I've had my share of cannabis related arrests. Growing back in the 90's was a totally different ball game. I think that escapes us in the present day where it's fashionable to post pictures of your plants and speak freely about growing. If you told the wrong person, or a person you trusted told someone else.... bad news. It wasnt just a decriminalized fine and a slap on the wrist back then. It was handcuffs, court, jail, and massive fines... ask me how I know
Well, you asked.
Lets go back to when I was 22. About 25 years ago.. fuck im old....
I'm 22. I have 2 young kids, 5yo boy 3yo girl. Going through a divorce from a phychotic woman, so obviously I have both kids 24/7 365 (fine by me, some of the best years of my life). I havent grown in 4 or 5 years because I was told that weed is "childish", just like playing hockey and I need to "grow up". Fuck that, I'm a Toys R us kid.
I moved back home and gave up everything but the kids, and the dog. Gave her the house, car blah blah blah. Didnt care. I only wanted away from her.
So, I'm back home. My parents have been sick my whole life. Taking turns in the hospital since I was like 6 maybe? Sometimes they would both be in the hospital, and I'd have to get up and get me and my little brother ready for school at 8yrs old. So... naturally they got progressively worse as they got older. I moved back in around April.. I remember it was around my dad's birthday. It was nice having my parents around with the kids. They would watch them for a few hours so I could go on a hike and smoke myself silly. It was nice to get some time to myself. Something I havent had for 5 years. Between going to school 2 nights a week an hour away, and working 60-70 hours, while simultaniously gutting a house built in 1860, and staying up with the baby all night... I was happy to be out of that situation, and get some help.
Thanksgiving day that same year would be a turning point. At that time, my parents were both in tremendous pain from multiple transplants and surgeries. My dads back was all jacked up from crumbling disks. So like anyone else in pain in that era, they were loaded up with morphine. From pills to injectable viles. I saw them waste away from the dependancy of those "medications". That morning, my mother went to unplug her i pod shuffle I had gotten for her so she could Listen to her favorite music at dialysis. Her weak heart gave out as she stood back up. She passed out on the bed and that's how we found her. The house smelled like my moms home made red cabbage and slow roasting turkey, but Thanksgiving would never be the same again.
My dad obviously fell into a pit. I saw him wasting away. He would go from a hospital bed he bought for his room, to a recliner in the TV room (his bunker). 2 recliners and a TV with a table and a lamp. My mom and dad would sit in there and watch whatever crap was on TV while my mom knitted blankets, or did her cross stich. Now it was just dad in there talking to a picture.
The morphine wasnt helping the situation. But guess who had two thumbs, and a jar of seeds he kept since he was 14 stashed in the basement.
I went to work crafting a 3x6 closet in my room I built in the basement. One side was for a 1x3 veg cabinet as tall as the ceiling. It had 3 or 4 shelfs for rooting snips in a little bubble cloner i made out of a plastic shoe box. The flower side had a secret door from the veg. It had an L shaped shelf right in the middle so I could step in. Very tight fit lol. I used 75w hps fixtures from a parking lot lighting job I did earlier that year. Took the ballast apart and mounted them outside the flower side. I grew in 2liter soda bottles with tape or paint on the outside to block out light. I put 8 bottles in a litter box, and I fit 8 litter boxes in the closet. So every week I'd harvest 8 little plants in a litter box and get about 1.5-2.5 zips depending on the strain.
My father had COPD from smoking, and he was on oxygen. So, this was my first attempt at making edibles. I made butter first. Gave dad a bagel. I told his ass to wait an hour or two. He ignored me. Like 20 minutes later he made himself a second bagel. Whoopsie doodle Kenny!
I go upstairs to check on him after i get the kids to bed. I fell asleep with them for an hour i think. I expect him to be conked out in the recliner, or maybe smiling watching something funny.. he was always smiling. But no...
He's standing about 5' away from the tv leaning on his oxygen tank with the remote in his hand. Playing on the television is the title screen to a Spongebob Squarepants dvd with the volume turned up to about 30. It sounds like a carnival in there. His mouth was hanging open and his eyes were sooooo red. I've only seen someone that fried a few times in my life. He was fucking torched!!
I go to grab the remote and get him in the chair and he just keeps moving the remote around saying nonono, nonononononano. He didn't want to be even talked to. All he could say was no lol. So I left him there. He's a big boy, he'll figure it out.
So he wakes up the next day at like 3pm. My dad, who couldn't sleep more than 2 or 3 hours at a time, just slept 14 hours! He's still fucked up, but He's on re-entry. A few weeks go by, and I take the kids to the amusement park by me. I come home and I smell tomato sauce and paint. This fucker is making dinner, doing laundry, moved the couches.... and is painting the fucking living room?!??!!! What is going on here.
He says he feels great. He hasn't taken the morphine in 2 weeks or however long it was, i forget now. Holy shit right?
Later that week I was bringing my daughter to my x for some reason. Left my son home with my dad because he was doing his "100" sheet. Where a kindergartner write the numbers 1 - 100 on a piece of paper. My dad has to go to the bathroom (he had Crohn's disease, when you gotta go you gotta go) my son decides he's going to go hide so he doesn't have to do his work. My dad says he heard the garage door open while he was in the bathroom and now he can't find my son.
Mind you, my dad sat in his bunker and watched Nancy Grace all day. That lady only reports on abducted children. Its gross.
I turn around and go home, I cant find him either. I had to call the cops. They find my plants, whatever... great job fellas... i know where those are. Find my kid.
3 hours later my son wakes up in a closet under a pile of blankets he was hiding in and strolls out to the living room.
My plants were all out on the road outside of my house with headlights of cop cars pointed at them. White Rhino, White Widow, some bagseed kerosene strain I made.
"They don't grow any faster because you're looking at them!", i yell out the window from the back seat of the police cruiser.
I hid my scale, the only thing that saved me. I had locks on the door so they dropped the child endangerment charge. I got hit with unlicensed cultivation of cannabis for 69 plants. Given my situation, and the fact that they found the butter I was making, and I answered any questions about weight with "I don't know".... it was only a $300 fine.
I asked the judge how they could charge me with unlisenced cultivation when there was no lisence to be obtained. I was told to shut the fuck up and consider myself lucky.
The cops took all my grow equipment, plants, and seeds. They took my dads butter away too. He passed away 3 years later and famously said "they will probably legalize it ten years after im gone." Sure as shit, they did
X wife took the kids and tried to use them as leverage to get me to move to the apartment next to her lol. Child Protective Services went to my house for 6 months. The guy was cool, he come over and watch the Mets game then take off. I had to go to a substance abuse education program ordered by the court until I admitted that marijuana is bad. I refused to say it. They made me go back for 8 months @$50 every other week until they gave up.
In that time, i wrote a letter to my senator,Bettly Little, about everything that happened and the benefits of cannabis to the chronically ill. She wrote back, probably a cut and paste post card response.. but at least responded. I still have the letter, and I'll dig it out.
I've been fighting for this plant since the first time I got high. For the record, I got the spins and dry heaved for like 4 hours the first time. But I stuck with it like true champions do.
I don't like to brag much, but if there ever was a Crusade for Cannabis i like to think that my sword was one of many shining lights cutting through the cage, chains, and stigmatism holding back not just the plant itself, but those who cultivate and care for it.
