11 cannabis-themed crime reads to celebrate 4/20
From murders involving Mary Jane to chronic scams, here's a weed reader to celebrate the holiday
the true crime that's worth your time
The origins of 4/20 as a weed-related celebration are murky, at best. The most common explanation, as noted by USA Today in an annually recirculated piece, is that it all began in NorCal’s tony Marin County, where a group of teens would meet at 4:20 PM on the regular to smoke weed:
Popular lore ties the birth of "4/20" to a group of high schoolers attending Northern California's San Rafael High School in the early 1970s. The cohort which dubbed itself the "Waldos" used to gather at 4:20 pm to toke up.
“We weren’t stupid stoners,” Steve Capper, 68, an original Waldo said, pointing to a certificate for exceptional achievement and citizenship he received in school.. The point being, the Waldos engaged in after-school activities like sports and studying, so 4:20 was chosen as the time the group could all meet up.
The time stamp became code for the act of smoking weed, and eventually spread beyond the Golden State's borders.
Fifty or so years later, that code is unnecessary in many parts of the U.S., with recreational use of cannabis legal in 21 states…a number that’s expected to grow in the coming years, as in many regions, the move to allow it received bipartisan support.
But, and I say this with respect for my many friends in the business, as with any industry that involves once-illicit activities (think booze, gambling, sex) there often remains a grey area where transgression can thrive — and as with any consumable with asserted health effects (remember, widespread recreational pot was vastly preceded by its legalized medical use), scams also abound. The topic is a fertile ground for true crime stories, with or without the use of grow lights.
Even if you don’t consume cannabis or acknowledge the holiday (which, to many, is an “amateur hour” along the lines of alcohol-focused holidays like New Year’s Eve), today feels like a good day to think about cannabis’s role in our society and where it’s going. For our purposes here at Best Evidence, that means true crime. I’ve assembled 11 cannabis-related longreads for you to enjoy all day — or, really, any time you need a buzz. — EB
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Inside the Underground Weed Workforce [The Walrus, Oct. 17, 2018]
In this first-person account, Canadian reporter Lee Hawks explains how he regularly heads to California to work illegally as a “trimmer” (the removal of leaves, stalks, and stems from the so-called “flower”). Snip:
It’s the lure of big money that, in 2010, made me quit my teaching job, where I earned only enough to live paycheque to paycheque, and take the risk of working south of the border. I go with a friend who has met the manager, and we’re promised we’ll be taken care of. At the border crossing, we tell the agent we’re taking a fall vacation. From there, we drive to a place near Ukiah, a few hours north of San Francisco, and spend the next three weeks in the garage of a typical suburban home. At first, I’m nervous, and I keep a bag containing money, my passport, and a change of clothes with me at all times so that I can run in case of a bust. But nothing happens. We’re paid $200 (US) per pound, fed delicious meals, beer and wine is bought for us, and we’re taken to a nearby hot springs to restore our aching muscles. I’m one of the slowest trimmers there, but I come away with about $5,000 in cash and bring it over the border in chunks, leaving increments of my money with an acquaintance in Washington. Everything goes smoothly.
Golden State Green Rush: Is Cannabis Equity Reparations for the War on Drugs? [Fast Company/Capital & Main, April 18, 2018]
If you head to a cannabis shop in many Bay Area cities, you’ll be doing business with someone with a past drug conviction. This isn’t because weed work is a shitty job that begrudgingly accepts formerly incarcerated folks. Instead, it’s an intentional program that aims to help support those punished by past weed laws. And it’s a program that has since spread beyond NorCal, to other places in which recreational use is now legal. Snip:
Rolling up among the site’s potential partner profiles was Linda Grant, 49. Mother of six, grandmother of two. Purveyor of marijuana since eighth grade. She was looking for a partner in her non-storefront dispensary — a delivery service. The cost of renting space in the East Bay would be the difference between her working legit or returning to the black market.
“I’m the poster child for cannabis equity,” Grant said in a telephone interview.
Though educated largely in the local weed trade, Grant clandestinely moved, by her estimation, millions of dollars of the stuff that now fuels the Green Rush, as Wall Street calls it. She started at the age of 12, dealing out of the girl’s bathroom at Elmhurst Junior High School. Instead of advancing through high school, Linda Grant sold weed.
Half Baked: How A Would-Be Cannabis Empire Went Up In Smoke [Indianapolis Monthly, August 29, 2021]
Cannabis — recreational or otherwise — is illegal in Indiana, but CBD (a low to no THC product derived from the plant) is legal, and the business is booming. Indianapolis Monthly first published a profile of Rebecca Raffle, the operator of a new local CBD bakery (at the time, one of the first in the country), but discovered after its publication that she was also allegedly engaged in a The Last Thing He Told Me-style deception involving a legally questionable cannabis delivery company. Snip:
In 2018, Raffle moved to Indiana with her wife, an ENT doctor, and her biggest idea to date: to revolutionize cannabis delivery. It was a killer concept for a killer app that she said she was in the process of developing, Grow Cart. Former business associates and employees say that Raffle told them she had vast experience in the cannabis industry and that Grow Cart was a blockbuster in the making with a valuation of over $1 billion, as startups like Facebook and Airbnb once had. In industry parlance, that made Grow Cart a “unicorn.”
And in a way, Raffle was, too. She was part of her own fairy tale. For example, that post-grad degree from Berkeley? The prestigious West Coast school told us that she attended a summer course there, but “we don’t have a record of that name matched with earning a degree.”
The embellishment didn’t begin or end with her education. But that wouldn’t begin to become clear until April 2021, when a tiny crack appeared in the facade, in an Instagram post from a local food-truck purveyor who claimed Raffle had done him wrong. The post went modestly viral, and a rush of commenters began to shed light on what initially played out like some kind of basic social media drama.
But the truth was bigger, messier.
The War on Drugs Is a War on Women of Color [Longreads, August 3, 2017]
This excerpt from Andrea Ritchie’s 2017 book Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color centers around how BIPOC women are disproportionately convicted of low-level drug crimes — like possession of cannabis — that members of other groups often skate by on. Snip:
According to the Drug Policy Alliance, “Drug use and drug selling occur at similar rates across racial and ethnic groups, yet black and Latina women are far more likely to be criminalized for drug law violations than white women.” Black, Latinx, and Indigenous women make up a grossly disproportionate share of women incarcerated for drug offenses, even though whites are nearly five times as likely as Blacks to use marijuana and three times as likely as Blacks to have used crack.
According to sociologist Luana Ross, although Native Americans make up 6 percent of the total population of Montana, they are approximately 25 percent of the female prison population. These disparities are partially explained by incarceration for drug offenses. These statistics are not just products of targeting Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities; they are consequences of focusing on women of color in particular. From 2010 to 2014, women’s drug arrests increased by 9 percent while men’s decreased by 7.5 percent. These disparities were even starker at the height of the drug war. Between 1986 and 1995, arrests of adult women for drug abuse violations increased by 91.1 percent compared to 53.8 percent for men.
These Devout Christians Are Using The Bible To Argue That Pot Is God’s “Perfect Medicine” [BuzzFeed News*, May 15, 2017]
In some regions of the U.S. where all cannabis products remain illegal, some evangelical groups — typically an unexpected demographic for in-your-face lawbreaking — are flagrantly violating drug laws. Ir’s because they say they’re following a power higher than the government, citing a verse from the Bible they say means god wants them to consume the plant. Snip:
Obviously, not everyone in Texas is receptive to Decker’s interpretation of the Bible — none of the laws covering medical or recreational cannabis were likely to pass before the legislative session ends in late May.
“People in the Bible Belt say, ‘You’re using the Bible to promote drugs,'” she said, drawing out the word “drugs” for emphasis. Decker disagrees. “We’re using the Bible to promote what God gave us. We say that God made the perfect medicine. Man is the one that made it illegal.”
*which, if you didn’t see the news today, RIP
The Gangster Princess of Beverly Hills [Rolling Stone, August 31, 2012]
Lisette Lee, an admittedly prolific weed smuggler who claimed she was a model, singer, actress, and Samsung heir at various times, has been well-covered in the years following her arrest. This Rolling Stone report is the best account of her rise in the then-illegal business; but as that publication’s paywall is hard to freely scale, I’ve pulled together a couple other options if you want to learn more about her:
Lisette Lee [Biography.com]
Lisette Lee, The ‘Korean Paris Hilton’ Who Was A Major Drug Trafficker [ATI]
Lisette Lee ex-pal writes book on suitcase marijuana ring [Columbus Dispatch]
Gangsters: America's Most Evil Season 2, Episode 3 “The Pot Princess of Beverly Hills: Lisette Lee” (Apple TV, Pluto TV, Prime, A&E)
CBD is everywhere. But is it a scam? [Vox, Jan 17, 2019]
I know I’m pushing the boundaries of true crime with this Vox explainer, but if nonsense health claims from companies like Herbalife are fair game — and if we agree that telling someone a product you’re selling will cure serious diseases when it won’t is criminal behavior — then I feel OK with this one.
Honestly, given the rapid expansion of CBD products paired with lax to no regulation, I’m surprised that we haven’t heard about a pyramid scheme-style “Herbalife of CBD” yet! Or maybe it exists and I’m just in the wrong Facebook groups?) Anyway, brace for uncertainty:
CBD is about as poorly regulated and understood as a product this popular can possibly be. It’s not accurate to say that CBD, as a whole, is bullshit. From a medical perspective, it’s promising; recreationally, it’s interesting. But that doesn’t mean the stuff you’re buying works.
Anyone who tells you anything definitive about what CBD — or THC, for that matter — does to your body is lying. Nobody knows. The legitimate research out there is extremely limited, and the slow drip of legalization — medical use, then personal use, federally illegal but permitted by certain states and cities — has made it incredibly hard for researchers to do their jobs.
"Down The Rabbit Hole I Go": How A Young Woman Followed Two Hackers' Lies To Her Death [BuzzFeed News, February 5, 2019]
The logline says it better than I could: “Tomi Masters was a 23-year-old from Indiana who moved to California with dreams of making it big in the cannabis business. Then she met a hacker who introduced her to a dark new world of digital manipulation, suspicion, paranoia, and fear — one that swallowed her alive and left her floating in a river in the Philippines.” Weed is a side note here, not the main course — but this is a story compelling enough that it merits inclusion.
Pot Luck [Longreads, July 30, 2019]
This is another social justice/drug war/mass cannabis-related incarceration piece, this time focused on how patchwork legislation and legalization means that in some states, folks punished for a bit of weed are languishing in prison, even though the laws that landed them in jail no longer exist. Snip:
Last month, shareholders of Canopy Growth, the world’s biggest cannabis company, agreed to a proposed merger with Acreage Holdings, the largest weed business in the United States. The deal, worth $3.4 billion, will take effect if and when the drug becomes legal at the federal level in the U.S., creating a massive international player in a rapidly expanding, newly legal industry. Meanwhile, as The Intercept reported, Fate Winslow, a homeless black man who sold $20 of weed in 2008, remains in prison on a life sentence, under Louisiana’s three-strikes law. Winslow is confined to a dorm with more than 80 other prisoners, double-bunked with no air conditioning in the heat of the Louisiana State Penitentiary.
The Great Pot Monopoly Mystery [GQ, August 23, 2017]
Another impact of the inconsistent laws throughout the U.S., and the lack of federal intervention, means that huge companies interested in the growing cannabis market operate essentially unfettered. This piece, about shadowy research lab BioTech Institute LLC (its website is fairly wild), posits that the patents this company is filing for could lock down weed the same way other lifesaving drugs have been made proprietary — leading to vast price inflation and the rise of a new black market for the products. Snip:
I staggered down the hall and ran into a trusted source who does serious medical work. When I asked her about BioTech Institute, she gasped and forwarded me a memo that had been circulating among the most influential people in marijuana for two months. This formal explanation of BioTech Institute’s entirely legal annexation of weed’s intellectual property had been written by another pot geneticist, Reggie Gaudino. He estimated that together, all of the company’s desired patents would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars and could eventually affect every marijuana strain currently being bred. Every. Single. Strain.
After Vegas, I brought up this story with every contact I encountered. Most had no idea what I was talking about. But it was the people who did who really alarmed me. Eyes grew wide. Voices became either hushed or loud and angry. Texting buddies suddenly needed to confirm we were off the record. In four years of observing the marijuana game, I’d never encountered a situation that struck fear and fury in so many people’s hearts.
The Long, Violent Fall of Tanning Mogul Todd Beckman [Riverfront Times, Jan 16, 2019]
Beckman, a tanning salon company CEO and gym owner who also sold hormone and vitamin supplements AND who attracted the attention of the DEA as an alleged pot smuggler, gained national attention after a high-profile kidnapping and torture case. He’s in prison now, serving a 20-year sentence.
The story of his life is fairly wild, and I honestly don’t understand why it has yet to be adapted. Take a look at the piece and tell me who you’d cast as Beckman and the other players in this bizarre drama. Snip:
Athanas had long, light brown hair that hung past his shoulders, contributing to his surfer-bro vibe. He had met Beckman just once (when the middle-aged entrepreneur complained of an aching back, Athanas suggested they go to hot yoga together), but he knew when the shipments were incoming. After all, he was one of the people who had helped sell them.
Athanas had been peddling marijuana since he was about sixteen years old but recently had grown more interested in daring drug ripoffs. "Seizing dealers' assets," is the way he described it.
Blake Laubinger had teamed up with him on a few such escapades. Athanas would arrange to meet another seller in an out-of-the way location, snatch the drugs and speed off in his car. Blake, parked just out of sight, would wait until his partner passed and then pull his truck across the road, cutting off any pursuers.
Friday on Best Evidence: Sarah proposes a Disapproval Matrix.
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