Tending 'the Grow': Marijuana at a Crossroads

In the warm, luminescent glow of the dust encrusted light fixture, the carpeted and dank hallway disappears into unvacuumed recesses. Darren grabs an unobtrusive handle along the wall's flimsy wood paneling, pulls, and a crack of light pierces the gloom. Pushing aside a black screen of Hefty bags intended to block light and trap heat, he reveals his miniature grow closet. A heavy, supple branch tumbles out. It brushes my hand, leaving a telltale streak of sticky, stinky moistness. The resin goes away with a bit of water. The smell stays.

A ventilator and wooden door couldn't dilute the pungent odor of the maturing female plants. When I point this out, Darren offers me only a mischievous smile. He's proud of this little closet-conversion. Six plants in all, two to a shelf, a 150-watt lamp substituting for sunlight in this hallway cupboard. "You can hide it no problem, but the smell is crazy. Next week my whole house is going to reek! Clipping and all that," he tells me. Ten days away from "pulling" the plants, Darren's "babies" are reaching their most odorous phase.

On this trip, Darren is very ill, a result of his 24-year battle with HIV and his many years as a homeless addict. But he meets with me anyway. He closes the cupboard and I follow the trailing ties of his plaid terrycloth bathrobe to his bedroom where he unceremoniously plops himself on a frameless mattress.

Darren possesses a medical marijuana care receiver ID card, a designation established by California voters in the 1996 Proposition 215, the "Compassionate Use Act", and its updated correlative, Senate Bill 420. "I want to be able to grow enough. I want to be able to do that for my sick friends. I have an obligation," Darren explains, making sure I know his intentions for growing weed. A religious man and a veteran, Darren is not keen on being perceived as a criminal or a profiteer. His medical marijuana prescription had expired 9 months before, but he hadn't been able to afford its replacement, rendering illegal his plants, stash and herbal gifts to another HIV-positive friend who had just suffered an aneurysm.

Of course, even with a prescription, it is all technically illegal because he lives in HUD-supported (read: federally governed) housing. Despite Attorney General Eric Holder's October 19 memorandum backing away from prosecuting medical marijuana in states that have legalized it, drug possession on "federal property" remains a felony and a basis to render Darren homeless again, excluding him from state and federal benefits for life.

"I have to sell my pain meds to get marijuana--my other medicine," he says. "I run short of pain meds every month. I freak out the last few days. Go buy from somebody else with the money I made from selling my meds before. Vicious circle."

It is vicious. Temper tantrums, green skin, hyperactivity or complete incapacitation. The pain meds allow him to get out of bed; the pot allows him to not vomit the meds and all his food. The monthly shuffle usually ends in fraught negotiations with friends for advances and loans, intensified by chronic and piercing pain.

The grow in his house allows him some room to maneuver. Noe, his cousin, set it up in return for a couch and sheets after she fled a dicey situation in Flint, Mich. "Do you know anybody that does identity changes?" he asks, suggesting Noe was actively melting, like so many before, into the haven of California's marijuana hills. Her experience growing hydroponic indoor pot for years in Flint, in factories long since abandoned, would come in handy. Changing the subject, he wrestles his dog into his lap, hugging and petting him with a heavy but careful hand.