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Introduction :( Originally published May '91)
Operation Green Merchant Part of the War on Drugs
United States:
Strength
DEA agents, along with local, state and federal agents from 46 states.
When Operation Green Merchant first broke 18 months ago, no one was sure of where it was going or what the extent of it would be. Now we know that its ostensible aim was to shut down this country's burgeoning indoor marijuana-cultivation industry; that during its execution the government decimated several of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution; that one magazine was put out of business and another thrown into financial straits; that several garden-supply stores and businesses were seized by the government without their owners being charged with criminal activity; and that more than 100,000 American citizens -- whose only connection with the operation was the purchase of gardening equipment -- came under federal investigation.
Green Merchant was designed to link the sources of information regarding indoor marijuana cultivation -- HIGH TIMES and 'Sinsemilla Tips -- with indoor growers in a criminal conspiracy. The connection of the two was thought to be that the gardening centers advertised in both magazines.
The logistics of the operation were these: during a two-year period beginning in late '87, the DEA sent agents to 81 stores and mail-order houses specializing in indoor-gardening supplies, asking for information regarding the growing of marijuana. While most of the store owners refused to have anything to do with the agents once they made their blatently illegal requests, a handful responded positively , and a few of those apparently even provided seeds to the undercover agents.
Those few positive responses provided the DEA with the legal leverage it needed to subpeona UPS shipping records from a number of those stores. An investigation of a portion of the names provided by those records turned up a number of illegal indoor-marijuana growers.
For the DEA, the link had been made: They now had proof that some of the consumers who purchased indoor-gardening supplies from the stores and mail-order houses which advertised in HIGH TIMES and 'Sinsemilla Tips' were indeed using gardening equipment to illegally produce marijuana. The stage was set for the Operation to go public.
Main Objectives
The government succeeded in shutting down 'Sinsemilla Tips'. Tom Alexander, whose Full Moon garden-supply store was seized during the early stages of Green Merchant -- without him being charged with anything -- was unable to continue publishing after all his advertisers either went out of business or were threatened with charges if they continued advertising with him.
HIGH TIMES continues to publish despite the loss of revenue from those same advertisers. But once it became apparent that HT would not fold, and in fact sales were increasing, a federal investigation was launched in New Orleans which attempted to make HT a co-conspirator with both the Seed Bank and the indoor growers. That investigation was dropped some months ago when the government failed to get an indictment.
On June 24, 1990, Nevil Schoenmakers, who legally operated the Seed Bank (another HIGH TIMES advertiser) in Holland, was arrested by the Australian authorities at the behest of the US government while visiting family in Perth. A 44-count indictment was lodged in New Orleans, charging him with the sale of marijuana seeds to undercover agents and indoor growers in the New Orleans area in 1989. He has been detained awaiting the results of an extradition hearing -- while not charged with anything -- in Australia since June.
Incidental Casualties
George Warren owned six Northern Lights garden centers in New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. On October 24, 1989, he was visited in his flagship store by a man who asked about purchasing lights and hydroponic systems. During the course of the conversation the man, who turned out to be a DEA agent, inquired about acquiring marijuana seeds. Warren told the man he wasn't in that business; the man persisted, and Warren told him there were probably magazines he could look into for that kind of information, then excused himself to answer a phone call in his office. The man followed him into the office and passed him a note asking for 200 seeds. Warren asked the man to leave the store.
The following day, the agent returned and made a small purchase, again sought seeds and was again informed that he couldn't get them there.
The next day, nine DEA, Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms and local-authority agents arrived at Warren's main store armed with a warrant for business records, grow lights, hydroponic systems and other inventory that might be used to grow marijuana. That same day, the process was repeated at each of Warren's stores; by evening he'd lost inventory valued at nearly $200,000. Warren himself, however, has never been arrested in connection with the seizures, and continues to fight for the return of his inventory.
Reached recently at home, Warren was furious. "My feeling is that if I've done anything wrong, arrest me. If not, give me back my merchandise. There's nothing illegal about lights. What are they going to do with them anyway?"
"Sell them at auction," he was told.
"Wait a minute," he replied. "You mean they confiscate my merchandise because they think someone will grow pot with it, and then they sell it to someone else?"
"That's how it works."
The owner of a large West Coast mail-order gardening-supply center tells a similar story. On October 26, 1989, the DEA and state police arrived at his warehouse with warrants for business records and computers. They padlocked the warehouse and began forfeiture proceedings for the nearly $1 million worth of inventory, the warehouse itself and the property it was located on.
The owner, who asked to remain anonymous, was also never arrested. Ten months later, the prosecuter in the forfeiture case gave the owner's lawyer a list of 20 misdemeanors, which he said he would prosecute if the man continued to fight the forfeit. The choice was simple: Fight and lose thousands of dollars in legal fees -- as well as risk one year in jail for each count he might be convicted on -- or give up the fight and walk away. His lawyer advised him to walk away, suggesting that of 20 counts it wasn't unlikely that he could lose at least one of them, and conviction on even a single count would mean losing the forfeiture case anyway. The man took his lawyer's advise and walked.
While not all prosecutors are willing to go to such lengths to seize property, the federal and civil laws regarding forfeiture certainly make it appealing for them to do so in cases where the forfeited items are of value. In federal cases, the agencies involved receive 75 percent of the monies eventually generated through the auction of forfeited goods; the remaining 25 percent is divided between the prosecutor's office and any local agencies involved in the seizure. Civil forfeiture cases divide ALL the monies between the prosecutor's office and the local authorities involved.
Dan Viets, a defense attorney who has won a number of Green Merchant cases, says that while "the idea of forfeiture is not new, the idea of giving the money to the police and prosecutors is. Forfeiture is an abuse. A lot of people don't really understand that it's going on."
Forfeiture doesn't just affect businesses. One of Viets' clients, a former law-enforcement officer, stands to lose his whole farm because 37 marijuana plants were found growing on it. Another of his cases involved a couple found with four pot plants, who have had their 11 acre farm forfeited as a result. Viets is optimistic about both cases.
"A lot of people don't fight forfeiture because they don't think they can win," he says. "But even though the burden of proof is not very high of the state's part, they still have to prove that the forfeited items were at least probably derived from the monies generated by illegal activity. And that's not always easy."
The horror of the prosecution of Green Merchant case's wasn't limited to forfeiture: One couple had their parental rights terminated for growing pot at home; several school teachers and at least one nurse lost their state licenses; others simply got caught up in the legal system, and found that trying to extricate themselves nearly ruined them.
Tom and Sara Williams were visited because their names were on the one of the confiscated store mailing-lists. When the DEA arrived they tore the Williams' house apart, eventually finding seven plants. Though their case was later reduced from felony possesion of an illegal substance to a guilty plea on one misdemeanor, paraphernalia-possession (the warrant was faulty), the Williamses had to spend nearly $7,000 in bonds and legal fees.
The list goes on. There are hundreds of horror stories which came out -- and are still coming out -- of Green Merchant: People whose lives were disrupted or destroyed by the government in an attempt to shut down two magazines and a seed house.
