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The Daytona Beach
3RD ROUND
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SUNDAY
perfect,
EDITION
Journal
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2 strokes JUNE 17, 2007
from
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Which school earned the All-Sports Award? TODAY’S FORECAST
Coverage of the FSL All-Star weekend Hey, man! Look at the groovy clouds!
SPORTS, PAGE 1D THE INDEPENDENT VOICE OF VOLUSIA & FLAGLER COUNTIES High: Upper 80s. Low: Lower 70s. PAGE 8C

www.news-journalonline.com FINAL EDITION $1.25

Atlantis The homegrown marijuana industry Lifeguards

OK’d could be taking root in bedrooms near you.
to land rescue 281
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
GROWING LIKE swimmers

WEED
HOUSTON — Atlantis was
cleared Saturday to return
to Earth this coming week
after the space shuttle’s
‘It was just one after another’
heat shield was judged cap-
able of surviving the in- By SETH ROBBINS What To Do
tense heat of re-entry, and a STAFF WRITER
If you are caught in a
U.S. astronaut reached a DAYTONA BEACH — With 281 res- rip current:
milestone with the longest cues and one near-drowning,
single spaceflight by any P Try to remain calm
Volusia County Beach Patrol of-
woman. ficers were on the run Satur- to conserve energy.
Atlantis is set to land at P Don’t fight the cur-
day.
Cape Canaveral on Thurs- rent.
day, although NASA offi- Whistles screeched and life-
P Swim across the
cials were still deciding guards waved orange flags as
whether to keep the shuttle they scrambled to rescue current in a direction
at the international space beachgoers from the churning following the shore-
station for an extra day be- surf. A high sand bar hid the line.
cause of a failure of comput- threat lurking just below — rip P When out of the
ers that control the sta- currents. current, swim and
tion’s orientation and oxy- ‘‘For about three hours, it angle away from the
gen production. was just one after another,’’
‘‘That’s great news,’’ At- said Beach Patrol Capt. Don current and toward
lantis commander Rick Dickinson. ‘‘This is a day where shore.
Sturckow said of the land- you earn your money.’’ P If you can’t escape
ing plan. Beach Patrol spokesman this way, try to float
The shuttle’s 11-day space Capt. Scott Petersohn said a or calmly tread wa-
station construction mis- perfect mix of ingredients cre-
sion had already been ex- ter. Rip current
ated the many rip rescues: strength eventually
te nded to 1 3 days so a
strong seas, a high tide, holes in subsides offshore.
thermal-protection blanket
could be fixed during an un- the sandbar and throngs of
bathers wading into the water. When it does, swim
scheduled spacewalk. toward shore.
NASA has been particular- Chris Windeler, here on vaca-
P If at any time you
ly sensitive about the space tion from Kentucky, didn’t even
shuttles’ heat shields since know he was in trouble until a feel you will be un-
the C olumbia accident lifeguard swam toward him and able to reach shore,
killed seven astronauts in his daughter. The pair were draw attention to
2003. floating on a boogie board. yourself: face the
Also Saturday, U.S. astro- shore, wave your
naut Sunita ‘‘Suni’’ Wil- SEE RESCUE, PAGE 14A
liams set a record for the arms, and yell for
longest single spaceflight seth.robbins@news-jrnl.com help.
by any woman. Williams,
who has lived at the space
TT HIESTAND

station since December,

surpassed the record of 188
days set by astronaut Shan-
non Lucid at the Mir space
Tattoo removal
clears ‘canvas’
News-Journal photo illustration/SCO

station in 1996.
SEE SHUTTLE, PAGE 14A

By NATASHA SINGER
NEW YORK TIMES

FAST BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Kelly

Brannigan was suffering
from a case of tattoo re-
LANE morse.
Just a year ago, Branni-
gan, 24, who holds up Case
Keeping you on track No. 24 as one of the models
for today, tomorrow on the NBC game show
‘‘Deal or No Deal,’’ had been

‘‘
full of hope when she and
By SETH ROBBINS I just filled the job . . . of marijuana her fiance had each other’s
STAFF WRITER
grower for this certain area. Somebody names tattooed across their
inner wrists.

A
fter six years in prison, Mitchell Shane stepped up and took my job when I left. We But now, when she looks
Estep still remembers the formula: at the letters — P-A-T-R-I-C-
28 grams per plant. don’t know who it was, but somebody is out K — she is reminded of the
127 plants per room. there. There are many more of me now.’’ failed relationship.
8 pounds of pot. For help, she turned to
$30,000. MITCHELL SHANE ESTEP New York Times
a college dropout from West Virginia and former Dr. Tattoff, a chain of tattoo
Using this equation, he filled dozens of subur- marijuana mogul in DeBary before being sentenced removal stores where Dage Decuir holds a pic-
ban homes — including 14 in Volusia County — nurses use lasers in a series ture of one of the tattoos
Coming Monday: with bedroom jungles of premium marijuana.
to 10 years in prison
of treatments to break she is having removed
True or false The neighbors never noticed, and his product al-
ways sold out. Palm Coast
down tattoo pigments. Dr.
Tattoff is part of a growing because she said they
How well do you know One local Estep, a college dropout from firefighters industry catering to people would distract from her
today’s American family? a small West Virginia town, uncovered who may not have thought strapless wedding gown.
ACCENT grower’s tale was a marijuana mogul at 25.
about 200 about the implications of
‘‘I was never a big pothead,’’ ‘‘forever’’ the first time
shows how he said. ‘‘I can have 100 pounds marijuana
plants after
around.
Most of Dr. Tattoff’s cli-
ents are women ages 25 to
Kidnapped quickly
of marijuana in front of me and
I don’t care about smoking it. I responding
Removing tattoos is cost-
ly, uncomfortable and time- 35, said James Morel, the
soldiers will take the 100 pounds and sell to a house consuming, but the affinity chief executive of the com-
Troops find ID cards of
a small it, though.’’
He lived with two girlfriends fire last for body art is so strong that pany, which has given
more than 13,000 tattoo las-
some people said they do it
missing men at al-Qaida
safe house, but no other
operation can — a blonde and a brunette. To
go with them, a Porsche and a
week. Busts
like this are
to clear space to tattoo all er treatments since opening
here in 2004.
over again.
clues.
WAR IN IRAQ, PAGE 18A
become a Range Rover sat in his DeBary
garage. A regular on the week-
indicative of Many dermatologists spe-
cialize in laser tattoo re-
‘‘Maybe women are get-
the growing ting more tattoos than they
mini-empire. end red-eye to Las Vegas, he
spent tens of thousands of dol- problem moval, and some laser hair-
removal centers are adding
used to,’’ Morel said, ‘‘or
rooting itself maybe they just have a
lars at casinos and strip clubs.
Beachy books Money didn’t matter. There was always anoth- News-Journal/JESSICA WEBB SIBLEY in our area.
services. In California,
there are removal centers
higher level of tattoo regret
than men.’’
Yes, there’s more to read er house to rent. With each new house, though, like Dr. Tattoff, Tat2-
this summer besides Estep added another name to the growing list of Plants seized at BeGone and Tattoo MD. SEE TATTOO, PAGE 5A
‘‘Harry Potter.’’ people who knew about his empire. indoor sites in Florida
BOOKS, PAGE 7G His ultimate net gain was a 10-year prison sen- 2001 15,151
tence.

Abby 6G Movies 8G
Pot entrepreneurs like Estep have sprung up
all across Volusia and Flagler counties. During
2002 19,506
Father’s Day
Books 7G Real Estate 1F April and May, narcotics agents busted eight sub- 2003 21,442 We celebrate dads with
Business 1E Sports 1D urban homes in Deltona, DeLand, New Smyrna stories dedicated to them:
Class. 4E, 6F Travel 1G Beach and Palm Coast. Last week, a house fire 2004 21,879 P Sacrifice their toys and
Deaths 4C Weather 8C uncovered another homegrown crop in Palm time? Gladly, say many
Horoscope 8E Puzzles are Coast. 2005 45,217 soon-to-be-daddies.
Ideas 1B in Comics SEE WEED, PAGE 12A LOCAL, PAGE 1C
2006 36,172 P Often fathers confidently
Vol. LXXXIV seth.robbins@news-jrnl.com SOURCE: National Drug Intelligence Center tell their children museum
No. 168, 10 Sections © NJ 2007 facts that just aren’t true.
News-Journal Corp.
INSIDE: How did marijuana become illegal in the United States, and what role is law It’s come to be known as the
enforcement playing in busting these networks of pot growers? PAGES 12A-13A know-it-all dad phenomenon
by docents.
PEOPLE, PAGE 2A

Magenta Cyan Yellow Black

7NJ1202A0617 7NJ1202A0617 ZALLCALL 05 23:30:23 06/16/07

ï
12A Sunday, June 17, 2007 R GROWING LIKE WEED: CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A The Daytona Beach News-Journal

Mid-grade marijuana grown outdoors sells for $700 to $750 a pound, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Pot grown indoors sells for $2,500 to $6,000 a pound.

Numbers don’t lie. Done right,

homegrown pot proves lucrative
WEED
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
‘‘We don’t even know at this
point how many houses there
are, and if we are hitting all of
them,’’ said Al Ducharme, co-di-
rector of the federal govern-
ment’s High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area program for
Central Florida.
Before 2001, most marijuana
was grown outdoors or smug-
gled from Mexico and the Carib-
bean. Thanks in part to stricter
border control since the Sept. 11
attacks and better detection by
authorities, marijuana growing
has been brought inside by
high-tech horticulturists. They
use high heat, fertilized water,
track lighting and plant genet-
ics to propagate marijuana with
dizzying levels of THC, the in-
gredient that makes users high.
The indoor crops can be worth
millions of dollars. In Florida,
only vegetables and oranges
generate more money each year
than pot’s invisible harvest, ac-
cording to a study done by Jon
Gettman, a professor at Shep-
herd University in West Virgin-
ia.
Nationwide, from 2001 to 2006,
seizures of indoor plants in-
creased 71 percent, federal
agents reported.
For investigators, finding in-
door nurseries gets harder as
home growers build extra inte-
rior walls to hide the smell —
like a sweet blast of freshly cut
grass — and to conceal the
plants from view.
So, how can you tell if there’s
a pot farm on your block?
‘‘Get to know your neigh-
bors,’’ advised the head of the
Volusia Narcotics Task Force.
SEEDING A CAREER
Less than a month out of pris-
on, Estep lounged in a leather
recliner at a Tampa Honda deal-
ership where a friend gave him
a job selling candy-colored
motorcycles. His clothes hung
loosely around his hips and
shoulders — he ate only vege-
tables and nuts in prison.
Estep fiddled with his new
Blackberry, answering calls
from friends he’d lost touch
with. ‘‘You haven’t seen me for a
while,’’ he laughed into the
phone. ‘‘You’ll forgive me for
that, won’t you?’’
He is 34 years old with short
sandy hair, a square face and
mischievous eyes. He winked at
his female co-workers. With an-
other, he alternated Spanish in
an unhurried southern drawl.
If ‘‘marijuana grower’’ were
an option on a career test, Es-
tep’s laid-back and punctilious
personality would fit the bill.
Before he grew it, however,
Estep ran pot via courier from
Guadalajara, Mexico, hiding it
in furniture and sending it
across the Texas border. ‘‘I said
to myself, ‘this is the last time
that anybody dictates or bosses
me.’ ’’
High-intensity lights are key pieces of equipment for home-grown marijuana operations. These grow lights expel significant
amounts of heat, but drug officials can’t use heat-seeking equipment or information from power companies to find grow
houses. This crop of marijuana was found accidentally last week when grow lights sparked a house fire in Palm Coast.
monthly electrical bill for each
house and determined how
much electricity he could use
without drawing attention. He
never stole electricity, a com-
mon red flag for authorities. A
system of pumps and hoses from
nearby showerheads watered
the plants.
‘‘In a matter of hours,’’ he
said, ‘‘I can have the whole
house set up. It takes me longer
to buy the stuff at Home Depot.’’
All that was left to do was
spray the leaves weekly and
check the pH levels of the water
— marijuana grows best within
a certain range.
‘‘I can take care of marijuana
easier than I can take care of a
pool,’’ he said. ‘‘My pool always
kept turning green.’’
POT OF GOLD
The pot Estep smuggled in ar-
moires from Mexico bore little
resemblance to what he grew in
Deltona. High-tech tricks of in-
door growers have increased
pot’s active ingredient and sent
prices soaring.
Hydroponics lets the plants
soak up nutrients better and
bud faster, said Jorge Cer-
vantes, author of several books
on marijuana cultivation and a
column in High Times where he
gives tips to frustrated growers.
Growers tinker with plant ge-
netics, crossing different breeds
and importing seeds with high
States with highest number of
pot plants produced indoors
State Total plants Total production
(pounds)
1. California 4.2 million 930,788
2. Washington 1.2 million 273,262
3. Florida 1.1 million 262,864
4. Oregon 595,925 131,377
5. Texas 524,729 115,681
Total for 11.7 million
United States
SOURCE: Study by Jon B. Gettman, marijuana policy researcher
dried pot, he would bag nearly 8
pounds of marijuana worth
about $30,000. Two rooms meant
he earned $60,000 every two
months. Stagger the time when
the plants were placed in each
room, and there was no end to
Estep’s harvest.
Still, he remembered the mo-
ment, back in 1997, when he be-
came careless. It all came down
to numbers, just like the mari-
juana.
Estep, a gym rat and body-
builder, recruited a workout
buddy as a partner. As they set
up a grow house in Apopka, his
Est. value
$1.4 billion
$438 million
$422 million
$210 million
$185 million
2.5 million $4.1 billion
partner rattled off the names of
friends and family members
who now had plants in their
homes. Estep quickly added up
the list.
‘‘We got more than six peo-
ple,’’ Estep said. ‘‘This thing
qualifies as a conspiracy now.’’
‘‘What do you mean?’’ his
partner asked.
Estep had studied case law be-
fore starting his venture, and he
knew if caught and convicted, a
judge could tack another five
years to his sentence as the lead-
er of a marijuana growing con-
spiracy.
News-Journal/JESSICA WEBB SIBLEY
‘‘It was a snowball, and it just
kept collecting stuff,’’ he said of
his business.
‘‘The ball had to come down
the hill. It was only a matter of
time before it was going to hit a
wall and bust open.’’
AN EMPIRE WILTS
In just a few years, Estep’s em-
pire at its peak included homes
in Apopka, Longwood, Deltona,
Lake Mary, Heathrow, Orange
City, DeLeon Springs and Or-
lando. He had five trailers in his
hometown of Matewan, W.Va.
‘‘I had houses I didn’t even
know I owned,’’ he said, refer-
ring to his rented grow houses.
Homes were juggled when Es-
tep sensed police might be
watching him. He dismantled
equipment and hauled every-
thing to new houses. He
switched the names on the rent
and the utility bills. He put his
DeBary house, where he lived,
up for sale.
Two undercover agents, he
says, posed as a married couple
looking to buy the house. He
thought to ask them for identifi-
cation, but when he peered out
an upstairs window, he saw the
woman playfully skipping cir-
cles around her faux husband.
Estep relaxed, let his guard
down.
On Oct. 13, 1999, police offi-
cers, DEA agents, sheriff’s dep-
uties and SWAT members
entered 23 of Estep’s homes.
They seized 19,000 plants,
though Estep estimated he had
close to twice that.
Had he been able to harvest all
the marijuana growing in the
homes that year, the organiza-
tion stood to make $9 million.
Besides the plants, agents
lugged away electronic irriga-
tion devices, lights, timers, tur-
key and steer manure, even
human feces, all used as fertiliz-
ers. Grow guides with titles like
‘‘Caretaking of the Wild Sinsi-
mella’’ and ‘‘Old Homegrown
Quarterly’’ littered the floors.
Agents also found ledgers detail-
ing the times when plants were
rooted, watered, transplanted,
fertilized and harvested. It all
filled four Ryder trucks.
‘‘It’s the best haul I’ve seen in
24 years,’’ one investigator re-
marked at the time of the bust.
The next day Estep, who had
been missing during the raids,
drove east across Interstate 4,
listening to ‘‘The Howard Stern
Show’’ on the radio when Robin
Quivers read the news about his
houses getting raided.
‘‘I’m going to prison,’’ he
thought.
Several months later, Estep
accepted a plea deal with pros-
ecutors. A judge sentenced him
to 120 months in prison.
‘‘You start calculating,’’ he
said ‘‘trying to figure out how
much time is that?’’
A decade, he realized.
More than six years later, Es-
tep knows a new formula. He
can take any three-digit number
and divide it by 12, spewing an-
swers like grade-school multi-
plication tables. It’s a trick, he
says, almost every inmate can
do to break down the time left
they have to serve.
He said he regrets that his
friends went to jail, especially
his partner, who had a wife and
kids. But he does not regret
what he did.
‘‘I just filled the job, the job of
marijuana grower for this cer-
tain area. Somebody stepped up
and took my job when I left. We
don’t know who it was, but
somebody is out there. There
are many more of me now.’’
He still gets phone calls from
past customers, asking what he
is doing.
Absolutely nothing, is his an-
swer. Estep does not want to di-
vide his life by 12 again. But, the
formula stays stuck in his head.
‘‘It’s like an actor walking
away from being an actor,’’ he
says.
‘‘Hollywood can call any day
and he can go be in 100 movies. I
got 100 houses that I can go rent.
Do I want to make that choice?’’
PDFA-0000626937

Fur storage
He was 22. THC genes. 0000625944

He read High Times, a mag-
azine for marijuana aficiona-
dos, and learned about
hydroponics, a method of grow-
ing plants without soil. He flew
to Amsterdam, where marijua-
na growing is legal. In the coffee-
houses, he studied how the
Dutch bred different strains, all
the while mailing home boxes
with seeds. ‘‘I made a conscious
decision to make this my ca-
reer.’’
Estep planted his first crop in
an Orlando apartment. He
burned it with excessive light.
Soon, however, his plants
were thriving, and he was rent-
ing whole houses in upper-mid-
dle-class neighborhoods.
‘‘It’s like being a bank rob-
ber,’’ he said. ‘‘He’ll tell you he
drove by a bank and knew that
was a good bank. I just know
that’s a good house.’’
He preferred gated commu-
nities, because they weren’t
prone to burglaries, and neigh-
bors wouldn’t nose through his
garbage or peek through his
windows. To give the impres-
‘‘If you take a look at the in-
door marijuana,’’ said Du-
charme, the federal drug expert,
Why Wait?
‘‘the active ingredient is a lot
higher in dosage.’’
It’s similar to the difference
between a poor Chianti and fine
And where will your fur spend the summer?
Beaujolais, said Dan Skye,
senior editor at High Times.
‘‘If you’re going to smoke mar-
ijuana,’’ he said, ‘‘wouldn’t you Most Installation in Two Weeks or Less!
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Estep crossed a Hawaiian
plant with a Dutch plant. The
hybrid thrived in the humid
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LA VISTA DEL SOL

sion people lived in the houses, Like a chicken farmer fattening
Estep put televisions and lights hens for slaughter, he aimed to
on timers. produce the biggest buds in the
Estep tacked tarps around the shortest time.
windows and painted walls to ‘‘The faster I can get this plant
prevent mildew — bud mold is a up,’’ he says, ‘‘the quicker it can Planning your summer retreat includes planning for your fur.
nasty problem. bud, and the faster I can get it to May we suggest a getaway to the fur vault at Macy’s? Controlled
‘‘You won’t buy a tomato with the market.’’
black spots on it,’’ he said. ‘‘You Estep always had a head for for both temperature and humidity, our vaults will protect all
won’t buy marijuana with mold numbers, and it came down to a your furs from Florida’s summer heat. We also clean, repair and
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ï

Magenta Cyan Yellow Black

7NJ1302A0617 7NJ1302A0617 ZALLCALL
The Daytona Beach News-Journal
A Flagler County sheriff’s deputy boards a rented truck used to carry all the growing equipment during a grow house raid at a Palm Coast residence in April. The house was part of an
operation including three other homes in Palm Coast and other homes in Duval County, St. Augustine and Jacksonville. A total of 91 plants were removed from the house in Palm Coast.
Home pot growers
tough for drug
officials to spot
By SETH ROBBINS
STAFF WRITER
DAYTONA BEACH — The garage
held a monster marijuana plant,
more than 9 feet tall, and to
investigators it looked like some-
thing out of a science-fiction
movie.
Silver-hooded lights hung
from the ceiling. Controlled by
timers, the lights darted around
the room on a series of tracks.
‘‘It’s like the room was alive,’’
said the head of Volusia Coun-
ty’s Westside Narcotics Task
Force, who, guarding his identi-
ty, goes by Sgt. Mike H.
During April and May, narcot-
ics agents raided four mom and
pop pot farms in Volusia County
where people cultivated mari-
juana in a basement, a closet, a
garage, even a barn. Meanwhile,
agents smashed a Palm Coast-
based grow ring, consisting of
four suburban homes that sup-
plied high-priced, high-quality
marijuana to the Jacksonville
market. The sweep marked an
ominous trend.
‘‘This was an organized crimi-
nal element,’’ said Cpl. Steve
Brandt, head of the Flagler
County sheriff’s Narcotics En-
forcement Team. ‘‘Selling mari-
juana was their job. That’s what
they did.’’
Once the marijuana is fully grown, the growers dry the leaves before distributing it. Bricks of marijuana such as these could
net the grower thousands of dollars. These bricks of pot were seized in a raid in August 2005 in Bunnell.
15 22:21:46 06/16/07
By the Numbers
Volusia
Year Grow sites Plants seized Grow sites Plants seized
2005 0 0
2006 11 500
2007 6 601
SOURCE: Florida Department of Law Enforcement, area Sheriff’s Departments
All the investigators agreed:
The grow houses looked like any
other suburban home, with man-
icured gardens and lawns, cars
parked in the driveways.
‘‘You could have driven down
the street,’’ Brandt said, ‘‘and
have no idea that it was a mari-
juana house.’’
Even investigators have trou-
ble spotting them. They cannot
fly over neighborhoods, turn on
a heat-seeking camera and pick
out homes that give off an in-
frared glow radiating from grow
lights. The Supreme Court de-
cided in 2001 such searching was
illegal, calling it an invasion of
privacy. Grow lights also draw
more electricity. But investiga-
tors cannot simply call power
companies looking for homes us-
ing an inordinate amount of
juice.
B
GROWING LIKE WEED: CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
Flagler
3 146
1 4
6 400
Sometimes it comes down to
the simplest tactic: ‘‘We smelled
it once,’’ said Sgt. Mike H.
And just last week, excessive
heat from grow lights sparked a
fire behind a wall in the garage
of a Palm Coast home. When fire-
fighters kicked down the wall
they discovered 200 marijuana
plants.
Still, investigators — about 32
in Volusia County — do have
some high-tech tactics to root out
grow houses, but they choose not
to reveal them because growers
might read their morning paper.
Growing marijuana has be-
come a growth industry because
Web sites share reams of infor-
mation on how to cultivate it,
and books give tips on getting a
robust crop.
‘‘When I started, everybody
Magenta
tried to treat it like this big se-
cret,’’ said Jorge Cervantes, a pot
expert who has written ‘‘Mari-
juana Grower’s Bible.’’
‘‘The information level is
much better than it was,’’ he
said, ‘‘but you still have to get
your hands dirty.’’
Growers’ soiled hands pro-
duced large pot profits here. The
four Vo lusia Co unty grow
houses added together were
worth about $1.5 million.
‘‘The people buying this stuff
are willing to pay more for the
high to last longer,’’ said Sgt.
Tim H., head of Volusia’s
Eastside Narcotics Task Force.
‘‘It is big business.’’
The Flagler grow ring earned
more than $1 million in a year
selling potent sinsemilla to drug
traffickers.
‘‘The organization we had
here was the top of the chain,’’
Brandt said. ‘‘They were not us-
ing it for personal uses, and they
were not dealing directly to us-
ers.’’
But it’s just a few house plants,
right?
‘‘These guys make tons of
money,’’ said Al Ducharme, a
federal investigator. ‘‘Some-
times more than if they were
selling cocaine.’’
seth.robbins@news-jrnl.com
News-Journal file/NIGEL COOK
Cyan
Marijuana Law’s U.S. History
Since the earliest settlers, marijuana has long been a cash
crop in the United States. This is a brief history of the infa-
mous weed.
1619: The first American law
pertaining to marijuana,
passed by the Virginia As-
sembly, required every farm-
er to grow it. Fibers from
hemp, which is much less po-
tent than the smokable kind,
were used to make ship sails
and rope.
1900-1930: Sailors and West
Indian immigrants smoked
marijuana in port cities along
the Gulf of Mexico. In New Or-
leans, newspaper articles as-
sociated the drug with jazz
musicians, prostitutes and
the underworld. Police offi-
cers in Texas said marijuana
‘‘aroused a lust for blood’’
and gave its users ‘‘super hu-
man strength.’’
1931: Twenty-nine states had
outlawed marijuana, general-
ly with little fanfare or debate.
1936, ‘‘REEFER MADNESS’’:
This propaganda film, origi-
nally financed by a church
group and made under the
title ‘‘Tell Your Children,’’ is
about what happens when
teens try marijuana: a hit-
and-run accident, manslaugh-
ter, suicide, rape and even a
descent into madness. Soon
after the film was shot, how-
ever, exploitation filmmaker,
Dwain Esper, purchased the
film, cut in several salacious
shots and repackaged it un-
der its now famous title.
1937, FEDERAL GROWING
BAN: The Marihuana Tax Act
passed, prohibiting Cannabis
sativa — the genus for the
species of plant designated
by Carl Lin-
naeus in 1753 —
from being
grown. The legis-
lation did not crimi-
nalize the use or
possession of pot,
but required any-
one looking to grow
marijuana to seek a tax
stamp from the government.
Failing to pay the tax resulted
in fines up to $2,000 and five
years in prison. The bill sailed
Yellow Black
Sunday, June 17, 2007 13A
News-Journal file/DAVID MASSEY
through Congress, and only
three lines were written on its
passage in the New York
Times.
BIRDSEED BROUHAHA: The
one group to balk at the mari-
juana-growing ban was bird-
seed makers. They used
hemp seeds in their bird feed,
and to this day, because of an
exemption, they are allowed
to use sterilized seeds.
BEFORE 2000: Drug agents
became better at spotting
hidden crops from helicopt-
ers and planes. They combed
through national forests and
wetlands, known to be a fer-
tile ground for illegal marijua-
na. Wildfires scorched
growers’ lands and sent their
crops up in smoke. Poachers
were such a problem that
mild-mannered farmers
placed punji boards, planks
with upward facing spikes,
around their fields. Criminal
organizations installed armed
guards.
POST-2001, TOUGH TO
SMUGGLE: Smugglers found
their jobs more difficult after
Sept. 11 when the govern-
ment beefed up its border pa-
trol. Seizures mounted to
more than 1 million ki-
lograms. So, growers packed
up their plants and hauled
them inside because it was a
good way to avoid detection,
and produce, in controlled
conditions, a more profitable
product.
2005: According to a White
House survey, there were
more than 25 million marijua-
na users in the United States.
— Compiled by Seth Robbins
with News Researcher
Karen Duffy contributing
ï