Pot advocates flee to freer life in Canada

By Jeremy Hay
The Press Democrat
March 24, 2002

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - On Valentine's Day, Ken Hayes -- a wanted man in America -- boarded a ferry at Horseshoe Bay bound for British Columbia's Sunshine Coast.

For Hayes, the heavily forested coastline beckoned as a sanctuary from U.S. drug agents, a world apart from Petaluma where he'd been a highly visible advocate for medical marijuana use.

Today, he is among a small but growing group of Americans who have fled to Canada's westernmost province to escape marijuana charges in the United States, or moved there in search of a society more tolerant of the drug.

Their presence highlights the dramatically different approaches to marijuana each country has taken -- and, some analysts say, could strain relations as the United States aggressively prosecutes people it views as drug dealers.

A year ago, Hayes won a well-publicized victory in Sonoma County when he was acquitted of marijuana trafficking charges. He mounted a medical defense, which has been successful in North Coast counties where voters strongly supported Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that allowed pot use with a doctor's recommendation.

But local sympathy is at odds with federal law, which puts marijuana in the same category as heroin and cocaine. Immediately after his acquittal, federal drug agents began investigating Hayes and the San Francisco marijuana buyers' club he co-owned.

An anonymous caller tipped Hayes to the investigation, and in January he raced to Canada with his girlfriend and 3-year-old daughter.

Two days before he boarded the ferry to the Sunshine Coast, U.S. prosecutors charged him with being a ``large-scale'' drug trafficker, crimes that carry a possible sentence of 10 years to life.

The charges are similar to those he beat in Sonoma County, but Hayes says he won't return to contest them, and will fight extradition, because federal courts bar defenses based on medical use of marijuana.

Most low-profile

Not all of his fellow refugees are under the gun, nor are they all activists.

The majority are simply people who believe marijuana helps them cope with illness.

"Most are very low profile, they're not active," said Richard Cowan, a former director of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws.

Most have landed in British Columbia, often drawn to the Sunshine Coast, where locals say a vibrant pot-growing industry was founded by a previous generation of American expatriates, people opposed to the Vietnam War.

At least 60 Americans are registered members of medical pot dispensaries in the province.

"I have no doubt more are coming," said Cowan, who lives in Vancouver most of the year.

But the most serious attention is focused on Hayes and three other Americans who face charges in the United States and have taken shelter in the Vancouver area.

One who fled in 1998 is now fighting extradition; the others crossed the border in the past 10 months.

They are:

Steve Tuck, a disabled Army veteran, who is wanted in Humboldt County on six felony pot charges.

Steve Kubby, a former California Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate, who is battling Placer County drug charges and is campaigning for medical marijuana rights.

Renee Boje, a 32-year-old graphic artist from Santa Monica, who is fighting extradition to the United States on marijuana-related charges.

All three live on the Sunshine Coast, a long strip of land north of Vancouver accessible only by ferry or seaplane.

The Americans say Canada is more free, its courts more just.

They miss their homes and families, and wish they could return.

"Freedom sure is a lot less abstract now," said Tuck, 36.

U.S. law enforcement officials aren't sympathetic.

Tuck is "a commercial marijuana grower for profit," said Sgt. Wayne Hanson, who heads the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department's drug enforcement unit.

Advocates like Hayes, who says he's been involved with medical marijuana for 10 years, argue that the United States is ignoring research -- and testimony by patients -- proving pot's medical value.

U.S. officials say they are drug users and pushers whose illegal activities are linked to a world of hurt.

"There's increasing evidence that more and more people are developing dependence on marijuana, and ... at an earlier age," said Tom Riley, a spokesman for White House drug czar John Walters.

"We haven't found any strong medicinal benefits ... and there's been years of research," Riley said.

Riley suggests that a trend of Americans moving north for more marijuana freedom would validate arguments against initiatives like Proposition 215.

That argument, he said, is "that if we legalize medical marijuana, we'll become a haven for people who want to smoke, grow and trade drugs."

In the United States, he said, "our goal is to drive down drug use."

Without fail, the American refugees say the U.S. war on drugs is killing people who depend on marijuana to ease their pain and defying the will of voters who have approved medical marijuana laws in eight states.

Hayes calls the U.S. charges part of a vendetta.

Aboard the ferry, he and his girlfriend, Cheryl Sequeira, were hoping for support and advice from compatriots on the Sunshine Coast.

Two days before, seven Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers had rapped on the door of the home they rent in Vancouver.

They seized Sequeira's laptop computer and 183 young pot plants Hayes was growing in a basement room. Each of them was charged with growing pot with the intent to sell.

Hayes and Sequeira believed the DEA orchestrated their arrests; they feared Canada wasn't as safe as they'd been told.

"On the ferry that night, I just knew it was hopeless," she said.

Social Acceptance

But in British Columbia, they have found a political and social climate for marijuana undoubtedly different from anywhere in the United States.

"We have been told by many of them ( Americans ) when we do arrest them, that they're here because the sentencing is less severe and the social acceptance is higher," said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Staff Sgt. Chuck Doucette, spokesman for the drug enforcement section.

He agreed, unhappily, that, "yes, that is the case."

Except for a small government-approved medical marijuana program, it's as illegal to grow, sell or smoke pot in Canada as it is in the United States. But Vancouver, Canada's third- largest city, is home to the country's largest pot club, the British Columbia Compassion Society.

The club, with 1,600 members, operates openly a block away from a neighborhood police storefront, selling a few hundred grams of pot daily, and mailing packages of pot to customers throughout Canada.

At the Sunshine Coast Compassion Club in Gibsons, 15 of the 40 members are American, said Lisa Kirkman, who started the club in October.

She said the Americans, all of them over age 45, hail from Florida, North Carolina and Hawaii, as well as California.

Illusion of safety

In November, Vancouver Police Inspector Kash Heed, the city's top drug officer, told a Canadian Senate committee that "small-scale possession ( of pot ) is virtually unenforced by the police department, and the government no longer effectively prosecutes the use of cannabis."

"In practical terms," Heed said, "we have ... de facto legalization based on the wide margin of discretion afforded the police."

Nonetheless, as Hayes and Sequeira have found, British Columbia isn't exactly a marijuana- safety zone.

"There's an illusion of safety in Canada that isn't exactly brought to bear," said Philippe Lucas, founder of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society, who currently faces charges for trafficking and possession.

But, he said, "I'm certainly unlikely to face jail time."

Which is why Americans like Hayes -- facing both U.S. and Canadian charges -- say dealing with British Columbia's courts is by the far the lesser evil.

But they fear that they're not out of the reach of the United States.

"I'm very happy here," Boje said, "but sometimes I wake up having nightmares of being taken away from my husband and baby."

She fled to Canada in 1998, as federal prosecutors prepared to charge her with marijuana cultivation, intent to distribute, and conspiracy. Her charges carry a sentence of 10 years to life.

The United States has been trying to extradite her since 1999.

Hayes and Sequeira were eager to meet Boje -- she inspires them.

They were to have dinner with her at Kubby's Sunshine Coast home.

Kubby has smoked pot for 26 years to help suppress adrenal cancer. His wife, Michele, says she uses it for irritable bowel syndrome.

The couple, with two young daughters, headed north in May from Placer County, following a two-year legal battle stemming from a 1999 raid at their Olympic Valley home.

The raid netted 256 pot plants and led to 19 pot felony charges against the Kubbys.

"We changed the law," said Steve Kubby, referring to Proposition 215. "It was just a shock that we could be arrested and charged and overnight labeled as criminals."

Kubby -- still embroiled in legal battles with Placer County and the state -- is "technically a fugitive," a spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer said.

The Kubbys contacted Hayes and Sequeira the night of their arrest.

"We said, 'You need to come over here, you need to be with some good American friends who can help you through this,'" Michele Kubby said.

On the same day Hayes and Sequeira were arrested in Vancouver, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided a ranch Hayes rented in Petaluma, and seven other Bay Area locations, including his medical pot club in San Francisco.

Three of his associates were arrested, and agents seized 8,300 pot plants and $58,500 in cash.

In an affidavit filed Feb. 8 in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, DEA Special Agent Jon Pickette described the club, the Harm Reduction Center, as a front through whose back door Hayes dealt hundreds of pounds of marijuana and through whose bank accounts he laundered hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Six hours after Hayes and Sequeira were arrested in Vancouver, a judge ordered them freed without bail.

In San Francisco, two of his co-defendants, Ed Rosenthal and James Halloran, were released on $500,000 bail. A third, Richard Watts, the club's manager, remains in jail.

All four have been indicted on charges including conspiracy to cultivate more than 1,000 marijuana plants. The charges carry prison terms ranging from five years to life.

'A Just Country'

For Hayes, the difference in treatment confirmed the decision to flee.

"I felt confident after getting released by the Canadian authorities that we had done the right thing," he said. "Canada is a just country."

In recent weeks, he has been contacted by at least two other California men wondering whether they, too, should head north to avoid potential criminal charges.

For Sequeira, their easy release in Vancouver was little comfort.

That they could be arrested in Canada was proof they weren't beyond the reach of U.S. authorities.

Neither DEA nor RCMP officials will comment specifically on Hayes' and Sequeira's arrests ( she isn't named in the U.S. indictments ), but Greg Underwood, group supervisor in the DEA's San Francisco district office, said, "I'm sure if he was arrested up there in Canada that we would have worked very closely with them; we have a very close relationship with their agencies."

"Ken kept telling me we'd be safe here," Sequeira said, "that we were in Canada and they couldn't touch us."

"When that RCMP cop came through the door and said the DEA wanted my computer, I just wanted to quit, to go home," she said. "What does it matter that we're here?"

For weeks now, Hayes and Sequeira have had that question answered by Americans who, in one way or another, share their circumstances.

"We're free here," Kubby said during an interview at his home in Sechelt, a town of about 7,500 that is the largest on the Sunshine Coast.

"It's a very cannabis-friendly area; the authorities are very friendly and understanding," Kubby said.

Physician's Approval

Later, at Howl at the Moon, a Mexican restaurant in Gibsons, a crowd of nine American expatriates gathered, along with some Canadian friends.

Boje cradled her baby. Between the tables, the Kubbys' daughters played with Hayes' and Sequeira's daughter. The adults -- all of whom are quick to produce cards stating they have a physican's approval to use pot for medical reasons -- ate nachos and drank margaritas.

Periodically, they headed for the restaurant's deck to openly toke on a marijuana pipe or a joint.

Asked later about the uninhibited pot smoking, RCMP Staff Sgt. Ed Hill, who oversees law enforcement in the Gibsons area, said: "If they've got a card that says they can go to the ballgame and smoke dope just like you and I can have a beer, I don't know there's much I can do about it."

If he'd been there, Hill said, "I'd have been checking and certainly investigating the validity of the cards and the ramifications of the use of American cards in Canada."

It's the kind of place, the Americans say, where they can try to carry on with their lives.

All the Americans raise money for those among them who have legal defense funds.

From their home, the Kubbys co-anchor Pot-TV, a thrice-weekly marijuana news show on the Internet.

On the night Hayes, Sequeira and Boje came for dinner, the Kubbys interviewed them for an upcoming show. Steve Kubby stood with his arms around Hayes and Sequeira; a large title on the screen read: "Ken Hayes: Free in B.C.!"

A month later, Hayes and Sequeira appeared in Vancouver's Adult Criminal Court, trailed by a photographer from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., which plans a show Tuesday about Americans fleeing pot charges.

New Court Date Set

A judge set another court date in April. Their attorney, John Conroy, who also represents Boje, has told them he expects they'll get off lightly on the Canadian charges, perhaps with a full discharge.

The TV crew returned with Hayes and Sequeira to their Kitsilano home.

The large living room, pungent with incense, was furnished with seating pillows, decorated with Buddha statuettes and family photographs.

The CBC reporter asked Hayes if it's "been worth it."

Hayes cried, dropped his head into his hands: "From where I sit now, as hard as it is, cannabis is medicine and those sick and dying people need it -- and I'd do it all over again, I don't know what Cheryl thinks, but I would."

Later, long after the TV crew has gone, Sequeira, who originally opposed Proposition 215, said: "I don't want to be here, but I'm not giving in. After how apathetic I was, I just can't concede to them."

At the drug czar's office, spokesman Tom Riley said people like Hayes and Boje and Tuck, though they themselves may not be responsible for crimes beyond growing and selling pot, work against a sordid backdrop.

"A lot of the most outrageously violent, egregiously brutal acts we associate with drug trafficking, are from people smuggling marijuana into the U.S.," he said.

Staying To Fight

In Oakland, Ed Rosenthal, 57, the author of more than a dozen books on marijuana and now a co-defendant in the case against Hayes, says he's not going anywhere.

"The reason I'm staying to fight it," he said, "is that I'm not guilty."

About those, like his friend Ken Hayes, who have fled, he said: "I'd hate to argue with somebody that they should give up their freedom. They did what they thought was right.

"I just have a different way of doing things."

In his living room, Hayes recalled his Sonoma County trial.

"I agree with him. He's right," Hayes said. "But he didn't go to my court dates for two years, I'm telling you that took a lot out of me.

"Why should I go back? I'm free here."