Drug Enforcement Administration agents with Lake County sheriff’s deputies raided the openly grown medical marijuana garden of activist Charles “Eddy” Lepp near Upper Lake on the morning of 18 August 2004.[1][2] The grow, run as Eddy’s Medicinal Gardens, covered more than 40 acres in plain view of Highway 20 travellers and had been featured in High Times magazine as “The World’s Biggest Medi-Pot Garden”.[1]
Agents seized about 20,000 plants and arrested 13 people, including Lepp, who was charged under federal law with possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.[1] Lepp said the crop belonged to about 1,000 patients for whom he grew it under California’s medical marijuana law, and his wife said the seizure destroyed a year’s supply of their medication.[1] The DEA’s San Francisco spokesman answered that federal law recognises no medical use for marijuana and that the supremacy clause overrides California’s Compassionate Use Act.[1]
Supporters demonstrated for Lepp outside the federal courthouse, and he was released on his own recognisance after prosecutors had sought a $200,000 bond.[1] He had been arrested for growing 131 plants in 1997 but found innocent, and raided in 2002 with 350 plants seized but no charges filed.[1] A later interview account puts the 2004 seizure at 24,784 plants on 20 acres.[2]
On 18 May 2009 Judge Marilyn Patel sentenced Lepp to the ten-year federal mandatory minimum for growing the garden, plus five years of supervised release with drug testing.[3] Patel called the sentence excessive but said federal law left her no choice, and she invited Lepp to seek a rehearing if the law changed.[3] Lepp, who had met every court date in seven years, was allowed to surrender voluntarily on 6 July.[3] The Chronicle reported the grow at issue as 20,000 plants beside a Lake County highway.[4]
