Larry Harvey of Kettle Falls, Washington, his wife, two family members and a friend are facing federal prison time for growing 68 pot plants, claiming they were to be used as medical marijuana
70-year-old Harvey suffers from a bad knee, spasms of gout and high blood pressure. Harvey saus he eats marijuana cookies to ease the pain from his gout. His 55-year-old wife has arthritis and osteoporosis. The ‘Kettle Falls 5’ includes Mrs. Harvey’s son Rolland Gregg and his wife, and their friend Jason Zucker. All five had medical authorizations to use marijuana. The Greggs and Zucker live in the Seattle area, a driving distance of 360 miles from Kettle Falls.
Zucker has a previous conviction for growing marijuana.
Something doesn’t pass the smell test here. OK, so Harvey and his wife are suffering painful ailments. But what about the Greggs and Zucker? I’ve seen pictures of Rolland Gregg and he looks awfully healthy to me. My opinion that medical pot is one big hoax aside, it is quite doubtful that all five would qualify for medical marijuana. But then again, it is as easy to ‘buy’ a pot prescription from a doctor as it is to buy a package of chewing gum.
In February 2013 the Kettle Falls 5 were indicted by a federal grand jury on six felonies each: Conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana, manufacture of marijuana, possession with intent to distribute marijuana, distribution of marijuana, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime and maintaining a drug-involved premises. Their trial is expected to start next month.
The pro-pot crowd is weeping and wailing over the plight of the Kettle Falls 5. They are incensed at the Feds for raiding the Harvey family and Zucker's pot plantation with its 68 ‘medical’ marijuana plants. Here is how award winning author and journalist Timothy Egan expressed his outrage in a New York Times op-ed:
To get a sense of the tragic absurdity of this federal prosecution, reaching all the way to the desk of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., consider what will happen next month. Pot stores will open in Washington, selling legal marijuana for the recreational user — per a vote of the people. A few weeks later, the Feds will try to put away the so-called Kettle Falls Five for growing weed on their land to ease their medical maladies. Federal sentencing guidelines, which trump state law, call for mandatory prison terms.
The authorities, using all the military tools at their disposal in the exhausted drug war, treated them as big-time narco threats. First, a helicopter spotted the garden from the air. Brilliant, except Harvey himself had painted a huge medical marijuana sign on a plywood board so that his garden, in fact, could be identified as a medical pot plot from the air.
This was followed by two raids. One from eight agents in Kevlar vests. The other from Drug Enforcement Agency officers. They searched the house, confiscating guns, and a little cash in a drawer. The guns are no surprise: Finding someone who does not own a firearm in the Selkirk Mountain country is like finding a Seattleite who doesn’t recycle. Still, the guns were enough to add additional federal charges to an indictment that the family was growing more than the legal limit of plants.
I for one am not weeping and wailing for the Kettle Falls 5. It sure looks to me like 68 pot plants exceeds what they needed for their own use. You can get an awfully lot of marijuana from 68 healthy pot plants. I think the Harveys and the Greggs were going to use the expertise of convicted pot grower Zucker to go into the profitable marijuana distribution business. Serves them right if they go to prison. But I’m not holding my breath because in the end Eric Holder will probably wilt and drop all charges against them.
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