Business
From the Archives: 9 Tons of Pot (1974)
Seven Men and a Barge Test Florida Justice
By Rod De Remer
Regular newspaper readers probably remember that spectacular bust last year of a barge with nine tons of pot aboard. It was the first in a series of setbacks for major dealers.
So what happened to the poor bastards whose boats were loaded to the gunwhales with Jamaican and whose heads were loaded with lush green visions of profit?
A fews weeks ago, they were tried in the same courtroom where, a few weeks earlier, the Gainesville Eight had been acquited.
The Gainesville Eight were Vietnam Veterans Against The War who were charged by the federal government with conspiracy to commit violence at the Republican Convention in Miami.
But there was a clear contrast at this trial to that of the Gainesville Eight. There was little publicity and even less sympathy for the defendants.
The “Steinhatchee Seven” were just pot smugglers.
Maybe four or five years ago people could rally around pot as a politically unifying force. Certainly the nine tons the Steinatchee Seven were accused of trying to import would make an impressive rallying point. “Alright, everybody,” shouts the movement leader, “we’re gonna dance around this pile of pot and nobody, not the pigs, not our parents, nobody is gonna take it!” However, it has always been the ideal, the freedom to smoke pot (unfortunately not included by our shortsighted forefather in the Bill of Rights) and not the actual physical substance itself that has been defended. When a group of dudes are playing around with more than nine tons of the stuff they’re after the big cabbage — man, they’re in business. A high-risk, lucrative business to be sure. No, there weren’t many who rallied to the cause and shouted, “Free the Steinhatchee Seven.”
The Steinhatchee Seven are: Barry Korn, 23, David Strongosky, 23, Michael J. Knight, 23, Richard Ericus, 22, and Steven Lab, 20, all from the St. Petersburg area; Floyd Capo, 40, from Cross City, and James Maslanka, 24, from Gainesville.
What they have been convicted of doing is attempting to bring nine-and-a-half tons of Jamaican bush up the small West Florida waterway called Rocky Creek on a barge owned by Capo and then to disburse it at Florida wholesale prices in effect during the spring of the year. Of course, no one is ever convicted of selling nefarious drugs at wholesale prices. No siree, the commonly quoted figure in the press, so often supplied by the prosecution, was that four-and-one-half million hard-earned American dollars would fetch that barge-load to the backdoor of your garage or warehouse or where ever else you could cram that much bush. Roughly, the breakdown is somewhere around $245 a pound. Must be some sort of government subsidized farm program. (Not content with that overblown figure, the Independent Florida Alligator, the University of Florida student newspaper, used a $9-million figure reportedly obtained from a Steinhatchee narcotics official.)
But the lack of a defendable cause was not the only contrast to be drawn between the Gainesville Eight and the Steinhatchee Seven. In the government’s political hatchet job attempted on its war veterans, it was the defendants, at least some of them, who were famous personalities and even heroes to many Americans. The best the Seven could muster was a well known attorney, Percy Foreman, who has defended the likes of Candy Mossier and James Earl Ray.
Foreman did present a commanding figure to the courtroom observers and, to some extent, the participants. However, one important participant did not seem overly impressed. US District Judge David L. Middlebrooks, while never tagged as a hanging judge, is not a man anyone would pick to pass judgement upon eternal soul were there a prohibition against drug usage in order to rise heavenward, with a key to the golden gates. No, Judge Middlebrooks does not look favorably upon those who sell, use or even think about drugs.
The Foreman-Middlebrooks clash came early in the trial when Foreman attempted to tell the judge how things are done in most of the federal courts he has practiced in. Middlebrooks leveled his eye at Foreman and shot back, “You’re going to follow the rules in effect in this court Mr. Foreman, and if you don’t like it you can go to New Orleans on appeal!” (New Orleans is the seat of the 5th Judicial Court of Appeal.)
Percy Foreman was not enough. He was not enough even though none of the defendants were caught with that mound of weed on Capo’s barge runaground on a sand bar that popped up in the middle of the creek. Not only that, but mild-mannered youthful Robert Crongeyer, assistant US attorney from Pensacola, admitted from the beginning of the government’s case that the evidence was circumstantial.
That circumstantial evidence, he promised the jury in his opening remarks, would “weave a web of circumstances that must fall over all of these defendants.”
Source: https://hightimes.com/culture/from-the-archives-9-tons-of-pot-1974/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
New Mexico cannabis operator fined, loses license for alleged BioTrack fraud
Marijuana companies suing US attorney general in federal prohibition challenge
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