Last week a Sacramento federal court sentenced a Plumas County man, Jeffre Sean Sanderson, to two years in prison and his wife, Alice Jean Wiegand, to six months for growing 165 pounds of marijuana for sale and distribution. After a six-month trial, the court rejected the defendants’ claim that they had a right to violate federal drug laws for “spiritual” and “health” reasons.

The couple will pay dearly for violating the law, and we take no pleasure in their punishment. They will be separated from their young children, who will be placed under child protective services. The contraband was grown on land Sanderson owned. As a result, it was confiscated under federal asset forfeiture laws. None of us will feel any safer with the pair incarcerated or their property in federal hands.

Yes, these were adults who should have known better. Their decision to flout the law and offer up a hippie-era defense has put their family and property at risk.

We have no idea what Sanderson and Wiegand were thinking—or if they were thinking at all. Still, we cannot help but believe that the mixed messages the state and many communities have been sending about marijuana manufacturing and sale contributed to the couple’s poor decision making. California voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996, making ours the first state to legalize marijuana for medical use. In 2000, Mendocino County became the first county in the U.S. to repeal any type of punishment for non-medical personal use of marijuana. In 2004, Oakland made personal adult use, distribution, sale, cultivation and possession of non-medical marijuana the lowest priority for law enforcement. Two years later, San Francisco, West Hollywood, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica and Santa Cruz enacted the same kind of ordinance.

Memo to those who still think that living in California gives them immunity from drug prosecutions: California is not a separate country; it is part of the United States. And the U.S. treats marijuana cultivation and trafficking as illegal. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled three years ago in Gonzalez v. Raich that the Commerce Clause permits the federal government to ban marijuana, even where local law permits it for medical use.

If Sanderson and Wiegand were confused, part of the fault lies with California’s “compassionate user” law and local lawmakers who believe they can insulate local citizens from drug prosecutions simply by passing an ordinance.




And they say marijuana is a harmless drug.