GIRLFRIEND'S TIP LEADS TO ARREST

Newshawk: Rachel Morton
Pubdate: Sat, 02 Sep 2000
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2000 San Francisco Chronicle
Contact: chronletters@sfgate.com

Page A24
Author: Michael Pena, Chronicle Staff Writer

GIRLFRIEND'S TIP LEADS TO ARREST OF MEDICAL POT ADVOCATE IN
LAFAYETTE

LAFAYETTE -- An East Bay medicinal marijuana activist was arrested Thursday by
authorities who seized more than 650 cannabis plants from his Lafayette home after being
tipped off by his live-in girlfriend.

Narcotics officers from the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department arrested Kenneth
Estes, 36, after his 27-year-old girlfriend asked sheriff's deputies to serve a restraining order
against Estes after a domestic dispute -- and told them Estes was growing marijuana in their
home.

The girlfriend gave the deputies permission to search the house, where they found the plants
under fluorescent growing lights in one room and several sheds.

Estes was arrested on suspicion of possession and cultivation of marijuana for sale. Lafayette
Police Chief Hank Davis said Estes sold the pot at a dispensary on University Avenue in
Berkeley called Medicinal Herbs. Davis said Estes told officers he sold marijuana there for
medicinal use and specified his occupation on the booking form as ``herbal distributor.''

"He claims that he's doing a service to society," Davis said. "He's very forthcoming about
what it's for."

Thursday's arrest came days after the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency order at the
urgent request of President Clinton to prevent an Oakland medical marijuana club from
dispensing its goods. Meanwhile, the U.S. Court of Appeals is reviewing a decision made in
July by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco that allowed the Oakland club to
dispense marijuana.

Jeff Jones, executive director of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, said Estes was a
volunteer who fancied himself an outspoken advocate for medicinal marijuana. Estes --
paralyzed from the waist down with limited use of his arms because of a past motorcycle
accident -- legitimately needs marijuana to ease his pain, Jones said.

"In Contra Costa, it's more like Placer or Sacramento County. You stand up and tell people
who you are, and you get arrested," Jones said. "He'll have to take all those issues to a jury
box."

In July, Estes turned himself in to authorities amid a small group of supporters to answer
possession and cultivation charges stemming from a January raid on his former Concord
home when police confiscated 1,500 plants.

The narcotics unit worked through the night getting the plants to the sheriff's crime lab then
obtained a warrant to search Medicinal Herbs. Officers confiscated an unspecified amount of
marijuana, materials to distill cannabis into hashish and 30 pounds of marijuana brownies,
Davis said.

Estes is being held at the Contra Costa County Jail in Martinez on $45,000 bail. Randy
Moses, 41, of Union City, another man living in the Lafayette home at the time, was arrested
and booked on the same charges but released yesterday pending further investigation.

MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens