California patients. Lepp figured the Raich ruling (which the Bush
Administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn) entitled
him to grow for as many patients as he could get to designate him as
their caregiver. He formed a non-profit -- Eddy's Medicinal Gardens
and Multi-Denominational Chapel of Cannabis and Rastafari -- and began
signing up patients.

"He recruited qualified patients from across the state," according to
McCartney, "holding seminars at which he told them, 'Let me take the
risk for you.' He said his goal was to lower the price of medical
marijuana. Payment of $500 per plant, an estimated $30 an ounce, was
due by Sept. 1. Lepp gathered 2,000 recommendations in all."

The DEA arrived at Lepp's house a little after 7am, Aug. 18. Lepp says
he saw the convoy of SUVs coming down his driveway and had time to
awaken everyone in the house and warn them to put their hands up and
be cooperative. When he opened the front door and asked to see a
warrant the lead agent slapped him in the face, knocking his cigarette
out of his mouth. It was payback, Lepp thinks, for his having "ordered
this gentleman off my property" a few days earlier. About a dozen
federal narcs, dressed in black with guns drawn, stormed in to search
the place and arrest everyone. Lepp says the warrant was totally blank
except for his name and a judge's signature. He questions its legality.

The DEA squad was accompanied by another dozen or so Lake County and
state Bureau of Narcotics officers. They chose not to hassle about 15
people on the property whom Lepp described as "Hispanic and Asian
field workers and construction crew members." Lepp and 12 members of
his "house crew" were taken to the Lake County jail. The house-crew
members were held for a few hours and released after signing a
document stating that they'd been "detained for public intoxication."
Lepp was held for about 20 hours, then transported to the federal
building in San Francisco where attorney Dennis Roberts promptly
negotiated his release. Lepp agreed to put up all or part of his
40-acre ranch, which has been split into several parcels. The bail
details will be worked out at a hearing Aug. 26. Lepp faces charges of
cultivation and maintaining a residence for the manufacture of a
controlled substance. A gun charge may be added, he says, "because
they found a little .32."

Lepp thinks he can beat the rap on at least three grounds: violation
of the Raich ruling, an illegal search warrant, and Congress's failure
to formally adopt the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (an original
theory he has been researching).

Lepp was able to make it up to Seattle in time for the start of the
Hempfest on Saturday morning, Aug. 21. He arrived in a green stretch
limousine, leading a convoy of loyal crew members. Eddy's Medicinal
Gardens had rented a large booth, and neither the rainclouds above nor
the events of the past week could stop the crew from publicizing their
operation. Pat McCartney says he will forever cherish the memory of
Eddy, in his long green robe, telling an interviewer, "I'm not in
trouble with the feds, they're in trouble with me." How Eddy Got Involved

As told by Eddy after his 2002 bust to Preston Peet: "I first started using
marijuana over in Vietnam. I won't go into details, but they had some
amazing shit over there. Smoking allowed me to keep myself well. Later on,
I would kind of smoke it socially but I was drinking heavily for years.
Then in about 1987 or 1988 my Dad got cancer. He underwent 14 major
operations in about 14 months. After getting out of the hospital, he lived
about another year before he died. During that year, he was living on
Ensure, the protein drink. The only way I could get him to drink the stuff
was to roll up a big ol' fatty and shove it in his tracheotomy tube. One of
my fondest memories of my father is him walking around with a big fatty I
rolled stuck in his trach tube choking down his Ensures. That's when I
first got involved with it in a medical aspect.

"My daughter was a caretaker for a young gentleman who got AIDS back
in the beginning of the AIDS epidemic when it was truly a terrible
thing and they had no control over it at all. Through him, I was
introduced to Dennis Peron. A while later Dennis came up with this
wild, hare-brained idea which ended up being Proposition 215. When
they started gathering signatures, I got involved and helped gather
signatures. My wife Linda and I gathered almost 500 signatures
ourselves to help get it on the ballot. Dennis and I wound up being
pretty good friends because we're both Vietnam vets. After Prop. 215
passed, it wasn't long before I got arrested."

We're legal, let's act it. --Todd McCormick, explaining his attitude
after Prop 215 passed. (He would subsequently serve three years in
federal prison for cultivation