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A Discussion With Ed Rosenthal
Interview by RoseEtta Stone

On January 31, 2003, Ed Rosenthal, noted globally as the leading authority, activist, best-selling author, and columnist on marijuana and social policy, was convicted in a San Francisco court of federal felony conspiracy and cultivation charges for illegally growing medical marijuana.

Four days later, seven of the twelve jurors who convicted him held an unprecedented press conference to denounce their own verdict.  And joined city officials in demanding a new trial for Rosenthal.  “I don’t know any other case in history,” stated San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan, “in which a majority of jurors held a press conference to say they were misled.”

Prelude to A Miscarriage Of Justice

I understand that you “were one of the original American writers to travel to Holland bringing European knowledge and sophistication about cannabis to the states through [your] books and columns.” What was the significance of being one of the original writers to have done that?

My being there first has no significance; if I hadn't been there first, someone else would have.

One of the articles I read stated that your first book, Marijuana Grower’s Guide, is the only title on marijuana cultivation to be reviewed by the New York Times Book Review.  My questions therefore are:  Were you then bombarded by media overexposure?  And were any of your other books reviewed by the Times?

I was not bombarded with media exposure after the book review. They haven't reviewed anything else I wrote.

For the last three decades you’ve been answering marijuana related questions from people all over the world in your "Ask Ed" column in High Times magazine.  At the column’s inception, 30 plus years ago, did you expect it to still be generating questions today?

No. I expected that we would receive only enough questions to run the column for three or four issues.

If you will, please separate the myths from the facts about marijuana for the uninitiated?

I recommend the book Marijuana Myths and Marijuana Facts by Dr. John Morgan.

Beside “Ask Ed,” other features on your web site include but aren’t limited to:  “Quick News” e-mail updates that can be subscribed to; competitions for bud, plant and garden of the month; Adopt A Green Prisoner; and various links such as drug testing, cooking and fun books, and books on psychedelics. 

Your site is such a comprehensive resource, and your knowledge seems encyclopedic in scope.  Yet so much, if not the majority of it, is dispensed via your writing.  Is writing books on any and all conceivable and inconceivable aspects of marijuana a labor of love for you, or the most tedious and least enjoyable duty you perform?

I enjoy my work. I'm being paid to pursue a hobby.  The income part of it has allowed me to delve deeper than I could have had I been required to keep a day job.

You’re a member of the Garden Writers Association of America.  For all the writers reading this, let me ask why writers would be interested in joining this  organization, what the criteria for membership is, and what benefits are derived from membership?

You will have to ask the GWAA about their criteria. I belong because it keeps me informed about what's going on with other garden writers and provides me with good ideas about how to conduct the "business" end of writing.

You’ve written more than a dozen books which cumulatively sold in excess of one million copies.  But the latter wasn’t the result of founding your own publishing house, was it?  

The books sell because people find them interesting. Word of mouth is the main way books are promoted. I guess people liked the books and recommended them to friends.

What types of books does your house, Quick American, publish? 

You can check out the web site at www.quicktrading.com. All the books are listed there.  We publish books on controversial subjects with a focus on marijuana. 

Do you accept unsolicited manuscripts?

No.  First send an inquiry letter.  If we are interested we will ask for a table of contents and one inner chapter.

Marijuana has become a medical, social, societal, legal, political, religious, socio-economic, civil and First Amendment rights, federal and state, issue and concern.  How, why, and when did this relatively innocuous drug attain such an elevated status?

I had known about some of its medicinal uses in the '70s.  As time went on I learned more about them.  From books, anecdotal experiences, as well as professional discussions.  My respect for the herb as medicine steadily increased.

The main reason marijuana is illegal is a jobs issue for the criminal justice systems in the U.S. About 7% of the federal and state criminal justice budget is spent finding, catching, jailing and harassing marijuana users. That comes to about 15 billion dollars a year. This has been the case since the "Marihuana Tax Act" of 1937 redirected prohibition agents to the marijuana beat.

When the tax act was created the number of marijuana users was estimated at 55,000. Now there are 25,000,000 people who use the herb. The laws have been ineffectual at preventing marijuana use, but very successful at employing more marijuana cops.

Considering all the episodic wars on drugs California “fought,” your thirty years in this field, and what the Federal government must have construed as the controversial, provocative, flaunting-the-law nature of every marijuana-related activity you’ve engaged in; from your web site to your columns and how-to books on growing marijuana, etc. (e.g., Ask Ed:  Marijuana Law: Don’t Get Busted, Marijuana: The Law and You: A Guide to Minimizing Legal Consequences, Marijuana Beer:  How to Make Your Own Hi-Brew Beer, Joint Rolling Handbook: Tips, Tricks and Techniques) – how did you “get away with it” all for all these years?  Was your web site never in jeopardy?  And is this the very first time you’ve been prosecuted?

I never got away with anything. All of my political and publishing activities were protected by the Bill of Rights. Even in my present circumstance I was not breaking the law. I was an officer of the City of Oakland and was deputized to provide marijuana to patients under the provision of the law as voted in by the people of California. I was deputized as part of Oakland's plan to implement Proposition 215 and to provide a regulated market rather than a chaotic situation of patients forced to purchase medicine from street dealers. The City assured me that as an officer I was immune from federal prosecution. These are all facts that were accepted in courtroom testimony. Unfortunately, the judge didn't let the jury hear about them.

This was the first time I was prosecuted.

The Conviction:  A Travesty Of Justice

You were recently convicted of conspiring to manufacture more than 100 marijuana plants, manufacturing more than 100 marijuana plants, and maintaining a place for the manufacturing of marijuana.  The first two charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 40 years each.  The third, a maximum sentence of 20 years. 

Whether or not any of these life sentences without parole are ultimately imposed on you, please address, if you would,  the “punishment” fitting the “crime” aspect of these sentencing guidelines?

No law should be more harmful to the individual or society than the behavior that it's attempting to regulate.

Are both the DEA’s (Drug Enforcement Administration) assertion that “There is no such thing as medical marijuana,” and Bryer’s (the judge that presided over your trial) ruling that federal law denies that marijuana has any valid medical use, categorically false?  Or is just the former claim, not the latter which, in part, explains why growing, dispensing, prescribing, and using marijuana medicinally is illegal as far as California’s feds are concerned-- but legal as far as the state is concerned?

The Supreme Court decided in US v OCBC, May 2001, that Congress decided that marijuana has no medicinal value.

Who does the federal government consider the worst type of “criminal” – marijuana users who self-medicate, or those for whom medicinal marijuana was prescribed by their doctors?

The federal law does not differentiate between the two.

If you should lose this battle, what happens to patients using marijuana, and to doctors prescribing it for them? 

They will be in for even more repression.

What exactly, in your opinion, is it about legalizing and/or regulating marijuana that law makers, the present administration, or whomever, are so afraid of? 

They are not afraid. To the top officials it's mostly a case of dogmatic fanaticism. To the grunts in the field-- the cops, judges, prison guards, etc. it's a job issue.

Despite, or because of all we’ve discussed thus far, is it still your estimation that 2005 will be, as you predicted, the year marijuana is regulated as alcohol and tobacco now are?

Yes.

Although the significance of the compassionate use of marijuana for medicinal purposes cannot be stressed enough, in regard to the state of California vs. the federal government, will regulation of controlled substances, like marijuana, ever be legalized if the prevailing fears are that drugs will be used for pleasure as well as for pain?  And that pushers will sell to kids who’ll become addicted to drugs?

Marijuana is not addictive. It will be civilly regulated.

Eleven states, including California, Oklahoma, Kansas, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, allow the sick to receive, possess, grow and smoke marijuana.  What do these states know that the rest of our nation doesn’t?

How to pass an initiative or get active in the political machinery.

Do you find your present predicament ironic since you’ve served as an expert witness on marijuana cultivation in both federal and state trials in the past?  Shouldn’t your expertise in this discipline, which was relied upon as testimony, have granted you a certain degree of immunity from persecution in your own case?  Otherwise, does it feel as if entrapment was involved – in that, being an expert on the witness stand was fine for their purposes on those occasions, but now, in their “crackdown,” the expert’s one of the first “offenders” they go after.     Do you find your present predicament ironic since you’ve served as an expert witness on marijuana cultivation in both federal and state trials in the past?  Shouldn’t your expertise in this discipline, which was relied upon as testimony, have granted you a certain degree of immunity from persecution in your own case?  Otherwise, does it feel as if entrapment was involved – in that, being an expert on the witness stand was fine for their purposes on those occasions, but now, in their “crackdown,” the expert’s one of the first “offenders” they go after.    

We filed a pre-trial motion regarding selective prosecution.

Finally, in view of the legal mess you’re in now, do you ever feel a sense of futility?  Or wonder if – in the books you’ve written, your speaking engagements, the "Ask Ed" column, your web site, your activism and advocacy, and all else you’ve done, that you’ve only been preaching to the converted and that the conviction puts you back at square one?  Or do you evaluate your 30 year pro marijuana stance in relation to achievement, accomplishment, and progress? 

No.  No. Yes.

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