INDIANA ARCHITECT: My concept of the penalties, the whole time I was
involved with growing marijuana, was, you know, "Gosh, I could get caught
and spend a year in prison." I mean, we were particularly naive about what
the final result could be. [Busted - Federal sentence: 20 years]
CRAIG RALSTIN, Indiana State Police: There are people that are growing it
for money, but they're criminals just like any other criminal.
WILL FOSTER: I lived a pretty decent life. I worked every day. I paid my
taxes. You know, I didn't go out and hurt nobody. I didn't rob nobody. I
didn't know that cultivation carried 2 to life, no. [Busted - State
sentence: 93 years]
ANDREA STRONG: They said, "Well he can't have bond. He's facing a life
sentence." And my mom says, "Well who did he kill?" You know, "Did he rape
somebody? Did he molest some child? What did he do?" He was accused of
being the middleman in a marijuana conspiracy. He connected the buyer and
the grower. [Busted - Life sentence, Leavenworth]
STEVE WHITE: I think it's a dangerous drug. I don't think it does any good,
period.
1st DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: Chimney on this house here. You can see a
little bit of heat coming out of it, a little animal standing there in the
back yard.
NARRATOR: In the night sky over Indianapolis, the hunt is on: drug
enforcement agents scanning a neighborhood for evidence of marijuana.
2nd DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: Hello!
1st DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: That don't look quite right. Yeah, a patio,
patio door, window. Window's been covered over. Looks a little odd.
NARRATOR: The infrared camera could reveal a marijuana-growing operation
inside any one of these houses. Infrared detects heat, which can indicate a
"grow room" using a lot of lights.
2nd DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: The foundation certainly is warm.
1st DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: That's what I was going to say. That
foundation's hotter than fire.
2nd DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: Yeah.
1st DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: That's the only thing I see real unusual.
NARRATOR: This kind of marijuana search is happening all over America. The
war on marijuana has become a battle fought not only overseas, but on home
turf.
3rd DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: We've got a search warrant. The targets are two
white males-
STEVE WHITE: This is a law-and-order part of the country. Law enforcement's
held in probably higher esteem here than any place I've ever been.
NARRATOR: For many years, Steve White ran Indiana's war on marijuana as an
agent with the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration. The DEA is spending
over $13 million a year to fund state cannabis eradication programs.
STEVE WHITE: We were one of the first 20 states to do it, and there hadn't
been an organized effort, I don't think, against marijuana in the U.S.
since the late 1930s.
NARRATOR: White recently retired from active duty with the DEA and now
teaches undercover police techniques. He went along with us on a typical
arrest to show us the world of marijuana law enforcement.
1st DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: Search warrant! Please open the door.
2nd DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: I'll get this side door here.
1st DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: Police! Search warrant!
2nd DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: You have the right to remain silent. Anything
you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an
attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be [unintelligible]
for you. You understand you're under arrest?
SUSPECT: Yes, sir.
NARRATOR: For this arrest in Bloomington, Indiana, an informant had tipped
agents off to an indoor marijuana grow room. It was allegedly run by a
business school student and his roommate in the back of their house.
STEVE WHITE: This is their growing room, and the first thing that you can
see on these plants is that they've been topped, or the flowering tops, in
other words, have been pruned off the colis of the plant. This is fairly
typical. They've got three lights here, the smaller plants over there,
larger ones coming up here.
I think a lot of people that grow actually grow so that they don't have to
go out and buy dope. But the down side and reverse side of that is, some
time along the line, they say, "Gee, I've spent this much on equipment and
this much on fertilizer. Why don't I grow a little more and sell it and pay
for that?" And then that's when they come into my clutches.
[to suspect] Would you hazard a guess as to what a pound of that stuff
would be worth on the market?
SUSPECT: I wouldn't know.
STEVE WHITE: If I said $2,000 to $5,000, could that be in the range?
SUSPECT: That would be about right, I guess- guessing.
NARRATOR: This suspect was one of about 3,000 people arrested for marijuana
offenses in Indiana last year. The state's cannabis eradication program now
makes more marijuana arrests than any state in the nation. During the
summer and early fall, when the corn is high, the drug enforcement team
heads out to make its own harvest.
DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: I think we may have some [unintelligible] marijuana
plants back in the center of this cornfield.
NARRATOR: Any one of these corn rows may hide thousands of dollars worth of
marijuana.
CRAIG RALSTIN, Indiana State Police: I've been spotting marijuana as a
pilot with the state police for about 19 years. I think it's one of the
most important jobs that we could be doing because I know what the effect
of the marijuana is on our young people in our society.
NARRATOR: An estimated 10 to 30 million Americans use marijuana, and as
much half of all the marijuana used in America is now home grown.
CRAIG RALSTIN: We'll use fixed-wings and helicopters and trained spotters,
and we'll find where people are either preparing their grows or suspicious
areas that look like somebody's cut an area out of a field. And once we
find the plant from the air, we'll direct our ground guys, and they'll go
back in and either cut it or pull the plants out.
That's a pretty nice plant.
ARMY OFFICER: Yeah.
CRAIG RALSTIN: You can see the growers started this one indoors some place
in a cup, and brought them and transplanted them back out here. That's kind
of the thing that we run into. We're always trying to keep up with the
growers and try to get them before they get them out.
DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: Are these your fields here?
MAN: Right. Yes.
DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: Okay, we got some marijuana out of this one and
this one, both.
ARMY OFFICER: He contacted me.
DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: Okay. Okay, good enough.
ARMY OFFICER: He's the one that told me.
WOMAN: You know, it really makes me mad that people can come into your
field and do that, you know, and they don't have to do any work.
MAN: And they make more money, you know, than I will-
WOMAN: They pull out your corn plants.
MAN: -for the whole crop, you know? But the cows ate it all last time,
except one plant.
MIKE GAYER, Indiana State Police: Unfortunately, every day that we fly, we
find cultivated marijuana. There is not a day that goes by that we go out
in this aircraft that we do not find cultivated marijuana plants. There's
that much in the state of Indiana.
RALPH WEISHEIT: "The marijuana basket of America" would probably be a good
description of the central part of the U.S. Marijuana is grown in every
state of the U.S., so it is a national phenomenon, but it seems
particularly prevalent in the Midwest.
NARRATOR: Ralph Weisheit, a professor of criminal justice at Illinois State
University, has done extensive research on the domestic marijuana industry.
RALPH WEISHEIT: We have to make guesses about how much marijuana is growing
because it is an illegal crop, but it is easily the biggest cash crop. Some
people have said it goes into the billions. The value is far higher,
probably double the value of corn. You also have in the Midwest a fair
amount of marijuana that's already growing wild that was planted during the
Second World War.
NARRATOR: The federal government actually gave farmers the seeds because
hemp from the marijuana plant was needed to make rope after supplies from
Asia were cut off.
MIKE GAYER, Indiana State Police: It was good in the '40s. It's bad in the
'90s.
DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENT: The government paid them to grow it, and now the
government is paying us to take it away.
RALPH WEISHEIT: Certainly, of all the illegal drugs, there's been no drug
about which the government has had more mixed feelings. Marijuana has had a
somewhat different role than other drugs. It has had a mystical sort of
atmosphere about it for some and it's been the embodiment of evil for others.
1st WOMAN: It doesn't do anything good for you.
1st MAN: It's very bad for you.
2nd MAN: It's a mild relaxant.
3rd MAN: This is a nice drug. It doesn't have a hangover. You don't become
aggressive and belligerent.
4th MAN: It is dangerous.
2nd WOMAN: Changes your mind.
5th MAN: It affects short-term memory.
3rd WOMAN: Paranoia.
6th MAN: Killing brain cells.
4th WOMAN: There's a reason why it's illegal.
7th MAN: I'm not sure I understand how you make a plant illegal.
RALPH WEISHEIT: I find that some law enforcement officials believe it is a
drug, and a drug is a drug, and so harsh penalties should go with that, if
we have harsh penalties for other drugs. I have found others who see
marijuana as completely different from cocaine or heroin, and really
believe that we've gone far too far along in our handling of the drug
through the criminal process.
NARRATOR: More Americans use marijuana than all other illegal drugs
combined and are spending an estimated $7 billion a year to buy it on the
black market. It's believed that more than two million Americans grow
marijuana themselves, either for personal use or to sell it.
NARRATOR: ["Sea of Green" video] Hello, and welcome to the Sea of Green.
Follow the simple instructions and soon you will begin your harvest.
NARRATOR: Lessons on how to set up a grow room are readily available on
videotape and in magazines. "High Times," founded in 1974, now has a
circulation of a quarter million readers. Even the Internet has marijuana
Web sites with discussion about softening the laws and the experience of
other countries with decriminalization.
The mass media treats marijuana with a mixture of alarm and laughter.
1st ACTOR: ["Home Improvement"] It's not oregano.
2nd ACTOR: Tarragon?
1st ACTOR: This is marijuana.
2nd ACTOR: Jill cooks with marijuana?
NARRATOR: Popular culture sends a mixed message, and for many marijuana
growers, the temptation to defy the law seems to outweigh the risk of
arrest. Doug Keenan, who lives in a quiet middle-class neighborhood of
Indianapolis, was even willing to go public and show us his grow room, dug
deep underground so the infrared cameras won't detect it.
DOUG KEENAN: The humming that you hear is the ballast, which is driving the
light here. Most all of this equipment can be bought at any hardware store.
Once you've decided that you're going to be consuming it pretty regularly,
then you come up with, "Well, I'm going to need a steady supply." Simple
reason is you've got something that's priced more than gold. If you're
going to smoke a lot of it, you can't afford to buy it out on the black
market.
NARRATOR: Over the last two decades, the potency of marijuana on the market
has increased and the price has skyrocketed. In the early 1980s, an ounce
of commercial grade sold for about $40. Today an ounce costs up to $400- in
fact, a price higher than gold, which now sells for around $300 dollars an
ounce.
DOUG KEENAN: I will be growing as long as I am free to do so- "free" being
that nobody's put a ball and chain around my ankle. You have to realize
that your liberty is at risk every minute of every day.
NARRATOR: So why go public and take the chance of arrest?
DOUG KEENAN: It's a delicate trade-off, but in my mind- you know, a lot of
people have asked me why be an activist at all. The alternative is, if I
don't, you're going to have a police state in another 30 years. And this is
basically a right of consumption. I have the right to grow and consume
anything that God gives me the seed and the ground to grow it in.
NARRATOR: So far, Keenan's grow room has escaped detection by Indiana's
drug enforcement team. But often, growers who think they're operating free
and clear for years are actually the targets of long investigations that do
end in arrest.
INDIANA ARCHITECT: I got a 20-year prison sentence and I was just totally
devastated. I think we were all particularly naive about what the final
result could be.
NARRATOR: This Indiana architect and his brother, an attorney, used this
farm to grow large amounts of marijuana, which they sold commercially. They
were arrested by Steve White after a five-year investigation.
STEVE WHITE: The farmer that owned this property had run into some
financial difficulties. And he was a client of the attorney, and when the
attorney's brother called him and wanted to expand the operation, this came
to mind.
NARRATOR: The architect doesn't want his identity revealed.
INDIANA ARCHITECT: The farmer didn't hesitate at all. He had very few
alternatives to be able to make the money that was going to be needed to
save his farm. And this was in the early '80s, when all the farms in
America were really in a big financial crisis. We grew there for a couple
of years, and the first year we grew 50 pounds, and at that time it was
worth about $100,000.
STEVE WHITE: They were the all-American boys. They loved their children.
They loved their parents. So, you know, how do I characterize them? Smart.
Nice. They broke the law. And they knew better. The people of Indiana will
not tolerate this type of behavior. Why should we say it's okay for a guy
to make a million dollars raising marijuana? Marijuana's the threshold
drug. It's the drug that most children, kids start out with.
NARRATOR: In a community like Warsaw, Indiana, marijuana is not only
growing in the cornfields, it's being traded in the halls of the high school.
1st GIRL: You can see when people's doing it at school, the smell of it at
school.
INTERVIEWER: You can smell it at school?
1st GIRL: Oh, yeah. Some people do it in the bathroom.
1st BOY: The bathroom's bad.
1st GIRL: We just got caught, like, two weeks ago. There was, like, five
girls that got caught doing it.
2nd GIRL: That was, like, the second week of school.
3rd GIRL: You can't hide it. I mean, you see somebody walking up and down
the street, all you have to do is ask them and they can give it to you.
They'll sell it right there to you, on the spot.
INTERVIEWER: All of you know somebody you could go probably call right now?
STUDENTS: Yeah. Yeah.
2nd BOY: The guys- well, if you don't do it, they call you wimps and all
kinds of things, and just try to put you down and get you to do it and
finally snap.
PAUL CROUSORE, Principal, Warsaw High School: We had indicators that we're
having problem with drugs in the building. We had a drug sweep back a few
years ago, where we actually had the police come in and dogs and we
searched, and we arrested 17 students.
NARRATOR: The Warsaw high school has begun testing its athletes for drugs.
A student who tests positive for marijuana is suspended from competition
for a year.
DAVE FULKERSON, Athletic Director, Warsaw High School: The kids have to
realize there are rules that they must go by. And that's- you know, our
society is made up of rules. The one thing that the general public fails to
realize, that it's in violation of the law. It's against the state law. You
can be arrested. You can be sent to jail.
2nd BOY: If they get caught, they go on probation. Even when they're on
probation- I had a friend and- they break probation.
1st GIRL: Sometimes when people get caught, they finally realize that
they're doing something wrong and they quit. But then, on the other hand,
there's some people that are just, like, "Oh, that's okay. I'll just go out
and- once I get free I'll go out and do it again."
NARRATOR: Many drug counselors consider marijuana to be a gateway drug that
could lead to the use of harder drugs.
BRET RICHARDSON: [to class] Name one of the gateway drugs. Joe?
1st PUPIL: Marijuana.
BRET RICHARDSON: Marijuana. Give me another one. Caitlin?
2nd PUPIL: Beer, wine.
NARRATOR: Lee Ann Richardson and her husband, Bret, of the Warsaw, Indiana
Police Department, work for the D.A.R.E. program - Drug Abuse Resistance
Education. D.A.R.E. uses local police officers to teach drug education in
the schools.
3rd PUPIL: Hi, Caitlin. Would you like to have some marijuana with me?
2nd PUPIL: No.
3rd PUPIL: How come?
2nd PUPIL: It'll make me sick. Oh, I've got to go work on that homework.
3rd PUPIL: Fine.
BRET RICHARDSON: Cut. Well done! But what if they say, "Why not?" What if
they start to tease you? Think about three reasons why you don't want to
use drugs.
1st BOY: I really didn't know much about marijuana. I didn't know what
harmful effects it can do on your life and stuff like that. I mean, it's
really nice to know now. And I made the decision not to do marijuana or any
drug.
2nd BOY: It just- like, it can hurt you, and it kills you and stuff if you
do too much of it.
GIRL: Well before I- before Officer Richardson came in this year, I was,
like, "What's so wrong about it? It just grows." But now I know what the
harmful effects are and I know that I will never, ever do it.
NARRATOR: The actual effects of marijuana on people who use it have been
the subject of scientific study, but the results have not served to settle
the debate about its dangers.
Dr. CHARLES SCHUSTER: Marijuana has very profound affects, particularly
when it's smoked, and the most important thing about it is that it's
immediate.
NARRATOR: Dr. Charles Schuster, a psychopharmacologist at the Wayne State
University School of Medicine, also headed the National Institute of Drug
Abuse during the drug crackdown in the 1980s. He's been researching
marijuana for more than 30 years.
Dr. CHARLES SCHUSTER: It's a powerful drug and it has powerful effects on
mood, powerful effects on your ability to perform skilled activities,
powerful effects on cognition and powerful effects on your heart- huge
increases in heart rate, for example, when you smoke it. It's a powerful
drug and we can't dismiss that.
There are many differences between heroin, cocaine, and marijuana, on the
other hand. Number one, marijuana, unlike heroin and cocaine, has never
been associated with acute overdosage death. To the best of my knowledge,
no one has died because they've smoked too much marijuana. Clearly, people
die from overdoses of cocaine and of heroin.
Number two, I think that although marijuana can produce dependence and
addiction, the likelihood of that occurring in people is much less than
with drugs such as cocaine and heroin.
When we think about social policies and a lot of other things, we have to
realize that the public health dangers associated with illicit drugs
depends upon the illicit drug we're talking about. With marijuana, I think
that we're talking about a lesser evil than we are when we're talking about
cocaine and heroin, but that doesn't mean that it isn't an evil.
[www.pbs.org: More on marijuana in the body]
Dr. DAVID MUSTO: Marijuana's an excellent example of how we have shifted
our views on a substance. You have these enormous shifts and, really,
research takes place against these larger attitudes, and it's also
interpreted in these larger attitudes.
NARRATOR: Dr. David Musto, of Yale University, has devoted years of study
to the history of America's drug policies and attitudes toward marijuana in
particular.
Dr. DAVID MUSTO: Marijuana started to come into the United States in the
1920s, along with Mexican immigrants. Then, in the 1930s, when the Great
Depression hit, these people became a feared surplus in our country, and
they were thought to take marijuana, go into town on the weekend and create
mayhem. Now, that's very close to the general attitude toward marijuana in
the 1930s. It was thought to be a cause of crime and a cause of senseless
violence.
The head of the narcotics bureau from 1930 to 1962, Harry J. Anslinger,
decided he had to fight marijuana really in the media. He tried to describe
marijuana in so repulsive and terrible terms that people wouldn't even be
tempted to try it. In the 1960s, the use of marijuana was symbolic of the
counterculture, of the anti-Vietnam war battles. It became something that,
if you used, you used it almost ritually, as joining a large group of
people who had similar points of view and similar attitudes, let's say, to
authority and to the government and so on.
NARRATOR: In the early 1970s, the Shafer Commission was ordered by Congress
to consider marijuana and the drug abuse laws.
Dr. DAVID MUSTO: They came out with the conclusion that marijuana should be
decriminalized. That is, small amounts for personal use might be fined,
like you might get a ticket. And this was very upsetting to President
Nixon. President Nixon, I think, of all of our Presidents was the one most
viscerally opposed to drugs.
Then in the Carter Administration, I think it was in 1978, all the heads of
the agencies came before Congress and asked for the decriminalization of
marijuana of up to one ounce. And it was quite interesting. There was quite
a backlash to this. You had the parents' movement formed.
PARENT: -that if I became involved and other parents became involved now
maybe this problem would not touch- that the evil fingers of drugs would
not lay their hands on the shoulders of my little boy.
Dr. DAVID MUSTO: And they created quite a reaction and defeated some people
who were running for Congress and had favored decriminalization. So you
move right from the Carter administration into the Reagan administration,
which was very anti-drug and anti-marijuana.
Pres. RONALD REAGAN: The American people want their government to get tough
and to go on the offensive, and that's exactly what we intend, with more
ferocity than ever before.
Dr. DAVID MUSTO: The Republicans and Democrats, seeing this as a
tremendous, dangerous issue, vied with one another as to all the ways that
they were going to help control drugs.
NARRATOR: One of those drugs was cocaine, which was causing widespread
concern. Coke sales were rapidly spreading from the cities to the suburbs,
and the 1986 death of basketball star Len Bias, blamed on crack cocaine,
put even more pressure on lawmakers.
In 1986 President Reagan signed the Anti Drug Abuse Act, which ordered
mandatory minimum sentences with no parole for all illegal drugs. The
federal penalties were set according to the amount of the drug involved,
equating marijuana plants with gram weights of other drugs. For example,
100 plants is considered comparable to 5 grams of crack cocaine. The
mandatory minimum sentence for 100 plants of marijuana is 5 years; for 1000
plants, 10 years.
INDIANA ARCHITECT: I was one of the lucky ones. Because my crime had taken
place in the early '80s meant that I was going to be sentenced under the
old law, what's now called the old law. And the new law, which came into
effect in 1987, has got mandatory minimum sentencing.
NARRATOR: The Indiana architect was released after serving 5 years of his
20-year sentence. Now anyone convicted on the same federal charges would
not be allowed parole. The mandatory minimum sentencing ordered by the new
law also prevents judges from giving a lesser penalty.
ERIC SCHLOSSER: The 1986 Anti Drug Abuse Act was the most significant drug
legislation of this generation, which shifted enormous power within our
legal system away from judges to prosecutors.
NARRATOR: Eric Schlosser wrote about the history and impact of marijuana
law enforcement for a recent series in "The Atlantic Monthly" magazine. He
also consulted for this program.
ERIC SCHLOSSER: And since that law was
passed the federal prison population has tripled. And whereas drug
offenders used to be a small proportion of federal inmates, today about 70
percent of the people in federal prison are drug offenders. There are more
people now in federal prison for marijuana offenses than for violent offenses.
ANDREA STRONG: He had a two-year enhancement, though, I believe, for
manager organizer, but that's it.
NARRATOR: Andrea Strong's brother, Mark Young, was sentenced under the new
law and was given life for brokering the sale of 700 pounds of marijuana.
ANDREA STRONG: They said, "Well, he can't have bond. He's facing a life
sentence." And my mom says, "Well, who did he kill?" You know, "Did he rape
somebody? Did he molest some child? What did he do?"
NARRATOR: Young had no previous record of violence or drug trafficking.
ANDREA STRONG: It changed my entire life. I lost my cleaning business
because we had made the news and we- our story, Mark's story, with my name
and stuff, was in the newspaper, the local paper, and some of the women
whose homes that I cleaned in, they didn't want me in their home anymore.
You know, I didn't have anything to do with drugs in any kind of way. My
brother did.
NARRATOR: About 17 percent of all federal inmates are convicted marijuana
offenders. That's one federal prisoner in six. Because mandatory minimum
sentences do not allow parole, federal prisoners convicted on non-violent
marijuana charges sometimes serve more time than convicted murderers
sentenced under state law.
Scott Walt is serving 24 years for conspiracy to possess with intent to
distribute around 2,000 pounds of marijuana. David Ciglar: 10 years in
federal prison for cultivation of 167 marijuana seedlings.
And take the case of John Casali and Todd Wick, two young men convicted of
growing some 1,600 marijuana plants in northern California. Their sentence,
the 10-year mandatory minimum, was handed down by Judge Thelton Henderson
of the federal district court in San Francisco.
Judge THELTON HENDERSON: I told these young men that I wished I could do
something other than what I did, and I felt awful about it, but that I felt
bound by the law. I think they were rehabilitatable within less than 10
years. I'm opposed to mandatory minimums, in general, because I think
they're unduly harsh. I think that they don't allow the judge the
discretion to deal with the individual problem. There is a formula that
says you've been involved with a certain amount of drugs, for example, ergo
you get the mandatory minimum.
ANDREA STRONG: In the federal sentencing, if you have so many plants that
are involved in your conspiracy - and in this case it was over a thousand
plants - then, like my brother, you receive a life sentence, and that means
life without the possibility of ever being paroled. And they'll bury you in
Leavenworth's back yard, if you can't bring him home to bury him. And
that's what we were told.
NARRATOR: Andrea Strong's brother, Mark Young, appealed his life sentence
on grounds that the prosecution had miscounted the number of plants. He's
now serving a 12-year sentence. Andrea Strong has become a leader in the
national organization Families Against Mandatory Minimums.
ANDREA STRONG: Our goal is to repeal mandatory minimum sentences that are
given to first-time non-violent drug offenders. We believe they should be
punished, but we believe their punishment should fit their crime.
NARRATOR: If Mark Young had been sentenced under Indiana state law, he
would have received a lesser sentence, but state marijuana penalties vary
widely, and in other parts of the country, the state punishment can be even
more severe than the federal. In 15 states, you can get life for a
non-violent marijuana offense.
NARRATOR: In Oklahoma, Will Foster was sentenced to 93 years for marijuana
cultivation and possession in the presence of a child. When Foster was
arrested at his Tulsa home in 1995, police said an informant told them
Foster had methamphetamines.
WILL FOSTER: It was about 2:00 o'clock on the afternoon of December 28th,
and the police come to our house. They didn't knock, they just
battering-rammed our door down.
MEGAN BURKE: In less than a 30-second span of time, you know, from the
minute they hit the door. My life will never be the same.
NARRATOR: Foster's partner, Megan Burke, was in the house with their three
children.
MEGAN BURKE: It happened so quickly. The next thing I know, the door
exploded inward. It knocked me backwards onto my 5-year-old daughter.
NARRATOR: They found no methamphetamines, but they did find Foster's
marijuana grow room down in the basement.
MEGAN BURKE: I was afraid of it, afraid of the ramifications if we got
caught. I knew they would be steep. I had no idea it would be a life
sentence, a death penalty, in essence. In the beginning, I was very angry.
I just wanted to kill him because I thought, you know, "You did this." And
I had to step back from myself because I can't give him all of the blame. I
knew what he was doing, and I could have had a big screaming fit and he
would have stopped. He would have been mad, but he would have stopped. And
I didn't do that. So I guess, in that respect, I share it equally.
NARRATOR: Foster says all the plants were for his personal use, to help
with arthritis, but the number of plants raised suspicions.
BRIAN CRAIN, Assistant D.A., Tulsa, Oklahoma: Other than the fact that we
found over a kilo of marijuana, there were gram scales, which indicate
packaging and distribution. There were baggies. There were other
paraphernalia that indicated distribution. We felt comfortable in bringing
that to trial. The idea that you can grow marijuana, that you can
distribute marijuana, that you can possess marijuana in the presence of a
minor- that is not something that we will accept in Tulsa County.
[www.pbs.org: Study state-by-state laws]
NARRATOR: Will Foster is serving his time in a Texas prison because there's
no room in Oklahoma's overcrowded cells. Foster is appealing on grounds
that the search warrant was invalid, and since he was charged under state
rather than federal law, he does have the chance of parole. The state had
offered Foster a plea bargain, but he refused.
WILL FOSTER: The reason that I went to jury trial was that this was the
only way I could guarantee that my wife would not go to prison. She was
their only witness. They made her testify against me.
MEGAN BURKE: I didn't want to have to do that. I really didn't. But it was
that or I was going to go to prison, and I didn't know who would get these
kids. And he said "You have to. You don't have a choice." So I testified
for the state, and I testified for the defense, and it was the longest four
days I've ever had. And I knew that he'd get something. I mean, it's
Oklahoma. But I didn't expect 93 years.
NARRATOR: The wives of marijuana growers are often put under pressure to
testify against their husbands or risk prison terms themselves. Jodie
Israel refused to take the stand against her husband and is now serving a
12-year federal mandatory minimum sentence.
JODIE ISRAEL: You know, somewhere it's got to stop. If I was to testify
against someone and bring down 10 people- you know, it's got to stop
somewhere.
NARRATOR: Her husband, a first-time offender, was convicted of growing
marijuana. He is a Rastafarian and claimed he used marijuana for religious
reasons. Because she presumably knew what he was doing, Jodie Israel was
charged with conspiracy.
JODIE ISRAEL: The problem with conspiracy is it's the only time they allow
hearsay into the courtroom. So if they can't get you for anything else,
they can get you for conspiracy. Your husband could go away on a business
trip for the weekend and come back home, and he could have been out, you
know, buying drugs, and you're going be charged.
When I came in, my children were 1, 2, and my 3-year-old had just turned 4,
and my daughter was 9. And they're all in different homes, and my littlest
son doesn't even know who I am. It's hard because, as a parent, you want to
protect your child from hurt. And it's like I have caused this hurt.
NARRATOR: She has seen her children only once in each of the four years
she's already served.
JODIE ISRAEL: I made a mistake in that I chose the wrong man. But 11 years
of my life away from my children isn't right.
NARRATOR: Kristen Angelo, a teenager who lives near Seattle, Washington, is
learning what happens to a family when a parent is caught growing marijuana.
KRISTEN ANGELO: I knew that my Dad grew pot. I didn't know how big it was
or, you know, anything like that, but it didn't bother me. I just never
really thought twice of it. I never thought the consequences could be this
harsh on my family, otherwise I probably would have said, you know, "Hey,
Dad, maybe you shouldn't be doing this."
NARRATOR: John Angelo, who worked as a design engineer at Boeing Aircraft,
had a grow room behind the house where he lived with his family.
JOHN ANGELO: This was an underground hydroponic growing facility. I had six
trays on each side, 30 feet long. Each side was capable of holding 380 plants.
NARRATOR: Angelo says he suffers from manic depression. He is an activist,
working to legalize medical use of marijuana.
JOHN ANGELO: I've been smoking pot since I was 12 years old. I've been
growing it for the last 12 years. I found a long time ago that I'm able to
function with marijuana. My oldest daughter knew what I was doing. She
never questioned it.
KRISTEN ANGELO: You know, he didn't smoke it around me or force me to smoke
it or anything like that. Everyone experiments with it. And for a while, I
did use it in school and I got very bad grades. It's a lot harder to
concentrate. You can't study very well.
NARRATOR: John Angelo and his wife, Rachel, say the three younger children
never knew about the marijuana operation.
RACHEL ANGELO: I'm completely against children using marijuana. They don't
need to be putting stuff in their bodies when they're growing, including
caffeine, drugs, alcohol-
JOHN ANGELO: Nicotine, right.
RACHEL ANGELO: -of any kind. Their little minds need to be developing.
JOHN ANGELO: I had no idea that they were going to take my children away
from me, that they were going to take my property away from me, and that
they were going to put me in jail for 5 years. I had no idea.
KRISTEN ANGELO: I was out with friends. And I came home from school and we
were pulling down the road and my friends said, you know, "There's cop car
at your house." And I was, like, "Oh, you're just kidding." You know,
"Don't play around with me like that." And they're, like, "No, Kristen,
we're serious." You know, "There's a cop car down there."
RACHEL ANGELO: They came belting through those doors with their guns in
hand and pointing them around the room and, you know, talking and-
JOHN ANGELO: Yelling.
RACHEL ANGELO: Well, yelling, and yelling for John- "John, come out! John,
come out!"
KRISTEN ANGELO: My dad was in handcuffs and Rachel was in the car, and I
was just- I was shocked. I mean, I was just- I can't even explain how I
felt. It was just, you know, total adrenaline rush. I didn't know what to
do. I didn't know what to say. I was really scared for both of them.
MARK KLEIMAN: Keeping middle-class kids from drugs has always ranked very
high among the goals of American drug policy. And a lot of 14-year-olds
have now started to use marijuana.
NARRATOR: Mark Kleiman, a professor of policy studies at the University of
California in Los Angeles, has studied the patterns of marijuana use.
MARK KLEIMAN: For a while, the number of users was falling and,
particularly, the number of young users was falling. That unfortunately
stopped in 1991, and since then, the number of young users has been
increasing. And what's really frightening is initiations happening at
younger and younger ages.
Gen. BARRY McCAFFREY: [at press conference] Marijuana is the principal drug
of abuse among youngsters, with increased numbers of hospital admissions or
treatment admissions where marijuana is cited as the principle drug threat.
NARRATOR: The alarm has sounded for the White House Office on Drug Policy,
headed by General Barry McCaffrey.
Gen. BARRY McCAFFREY: [at press conference] The drug threat is changing,
and student populations are picking up on it, and it's tending to drift
into younger years. The first use of marijuana figure - how old were you
when you first used marijuana - has steadily dropped. And I anticipate the
next time we get a number to give you, it will have dropped further.
NARRATOR: You won't get an argument from many American students. In Warsaw,
Indiana, schools the talk is about mixed messages, with families and
children torn between what the law says and what widespread use, even in
their own homes, is telling them.
GIRL: I know I lost one of my best friends over marijuana. Her mom found
out, and her mom was mad, but her mom also does it, so, I mean, her mom
isn't setting a good role model, or her dad.
LEE ANN RICHARDSON: I had a girl tell me that her parents were smoking
marijuana. And I asked her what she did in that situation, and she said she
left and goes to her room. And I said, "That's very good." You know, she's
making the right choice, the right decision to get away from the
environment, basically.
BRET RICHARDSON: Just last week, I had one of my students come to me to
tell me about one of his relatives, and he wants something done about it,
so the information has been turned over to our drug task force. I tell them
all the ramifications of that choice that they are making, and if they want
the police involved in it, it's going to disrupt the family life. And then
it's up to the student to decide if that's the direction they want it to
go. We don't encourage the kids to spy. That's not my role. I'm there as
instructor, not as an enforcement officer.
LEE ANN RICHARDSON: And you see he becomes- I could see he became partially
defensive on it. I think that's a sore subject with us, especially with the
D.A.R.E. program, because it has nothing in the curriculum about, you know,
turning people in or doing anything that way. [www.pbs.org: How effective
is D.A.R.E.?]
STEVE WHITE: One year, we did three indoor grows here based on the children
of the growers through the D.A.R.E. program. They not only told us about
it, they drew diagrams, how to get to Daddy's indoor grow. So that's tough
on a family. The more I think about it, the more I wonder.
NARRATOR: During his career arresting marijuana suspects, former DEA agent
Steve White found himself asking more questions.
STEVE WHITE: I had done a lot of undercover work. It was mainly
amphetamines, LSD, heroin and cocaine. I thought all dope dealers were scum
to various levels, that they would sell out their mother, and I've seen it
time after time. When I got into the marijuana program, one thing that
amazed me was how cooperative a lot of the people were, how proud of what
they're doing, how normal, in every other respect, they were. And there's
some of them that I quite frankly like. This is confusing, but I still put
them in jail.
SUSPECT: I'm not hurting nobody, or at least I don't feel I am. I'm hurting
my lungs maybe. You know, buy a joint somewhere and you're a felon, or they
want you to be a felon. I mean, you know, that's the name of the game for
them.
STEVE WHITE: I came to see them as a different breed of cat. They're still
criminals, but they don't have some of the characteristics of all the
others that I dealt with in the 20 years previously.
DENNIS FITZGERALD: There are some agents that don't see crimes associated
with marijuana use. They don't see the armed robberies that follow crack
use or that follow heroin addiction. They don't see any of the crimes that
you associate generally with drug abuse.
NARRATOR: Dennis Fitzgerald was a federal drug enforcement agent for 20
years. Now retired from the DEA, Fitzgerald is director of the National
Institute for Drug Enforcement Training.
DENNIS FITZGERALD: Marijuana abusers don't, generally, when they can't get
marijuana, go out and rob a liquor store to get money to buy their
marijuana. It just doesn't follow. So an awful lot of law enforcement
officers just don't have the personal conviction when it comes to marijuana
enforcement that they do with the enforcement of heroin laws or crack
cocaine laws or cocaine laws. A lot of agents feel as though the marijuana
laws misdirect an awful lot of investigative energies, and people are going
to jail for significant periods of time over very small quantities of
marijuana.
NARRATOR: Agents like Fitzgerald and Steve White have watched the war on
marijuana escalate. It is now costing federal, state and local agencies at
least $10 billion a year, more than one fourth the total budget for the war
on drugs. The enforcement effort has brought other consequences.
DENNIS FITZGERALD: The forfeiture of the assets directly enriches the
police agency that brings the case against the grow operators. Now, the
monies that they receive from asset forfeiture, primarily, it can be used
to pay informants.
NARRATOR: Dennis Fitzgerald has written a book about how government
agencies use informants to make drug arrests. Informants can be paid up to
25 percent of the value of assets seized in arrests, up to $250,000.
DENNIS FITZGERALD: What bothers me about the informant situation is the
unbelievable amounts of money that the informants are making, that they can
make. There are pamphlets that are put out on what to look for in marijuana
indoor grow operations: large air-conditioning bills, large power bills,
the delivery of firewood, generators. There's a whole laundry list of
things that people are told to look for. Ordinary citizens are encouraged.
There's just this whole network of people that are out there, just average
citizens that have been drawn in to become informants, neighborhood crime
watches that have gone a step too far.
POLICE OFFICER: Police search warrant!
NARRATOR: On this case, an informant had told state police that this house
in Indianapolis harbored a marijuana grow. No one was home except the
suspect's son.
POLICE OFFICER: Is your Dad home? Well, we've got a search warrant to
search the house. Where does your dad work?
NARRATOR: When the suspect came home, it turned out he was being used as an
informant himself on another state police marijuana case, so the charges on
this arrest were deferred.
SUSPECT: It's all about, I guess, they want you to look for somebody that's
bigger than you- stepping stone.
JOHN ANGELO: They were able to get a search warrant for an overhead
infrared search. So they come over with a helicopter one night and saw the
heat signature of the trailer under the ground, and that was their basis
for a search warrant, then, at that time to come in and arrest us.
NARRATOR: An informant's tip had also led to the arrest of John and Rachel
Angelo.
RACHEL ANGELO: I feel that the government actually makes people feel good
about using the marijuana laws or drug laws as a basis for- or as a
bouncing board for people to take advantage of each other and to be
vindictive with one another. You know, "Hurt your neighbor. It's the right
thing to do."
JOHN ANGELO: Although I feel it's an improper law and I should have worked
to change that law, and I would like to see laws changed, I agree. Yes, I
did break a law. But I was no threat to the community. I was no threat to
the environment or to my kids or to anybody else. Justice would have been
served a lot better by taking my talents or my abilities to work to let me
continue with my job and paying taxes and stuff, but community service and
home incarceration, keeping my family together.
NARRATOR: Rachel Angelo was facing a five-year prison term. John could get
10 years in addition to a million-dollar fine.
Judge THELTON HENDERSON: I think when the sentencing guidelines first came
in, we thought they would phase out after some period of time. They're
still around, and I see no indication of them phasing out in the near
future. But I'm not aware of anything judges can do. We can't lobby. We're
pretty much handicapped. We can speak out, such as I'm speaking out now,
and state our displeasure and hope that the time will come when Congress
will revisit this.
Sen. ORRIN HATCH, ( R), Utah: The reason why we went to mandatory minimums
is because of these soft-on-crime judges that we have in our society,
judges who just will not get tough on crime.
NARRATOR: As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Orrin
Hatch of Utah has been a leader in the fight to strengthen anti-crime laws.
He strongly supports mandatory minimum sentencing.
Sen. ORRIN HATCH: Keep in mind these growers and these pushers, they're
killing our kids. They're the reason we have such a drug culture in this
society that's just wrecking our country in a lot of respects. In all
honesty, I think that when you have people who are pushing drugs on our
kids or pushing at all, we ought to get as nails on them, and I don't
think- in many respects, we ought to lock them up and throw away the keys.
NARRATOR: Over the last decade, mandatory minimum sentencing has been
reconsidered by congress. The debates have not led to any change in the law.
Rep. STEVEN SCHIFF, ( R), New Mexico: [at hearing] I think the debate, if
any, should be over how long individuals should be in prison compared to
others. The debate should never become whether individuals should spend
time in prison.
MARK KLEIMAN: We ought to think about sentencing in terms of its actual
impacts on behavior, and we ought to frame our sentences in ways that make
sense both morally and practically
NARRATOR: Mark Kleiman recently joined a group of prominent scientists,
drug experts and public officials in proposing a new middle-of-the road
approach to national drug policy. [www.pbs.org: Read the proposal.]
MARK KLEIMAN: We don't want to debate legalization versus prohibition. We
don't want to debate hawks versus doves. We want to say, "Look, this is
really a complicated question. We need to look in detail at individual
policies and figure out which ones will actually serve the public interest."
One of the principles is that we ought to base our sentencing on a
balancing of costs and benefits, and not merely use long sentences as a way
of expressing disapproval. I think we ought to start basing mandatory
sentences on the conduct of the people engaged. Are they using violence?
Are they using corruption? Are they using kids? If we do that, I think
we'll have a more sensible set of sentences.
STEVE WHITE: I cannot see somebody in there doing eight years for marijuana
and a rapist being set free. Anybody that abuses another human being I have
a certain loathing for. There's a disparity there. But that's not with law
enforcement. We don't make the laws and we don't sentence the offenders.
All we do is catch people.
NARRATOR: John Angelo and his wife, Rachel, agreed to a plea bargain.
Rachel testified for the prosecution and was given three months in a
halfway house with work release. After she returned home, John would enter
federal prison for a five-year term.
RACHEL ANGELO: Just exactly what we expected to happen. They went with the
plea agreement because it was the easiest thing to do, I think.
JOHN ANGELO: And I'm willing to accept what I plead to. I saved Rachel and
her father both a lot of pain and suffering, and I'll live by that then.
That's it. Let's go home.
NARRATOR: Like John Angelo, Doug Keenan says he needs to grow and use
marijuana for medical reasons. He's a cancer patient. But Keenan is the
kind of marijuana grower who confuses the issue. He freely admits he also
uses marijuana for pleasure.
DOUG KEENAN: Most of the people that are in this want to see the plant let
free. Actually, we'd like to just see the dialogue get started, but we're
having enough trouble, you know, getting the government to the table on
that. Everybody on all sides agrees that it's not working, what we're
doing. Great. What are we going to do next?
Dr. DAVID MUSTO: Actually, the American people are, in a way, deciding now
about marijuana in a way they never had the opportunity before. We may be
unraveling the national consensus on drugs and bringing back to the states
the decision as to what to do with drugs because the votes in Arizona and
in California suggest that there could be parts of the country in which
there's a different point of view.
NARRATOR: Both California and Arizona have passed initiatives that permit
medical use of marijuana. In California, behind the doors of cannabis clubs
like this one in San Francisco, marijuana openly changes hands. The clubs
are open to anyone presenting a doctor's letter stating medical need. The
existence of the cannabis clubs has been challenged in court.
Dr. DAVID MUSTO: The medical marijuana debate is extremely interesting.
There's no question that people who want to legalize marijuana are using
the medical marijuana issue as a wedge. On the other hand, there are many
statements from people who have used marijuana in situations in which
they've been greatly helped by marijuana, and that's their testimony.
MARK KLEIMAN: And the answer therefore has to be, it seems to me, let's do
the research. I've been boring people for five years now by just saying,
whenever this question comes up, "Let's do the research. "Let's find out.
Let's try it on some patients and see if they get better." We shouldn't
debate medical marijuana as a shadow play about the deeper question of
legalization of marijuana for recreational use.
Sen. ORRIN HATCH: The minute California passed that particular statute, we
had marijuana fields start to grow up again, on the basis that they're
using it for medicinal purposes. And in the process, of course, we've got a
lot of indiscriminate use of marijuana now in California that is even
greater than it was before. If you allow people to grow marijuana and to
indiscriminately grow and use it, then you're adding to the lack of
discipline and the problems that we have in our society and, really, to,
ultimately, the harder use of harder drugs.
STEVE WHITE: I do not believe that decriminalizing or legalizing marijuana
is going to help in any way. I think it's a dangerous drug. I don't think
it does any good. Period.
DENNIS FITZGERALD: I'm not for blanket legalization of marijuana. I think
certain offenses should be decriminalized.
MAN AT ANTI-DRUG RALLY: Marijuana is the cure-all wrong message.
Dr. DAVID MUSTO: Should the government intrude on your private right to do
something? Or does the government have an obligation to take steps to
protect you in ways that you couldn't protect yourself? This goes back to
the Federalist papers, I mean, or to the Constitution. How should we run
our lives? And marijuana has become the symbol of how we should think about
something that's medicine or not a medicine, a private right or a public
right. And people bring to it their deepest feelings and their image of how
they would like the world to be run.
STEVE WHITE: It's an emotional issue. It's right there with gays in the
military and abortion. Everybody's got an opinion on it. When I started in
law enforcement, the general opinion, particularly in the white middle
class community, was "Marijuana? Send them to jail," because they're
probably black or Chicano, to begin with, and it wasn't something that
affected us. Now it touches everybody in America. And I don't think anybody
doesn't have a family member in an extended family that hasn't been touched
by it.
ANNOUNCER: Discover more of our report at FRONTLINE's Web site. Take the
marijuana quiz, explore the interactive guide to federal and state laws on
marijuana, read an essay by the grower who's gone public, and take a close
look at two case histories, plus a timeline on marijuana in the U.S., the
best of the pro and con arguments and much more at FRONTLINE on line at
www.pbs.org.
ANNOUNCER: Let us know what you think about tonight's program by fax [( 617)
254-0243], by e-mail [FRONTLINE@PBS.ORG ] or by the U.S. mail [DEAR
FRONTLINE, 125 Western Ave., Boston, MA 02134].
© 1998 WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION
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