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Northern California\u2019s legendary cannabis grower and audaciously outspoken activist Bailous Eugene Smith \u2014 universally known as B.E. \u2014 passed away at a hospital in Redding, California on Jan. 6, following\u00a0complications from bypass surgery, according to family and friends. He was\u00a072 years old.<\/p>\n
Smith was born in Alabama, but came to California\u2019s north country with his family while he was still a young boy. He did two tours of duty in\u00a0Vietnam at the height of the war in the late \u201960s, and came back to America suffering from PTSD. He initially turned to alcohol to cope, but soon \u201ctransitioned to pot,\u201d in the words of his daughter-in-law, Rose Betchart Smith.<\/p>\n
For a while, he worked as a tree-feller in the local timber industry. However, by the late \u201970s, he became a real outlaw \u2014 joining a group of\u00a0gold prospectors in the deep back-country of the remote and rugged Trinity Alps, living off the land in the wilderness. Although the U.S. Forest Service considered them trespassers, they claimed legitimacy under\u00a0an 1872 mining law, which allows claim-staking on the public lands.\u00a0The USFS\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0in 1982 that it had\u00a0\u201clost control\u201d of some 100,000 acres of Shasta-Trinity National Forest.<\/p>\n The outlaw miners were cleared out in a series of raids by Forest Service enforcement and National Guard troops in\u00a01983 \u2014 a direct precursor to the militarized Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP), which began immediately thereafter.<\/p>\n When I first interviewed Smith for High Times magazine in 1994, he told me he was sure that the elite anti-terrorist\u00a0Delta Force was brought in for the raids, although the Pentagon would not confirm this. \u201cDenny Canyon was a test run for the War on Drugs,\u201d he told me, referring the gulch where the miners staked their claim.\u00a0<\/p>\n By the early \u201990s, Smith had settled in Denny, the unincorporated village on the edge of the canyon, where he switched from gold prospecting to growing cannabis \u2014 initially to treat his PTSD. But he also won a clientele, as his renown as a skilled cultivator grew. Smith boasted to me that one of his clients was Merle Haggard, the country music legend who lived in neighboring Shasta County.<\/p>\n In this time period, Smith began to emerge as a grassroots political voice. He developed a following among local growers, bikers and\u00a0rednecks as a \u201cconstitutionalist\u201d\u00a0libertarian, asserting a right to\u00a0grow cannabis \u2014 and drive without license or seat-belt \u2014 under his populist interpretations of English common law.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe marijuana laws don\u2019t apply to private citizens,\u201d he told me. \u201cIf you don\u2019t grow under contract to the federal\u00a0government, the Marihuana Tax Act doesn\u2019t apply to you.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Smith only got bolder with the passage of Proposition 215 in 1996, making California the first state in the country to allow cultivation, sale and use of medical marijuana. The following year, he started growing openly \u2014 as the designated caregiver for\u00a0some 30 patients around the state. One was\u00a0Sister Somayah Kambui, a veteran Black Panther in Los Angeles who\u00a0used cannabis to treat pain from sickle-cell anemia<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n He grew 87 plants at the site, on the land of his neighbor and friend Martin Lederer, an elderly German immigrant. This number was chosen partially in sentimental reference to 1787, the year the U.S. Constitution was signed \u2014 but also to keep the number below\u00a099, that at which the five-year federal mandatory\u00a0minimum sentence kicks in. He said patients could expect to purchase\u00a017 ounces of\u00a0untrimmed\u00a0bud for $500. Paperwork indicating that he was a designated caregiver under California law was prominently posted at the grow site, and he painted the roof of a nearby shed for helicopters to see with the words: \u201cMEDICAL MARIJUANA, CALL TRINITY COUNTY SHERIFF.\u201d<\/p>\n During the period he was taking this openly defiant stance, Smith won significant media attention, including a segment on the\u00a0Discovery Channel\u2019s \u201cWeed Country<\/a>\u201d series.<\/p>\n However, on Sept. 24, 1997, U.S. marshals and Forest Service agents raided Smith\u2019s grow. The marshals rode\u00a0helicopters into Denny and seized Smith\u2019s plants. In November of that year, a federal grand jury brought felony cultivation charges against Smith. Lederer also faced charges, and a forfeiture proceeding against his property.<\/p>\n When I spoke to Smith after the raid, he was typically intransigent. \u201cYou don\u2019t have a crime if there\u2019s no\u00a0corpus delicti \u2014 the injured party,\u201d he said. \u201cWhere\u2019s the\u00a0corpus delicti?\u00a0There is none. The War on Drugs is a scam.\u201d<\/p>\n Smith was defended in the Sacramento courtroom by the activist attorney Tom Ballanco, who is today a Trinity resident himself. Reached for comment at his off-the-grid homestead this week, Ballanco recalled the arguments his team made to the jury. \u201cWe claimed a medical necessity defense, first and foremost,\u201d he says. \u201cBut we also argued that there was no\u00a0federal jurisdiction, on states\u2019 rights grounds. As an intra-state matter, it didn\u2019t concern the federal government. The\u00a0primacy of state law was one of B.E.\u2019s pet theories.\u201d<\/p>\n Ballanco emphasizes that the states\u2019\u00a0rights\u00a0argument would actually be vindicated years later in the 2011\u00a0Cole Memo<\/a>, the Justice Department document instating a policy of non-interference in state-legal cannabis cultivation or sale (recently rescinded\u00a0by the Trump administration<\/a>).<\/p>\n Smith\u2019s patients were brought in to testify, including\u00a0Kambui, and a man who had lost his leg in a motorcycle accident and was dealing with \u201cphantom pain.\u201d But District Judge Garland E. Burrell\u00a0barred any mention of medical marijuana<\/a>\u00a0in their testimony, on the grounds that it was not recognized by federal law. The patients could only serve as character witnesses. Ballanco also brought in the actor Woody Harrelson as a character witness.<\/p>\n Smith was convicted on May 21, 1999 and sentenced to serve 27 months in federal prison. Betchart Smith notes sadly that the sentence came down on Aug. 6 \u2014 which was the 33rd\u00a0birthday of B.E. Smith, Jr., her husband and the defendant\u2019s son.<\/p>\n Smith served his time at the federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon. Lederer pleaded guilty and got nine months, which he was able to serve locally. He was also able to keep his property.<\/p>\n After his release, Smith had to lay low for a few years, as he remained on probation. But he eventually returned to the political arena, in his trademark irreverent style. He repeatedly\u00a0ran for sheriff of Trinity County \u2014 mostly as a protest candidate \u2014 and even threw his hat in the ring for governor of California in the 2003 gubernatorial recall election.<\/p>\n \u201cI am proud to be his daughter-in-law, and proud of his accomplishments as a freedom fighter,\u201d said Betchart Smith. \u201cHe taught me how to research law, speak up for the people, be a government watchdog and more.\u201d<\/p>\n Betchart Smith says that in his final days, Smith had reflected on the current political polarization in the country, and his wish for a renewed sense of unity. \u201cOne thing he told me last month while in the hospital was that he just wanted \u2018Americans to be Americans\u2019,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0how do you fight for your right to cannabis?<\/p>\n The post Legendary Emerald Triangle Freedom Fighter B.E. Smith Dies at 72<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Northern California\u2019s legendary cannabis grower and audaciously outspoken activist Bailous Eugene Smith \u2014 universally known as B.E. \u2014 passed away at a hospital in Redding, California on Jan. 6, following\u00a0complications from bypass surgery, according to family and friends. He was\u00a072 years old. Smith was born in Alabama, but came toContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":40576,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2252,148,50,100,320,139,339,11184],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40575"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40577,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40575\/revisions\/40577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/B.E.Smithpassesaway.jpg\")
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\nRead More: Legendary Emerald Triangle Freedom Fighter B.E. Smith Dies at 72<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"