ON WEDNESDAY, December 7, 2016, a man you have probably never heard of left a federal prison after serving eight and a half years of a 10-year sentence. His name is Eddy Lepp, and he was arrested and convicted for growing medical cannabis plants in California. To be more specific, he was arrested and convicted for growing 24,784 medical cannabis plants, which had a street value of $18 million, and were believed to constitute the largest medical cannabis grow seizure in US history.
Eddy Lepp is a badass, and it would behoove cannabis producers in Oregon and elsewhere to learn from his example. He’s a Vietnam veteran, and until 2002 he grew more than 50 strains of cannabis on his 20-acre farm, dubbed Eddy’s Medicinal Gardens. The farm was 150 miles from San Francisco, near the Mendocino National Forest. Lepp, an ordained Rastafarian minister, and several tenants on his property tended the crops. All being Rastafarian, the group of growers eschewed alcohol and all other drugs.
The grow op was far from clandestine, as anyone driving by on Highway 20 could easily see the massive crop. But Lepp wasn’t banking fat stacks. He donated most of the crop to people who had medical needs. Lepp also used some of his weed to treat his PTSD, and to treat what sadly turned out to be the terminal cancer of his late wife, Linda.
But that all changed one morning in February 2002, when a team of 34 different law enforcement officials, from more agencies than I can list here, raided Eddy’s Medicinal Gardens.