Lake County medical pot activist jailed

<p>A Lake County medical marijuana activist with a penchant for pushing legal boundaries and flaunting his crop on magazine covers, was arrested for a fourth time Wednesday.</p><p>Federal agents seized 6,000 plants and about 30 pounds of dried marijuana from Charles "Eddy" Lepp, who last year was arrested after openly growing 32,500 pot plants on his Upper Lake property along Highway 20.</p><p>The plants seized in his greenhouse Wednesday ranged from starters to adults, Lake County Narcotics Task Force Cmdr. Richard Russell said. Had all the plants been mature, the value of the confiscated pot would be more than $15 million, he said.</p><p>Lepp, who couldn't be contacted Wednesday, has insisted in the past that his plants are grown for legitimate medical users, including members of a ministry that he founded and called Eddy's Medicinal Gardens.</p><p>The loss of marijuana for medical users is unfortunate, said Dane Wilkins, executive director of the Northern California chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.</p><p>But he said he's not sure he can support Lepp's campaign to push the outer limits of Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that legalized medical use of marijuana in California.</p><p>"He's definitely an activist and doing what he feels is the right thing to do and I need to support people like that," Wilkins said. "But at the same time, balance and responsibility are important too."</p><p>Lepp has long maintained what he's doing is legal.</p><p>Lepp and another man, Daniel Barnes, were arrested by federal agents on suspicion of felony cultivation and possession of marijuana for sale and taken to San Francisco for booking, Russell said. Two others were arrested on the property and taken to the county jail for refusing to identify themselves.</p><p>Lepp, who's appeared in several issues of High Times magazine and other publications dedicated to growing marijuana, has been charged three other times with marijuana-related crimes in Lake County, Russell said.</p><p>He was acquitted of a 1997 charge and never charged after being arrested in 2002.</p><p>Until Wednesday morning, Lepp was free on $200,000 bail following his August arrest, also by federal agents.</p><p>Not only did he break the law again, Lepp violated a condition of his bail by growing marijuana, said Richard Meyer, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.</p><p>He said federal prosecutors plan to seek a no-bail hold on Lepp this time.</p><p>The 2004 charges against Lepp carry a minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum of life, Meyer said.</p><p>Meyer said Wednesday he doesn't yet know how Lepp will be charged following his latest arrest, and what the potential prison sentence will be.</p><p>Lepp is scheduled to be arraigned today in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.</p>