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High-Witness News
May '91 No.189
Green Merchant: The First 18 Months
by Peter Gorman
Transcription By Havoc
Originally appearing in HIGH TIMES, May 1991
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When Operation Green Merchant first broke 18 months ago, no one was
sure of where it was going or what the extent of it would be. Now we know that
its ostensible aim was to shut down this country's burgeoning indoor
marijuana-cultivation industry; that during its execution the government
decimated several of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution; that one
magazine was put out of business and another thrown into financial straits;
that several garden-supply stores and businesses were seized by the government
without their owners being charged with criminal activity; and that more than
100,000 American citizens -- whose only connection with the operation was the
purchase of gardening equipment -- came under federal investigation.
Green Merchant was designed to link the sources of information
regarding indoor marijuana cultivation -- HIGH TIMES and 'Sinsemilla Tips --
with indoor growers in a criminal conspiracy. The connection of the two was
thought to be that the gardening centers advertised in both magazines.
The logistics of the operation were these: during a two-year period
beginning in late '87, the DEA sent agents to 81 stores and mail-order houses
specializing in indoor-gardening supplies, asking for information regarding the
growing of marijuana. While most of the store owners refused to have anything
to do with the agents once they made their blatently illegal requests, a
handful responded positively , and a few of those apparently even provided
seeds to the undercover agents.
Those few positive responses provided the DEA with the legal leverage
it needed to subpeona UPS shipping records from a number of those stores. An
investigation of a portion of the names provided by those records turned up a
number of illegal indoor-marijuana growers.
For the DEA, the link had been made: They now had proof that some of
the consumers who purchased indoor-gardening supplies from the stores and
mail-order houses which advertised in HIGH TIMES and 'Sinsemilla Tips' were
indeed using gardening equiptment to illegally produce marijuana. The stage
was set for the Operation to go public.
-=*/> Main Objectives <\*=-
The government succeeded in shutting down 'Sinsemilla Tips'. Tom
Alexander, whose Full Moon garden-supply store was seized during the early
stages of Green Merchant -- without him being charged of anything -- was unable
to continue publishing after all his advertisers either went out of business or
were threatened with charges if they continued advertising with him.
HIGH TIMES continues to publish despite the loss of revenue from those
same advertisers. But once it became apparent that HT would not fold, and in
fact sales were increasing, a federal investigation was launched in New Orleans
which attempted to make HT a co-conspirator with both the Seed Bank and the
indoor growers. That investigation was dropped some months ago when the
government failed to get an indictment.
On June 24, 1990, Nevil Schoenmakers, who legally operated the Seed
Bank (another HIGH TIMES advertiser) in Holland, was arrested by the Australian
authorities at the behest of the US government while visiting family in Perth.
A 44-count indictment was lodged in New Orleans, charging him with the sale of
marijuana seeds to undercover agents and indoor growers in the New Orleans area
in 1989. He has been detained awaiting the results of an extradition hearing
-- while not charged with anything -- in Australia since June.
-=*/> Incidental Casualties <\*=-
George Warren owned six Northern Lights garden centers in New York,
Ohio and Pennsylvania. On October 24, 1989, he was visited in his flagship
store by a man who asked about purchasing lights and hydroponic systems.
During the course of the conversation the man, who turned out to be a DEA
agent, inquired about acquiring marijuana seeds. Warren told the man he wasn't
in that business; the man persisted, and Warren told him there were probably
magazines he could look into for that kind of information, then excused himself
to answer a phone call in his office. The man followed him into the office and
passed him a note asking for 200 seeds. Warren asked the man to leave the
store.
The following day, the agent returned and made a small purchase, again
sought seeds and was again informed that he couldn't get them there.
The next day, nine DEA, Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms and local-authority
agents arrived at Warren's main store armed with a warrant for business
records, grow lights, hydroponic systems and other inventory that might be used
to grow marijuana. That same day, the process was repeated at each of Warren's
stores; by evening he'd lost inventory valued at nearly $200,000. Warren
himself, however, has never been arrested in connection with the seizures, and
continues to fight for the return of his inventory.
Reached recently at home, Warren was furious. "My feeling is that if
I've done anything wrong, arrest me. If not, give me back my merchandise.
There's nothing illegal about lights. What are they going to do with them
anyway?"
"Sell them at auction," he was told.
"Wait a minute," he replied. "You mean they confiscate my merchandise
because they think someone will grow pot with it, and then they sell it to
someone else?"
"That's how it works."
The owner of a large West Coast mail-order gardening-supply center
tells a similar story. On October 26, 1989, the DEA and state police arrived
at his warehouse with warrants for business records and computers. They
padlocked the warehouse and began forfeiture proceedings for the nearly $1
million worth of inventory, the warehouse itself and the property it was
located on.
The owner, who asked to remain anonymous, was also never arrested. Ten
months later, the prosecuter in the forfeiture case gave the owner's lawyer a
list of 20 misdemeanors, which he said he would prosecute if the man continued
to fight the forfeit. The choice was simple: Fight and lose thousands of
dollars in legal fees -- as well as risk one year in jail for each count he
might be convicted on -- or give up the fight and walk away. His lawyer
advised him to walk away, suggesting that of 20 counts it wasn't unlikely that
he could lose at least one of them, and conviction on even a single count would
mean losing the forfeiture case anyway. The man took his lawyer's advise and
walked.
While not all prosecutors are willing to go to such lengths to seize
property, the federal and civil laws regarding forfeiture certainly make it
appealing for them to do so in cases where the forfeited items are of value.
In federal cases, the agencies involved receive 75 percent of the monies
eventually generated through the auction of forfeited goods; the remaining 25
percent is divided between the prosecutor's office and any local agencies
involved in the seizure. Civil forfeiture cases divide ALL the monies between
the prosecutor's office and the local authorities involved.
Dan Viets, a defense attorney who has won a number of Green Merchant
cases, says that while "the idea of forfeiture is not new, the idea of giving
the money to the police and prosecutors is. Forfeiture is an abuse. A lot of
people don't really understand that it's going on."
Forfeiture doesn't just affect businesses. One of Viets' clients, a
former law-enforcement officer, stands to lose his whole farm because 37
marijuana plants were found growing on it. Another of his cases involved a
couple found with four pot plants, who have had their 11 acre farm forfeited as
a result. Viets is optimistic about both cases.
"A lot of people don't fight forfeiture because they don't think they
can win," he says. "But even though the burden of proof is not very high of
the state's part, they still have to prove that the forfeited items were at
least probably derived from the monies generated by illegal activity. And
that's not always easy."
The horror of the prosecution of Green Merchant case's wasn't limited
to forfeiture: One couple had their parental rights terminated for growing pot
at home; several school teachers and at least one nurse lost their state
licenses; others simply got caught up in the legal system, and found that
trying to extricate themselves nearly ruined them.
Tom and Sara Williams were visited because their names were on the one
of the confiscated store mailing-lists. When the DEA arrived they tore the
Williams' house apart, eventually finding seven plants. Though their case was
later reduced from felony possesion of an illegal substance to a guilty plea on
one misdemeanor, paraphernalia-possession (the warrant was faulty), the
Williamses hadto spend nearly $7,000 in bonds and legal fees.
The list goes on. There are hundreds of horror stories which came out
-- and are still coming out -- of Green Merchant: People whose lives were
disrupted or destroyed by the government in an attempt to shut down two
magazines and a seed house.
-=*/> Repercussions <\*=-
While the obvious targets of the Operation were HIGH TIMES, 'Sinsemilla
Tips' the Seed Bank, store owners, small-time growers and the thousands of
people who were investigated, the real victim of Green Merchant has been the
Bill of Rights.
The right of free speech is a cornerstone of our republic. History is
full of people that spoke out advocating illegal positions in an effort to
change the laws governing them -- from Thoreau's 'Civil Disobediance' to 'The
Abolition Papers', from Freedom Marches to abortion rights. What 'Sinsemilla
Tips' did, and what HIGH TIMES does -- advocate the legalization of marijuana
-- is no different than what others have done throughout American history. The
right to print what we choose to print is supposed to be inviolate.
The right to privacy is supposed to be protected as well. Yet the
investigation of thousands of people -- based solely on their having purchased
legal equipment from legal businesses which just happened to advertise, amoung
other places, in pro-marijuana magazines -- has been continually defended by
the Justice Department as necessary to their effort in the War on Drugs,
despite its obvious constitutional infringment.
The rights to privacy were further comprimised by the thousands of
warrantless searches made in that investigation. While many people allowed
those consent searches to be performed, others were intimidated into them. To
date, dozens of government cases have been dropped as a result of those
unlawful entries.
Perhaps the rights most abused in the execution of Operation Green
Merchant involve personal property and the right to be innocent until proven
guilty. The use of forfeiture during the government's prosecution of the
Operation has absolutely shredded these basic rights. That store owners could
have their businesses seized by federal agents, without there being enough
evidence to charge those owners with any criminal activity whatsoever; is a
terrifying concept; that people found to be growing marijuana in the privacy of
their homes could have those homes seized by government agents before they were
ever brought to trial is unconscionable. And yet this was one of the recurring
themes of Green Merchant: confiscate property; threaten charges which would
bankrupt the defendant to defend; and then make an offer to withdraw the
charges if they agree not to fight the forfeiture.
-=*/> Net Results <\*=-
The government not only denies ever trying to put either HIGH TIMES or
'Sinsemilla Tips' out of business by gutting their advertising, it has defended
the actions of the federal, state and local authorities in every phase of Green
Merchant as integral to the success of the War on Drugs. Terrance W. Burke,
the Acting Deputy Administrator of the DEA, suggests that "there is no such
thing as a casual or innocent drug user of illegal substances. Users are a
major factor in the drug-trafficking problem, and they are going to be held
accountable."
Steve Hager, HT's Editor-in-Chief finds fault with that argument. "The
whole reason we told people to grow their own pot was to get rid of the
criminal element. We said, if you want this -- to eat it, to smoke it,
whatever -- that's your God-given right, and we'll tell you how to grow it.
Don't give your money to the narcotic traffickers. Don't support the criminal
drug trade."
Marijuana is illegal today not because it's unsafe to drive while high,
or because some religious and temperance groups think it's the devil's weed;
it's still illegal only because the big boys haven't yet seen their way clear
to corner the market once it does become legal. But you can bet they are
working on that; both marijuana for smoking and hemp for its thousands of
commercial uses -- from plastics to pulp, paper to pesticides, from food to
fuel, fiber to pharmaceuticals -- are just too valuable to be kept of the
market forever. It's just a question of working out the details -- amoung
which is ridding the marketplace of as many independant growers and as much
information as possible. That part of the plan went into effect on Black
Thursday -- October 26, 1989.
In the final analysis, Operation Green Merchant has done nothing but
ruin the lives of thousands, destroy the Bill of Rights, obfuscate the
potential commercial and medical uses of hemp/marijuana by continuing to
demonize it, raise the price of pot and invite the criminals to take charge of
its production.
Way to go boys.
-=*/> The Numbers <\*=-
During a two-week period beginning on October 26, 1989, the DEA raided
gardening centers and private homes in 46 states. The results of that first
phase of Green Merchant -- released on November 9, 1989 -- were:
o 377 arrests of private citizens for marijuana cultivation;
o 42,677 marijuana plants seized (the Justice Department counts
unsprouted seeds in soil as marijuana plants);
o 875 pounds of packaged marijuana seized;
o 2.5 pounds of methamphetamine seized;
o 5 pounds of mushrooms seized;
o 280 indoor grow-sites seized;
o 19 stores and warehouses seized;
o 11 store owners arrested (8 store owners had their businesses
seized without being charged of any criminal activity);
o $7,318,000 in total assets seized.
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o 19 stores closed down: 7 stores forfeited, 11 currently under
forfeiture litigation, 1 store no explantion;
o 16 store owners arrested;
o $9,208,928 in total assets seized.
(No new statistics on either quantities of packaged marijuana or
other illegal substances seized.)
The Operation was far from over. During the past 18 months the DEA
has continued its Green Merchant investigations. The most recent figures --
released by the Justice Department on February 1, 1991 -- are:
o 443 arrests of private citizens for marijuana cultivation;
o 50,794 marijuana plants seized (including unsprouted seeds in soil);
o 358 indoor grow-sites seized;
Of all the arrests made in Green Merchant thus far, only two people had
illegal substances other than marijuana in their homes; one man with 2.5 pounds
of methamphetamine, and another with 5 pounds of mushrooms. Indeed indoor
pot-growers don't appear to be supporting the criminal drug trade.
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