Original subtitles

When I came back to America,

I very much felt I was in the land of the conquered people.

That it had been trashed.

That it was not the same country I left.

I was very upset

and my family didn't want to hear about it.

I began dreaming of a sisterhood that could heal the people,

heal the Valley.

I was walking home from a meeting with local activists.

A woman sees me and rushes across the street,

she's crying and she says, "Sister, sister,

I lost my job, I have a seven-year-old son.

I'm an alcoholic,

I was heading to the liquor store

and you're a sign from God."

She fell into my arms sobbing and crying.

I looked up at the street light like it's God

as I'm hugging this woman and going,

"Please forgive me."

Then I sent her back and I said,

"Have you ever tried the cannabis plant?"

And she said, "Wait, what kind of nun are you?"

Cannabis,

we have an epidemic nationwide.

Majority of people do not like the idea of smoking pot.

So as far as I'm concerned,

anything that takes over your body like that should be, erm,

controlled.

Who doesn't know someone who smokes grass or uses grass?

I could be talking to a judge,

I could be talking to our head... our district attorney.

Who don't you know that doesn't smoke?

Americans want marijuana

and we are unmindful

of the ugliness that is involved

in getting it to us.

I think most of us nowadays don't even call it a drug anymore.

It's just weed.

Even if we were to compare it to alcohol,

kids our age still have a sour attitude

towards alcohol versus weed.

People say it's just marijuana...

but the federal government still treats marijuana

as an illegal drug.

So it's not just marijuana.

On face value just looking at it,

yeah, it is just marijuana.

But there's so many dark things behind it.

The Catholic and the Muslims and the Church of Scientology

and the Baptists will not stand up.

We're gonna lose this battle

of drug addiction to Satan and the enemy himself.

Growing plants is dangerous in many ways

which is what scares me about my mom

or anyone in my family being in the business.

There's multiple instances where she was,

I feel like, she was in danger.

But I would always tell her,

I don't want you to lose your life over this.

But I'm still going with it, you know...

because it's what pays the bills

and Mom feels that the spirituality

is what makes people listen. They wanna know what's going on.

Merced County, the soil is so great

and we expect to get like eight to ten pound a plant.

-Here's my card.

We have nuns that are drug dealers.

The sisterhood was delivering cannabis

to dying people.

It doesn't matter how you dress up,

if you are dealing illegally,

then you are a drug dealer.

We are on a sacred calling here.

We need to stop all of it altogether.

And this is the reason why I'm on this mission.

So much he doesn't understand.

It's an age-old problem, drugs ruin lives.

I will take their product and I will take it to the dump

and I will cite them into court.

After all the betrayal in my life,

after being left penniless and homeless

by my own family,

everyone needs to understand

that I will do whatever it takes

to protect what I have built.

Oh, there's Chris in her nightgown.

That's not her wedding dress.

Chris, Chris, I've got you on camera.

I know, Mother.

I was born and raised in Wisconsin,

educated in Wisconsin.

I got my degree in business education.

I was a corporate girl.

I once voted for Ronald Reagan.

I married my husband, Gary, when I was 28 years old.

It's my privilege to present to you,

for the first time formally and officially,

as husband and wife, Gary and Christine.

It was one of the happiest days of my life.

I was very much in love with him.

We were happy together in those early years

and I felt like I was living the American Dream.

Within a year, I was pregnant with our first son.

OK.

This is it, one month pregnant.

Five and a half weeks.

Three years later, we had three children

and we're living in a big suburban house in Kentucky.

Hey, farmer Gary.

What are you planting?

Tomatoes.

We had a great marriage.

Everybody was jealous of us.

We were happy.

Thank me. This is my wonderful wife.

That's right.

She's so sweet all the time.

Tell me you love me.

I don't.

Come on, Christine.

-OK, he loves me. - Go next to your husband.

-He loves me. - Get over there.

Now wave to the family.

Tell the camera how much you love me.

I had my business degree and I was ambitious.

As the children got a little older,

he chose to stay home and be with them,

while I chose to grow the consulting business.

Oh, my goodness, you think you got enough babies, Dad?

I got my babies.

Gary ended up staying at home,

being the stay-at-home dad

and he was just always a rock-solid guy.

He wanted to be the stay-at-home mom.

It was a lot of diapers he had to change

and a lot of meals he had to fix

and he was a very front-and-centre father.

He was an excellent father with my children.

This is a tape. I'm reading--

Bye, Mommy and Daddy.

Bye, Alex.

As far as I remember, he was a really good dad.

Very attentive, he was there for me.

He took me to soccer practice

and he did what he was supposed to do, we spent quality time together.

Hey, Alex.

She was the breadwinner of the family.

She was the CEO, she was the boss.

She was the one, the, "I'm not gonna take anyone's shit," lady.

So growing up, that was definitely an amazing role model for me.

Chris was as corporate

as you would expect in the banking world.

There was no rebellious side of her whatsoever.

I worked as a consultant in telecommunications.

And turned out I was really good at it.

I used to say I implement businessmen's fantasies.

I made a lot of people a lot of money

and I accepted the assignment for an American company

to live in Amsterdam, help them launch their telecommunication services

in six countries.

Over the course of the ten years

in the Netherlands,

my consulting company banked a million dollars.

My husband, all about savings.

We were all about savings.

And he agreed that

he had set aside $300,000

for me to relaunch my consulting company in America.

OK, so that's a picture for me in my office in Kentucky.

So in our house in Kentucky.

That's hard to find, isn't it?

Oh, the one belows the freezer, Meg.

They were getting themselves established again.

Is this the living room?

So everything was set up

for a happy family life.

It's three monkeys!

But I guess all of that's quite deceiving

once you find out that other things were actually going on.

- It feels bigger, doesn't it? - Yeah.

What are you guys doing up there?

After they had moved to Kentucky

and owned their own home there,

Gary decided to take the kids camping

and it was his sister

that had come over on the Saturday morning

with some mail in his name

but with different addresses.

Hello, Mommy!

I guess the curiosity got the better of her,

she opened up one or more of those envelopes

and, low and behold,

there was some financial statements.

That was a bit of a shock because there are these accounts

that she wasn't aware that they existed.

I guess fortuitous that the mail was handed to her

and then she suddenly saw the truth.

So the million dollars

that had piled up into our business account,

he just seized.

He said, "You're poor, I'm rich, deal with it."

I could hear her trembling over the phone line

because it was excruciating, painful.

This is him moving money.

25,000 out of there and into there.

He took all of the money,

while he couldn't just give us a little for food.

He did some really horrible things.

The first month we were in Holland,

he opened a Swiss account

and started funnelling money out of the business

into a Swiss account and then an Isle of Man account

and then a South American account.

Every which way that he could handle the books

and make the money go to his account and make it look to me

like the money was going to the proper place, he did that.

My attorney, when she looked at what happened,

she actually said, "I think he premeditated this divorce

from the day he married you."

The horror of a 17-year marriage

with a man, who I thought I was gonna be with

for the rest of my life, decided he hated me.

And how did it make me feel?

Like a cannon to the chest.

Like, completely devastated,

humiliated and stupid.

You can't help. You blame yourself for not seeing things.

And that's how I felt. I felt humiliated and stupid.

I'm sure a psychologist could have a heyday

in terms of what that betrayal,

what it put her through.

That was the end of that relationship.

Yeah, I got the brackets around here.

They're ready to go.

He didn't steal it because he wanted money

or he even likes money. He stole it for control.

The fight for the money is still going on.

I mean, this was just a litigation nightmare.

It's been a ten-year battle.

You know, evidence packages.

The example that he wasn't paying child support

and bought a new car right after the divorce,

but he can't pay child support.

And, anyway, all these boxes are just loaded

with all the evidence of everything that happened since the day.

And so, my attorney, she said,

"I've got to tell you something and it's gonna be a bit shocking."

And I said, "Yes?"

And she said, "He never divorced the wife before you."

I was horrified. I was totally horrified.

I believed he was divorced and married him.

I haven't decided if I'm gonna go after him

about the bigamy thing.

I had a Sophie's choice right from the beginning.

My attorney said,

"You can fight for the money or you can fight for your children.

Make up your mind." That was my million dollars, he hadn't earned a cent of it.

Those were my children, I gave birth to them.

I had to say "I'll fight for the children

and I'll go after the money later

to get the children out."

I simply left and headed for family in California.

I moved in with my uncle

who was also going through a separation at the time

and he was struggling as a single father,

raising his two sons and my mom was struggling raising us.

My sister's my sister,

I'll have her for the rest of my life.

And her kids didn't have a dad.

So it was kind of a good idea for her to move out here.

And that way I could kind of play the dad role for her kids

and she could play the mother role for my kids.

And there was none of this

wearing a nun's costume and all that stuff.

There was none of that.

That came about later on.

And so I settled into a whole new life

with my children in California.

Of course, I had no idea

that this was just the beginning of my nightmare.

The great valley of Central California,

a valley filled with deep, fertile soils.

The farmers on this land harvest rich crops.

Today, the Central Valley of California

is a rich source of food and wealth for the whole nation

and provides employment for millions of people.

In fact, a great many different kinds of crops

are grown here on the rich soil.

Medicinal marijuana has been legal for a while.

Our local ordinance says a person can grow

up to 12 plants.

And this is the food basket of the world

and the number one cash crop in California

has been marijuana

and we have derived no benefit from that whatsoever

because it has made

certain illicit growers

wealthy beyond their wildest imaginations.

My brother started talking about cannabis laws

and the changing in California and how if we were smart,

we would start a cannabis business.

And I pretty much started right from the beginning.

She needed an income.

Around here, really hard to find a good income,

even for a woman as smart as she is.

The cannabis was a good income.

After the financial crisis of 2008,

the agriculture industry of the Central Valley

has really suffered.

Luckily, the cannabis laws in California

changed in 1996

and it became legal to grow cannabis for medical purposes.

The whole Central Valley grows weed.

The whole Central Valley.

From all the way up north California,

all the way down south.

Counties that have embraced cannabis

have created an enormous amount of wealth

through taxing it.

While there's lots of legal growing for medicine,

there's still lots of cannabis

growing for the black market.

Nowadays,

there's a lot of farmers growing cannabis.

Everybody decided why go to the mountains

when you can do it in your backyard?

But it's the same way that there's people that grow it,

there's also big crews of people out there

that are ready to steal it, ready to catch you sleeping.

If you don't watch what you're doing,

you can get into a lot of trouble.

We were settled in California for only four months

and I could see that I wouldn't be able to work in my chosen profession

without leaving my children for travel.

I was excited.

I had never really been involved in anything like this before.

I was a corporate girl.

I was good at business

and Gary and I used to grow lots of produce in our backyard.

So I knew we could do this.

I essentially said,

"OK, we'll grow weed, we'll cure weed, we'll deliver weed,

we will be the weed family."

I agreed to get into the cannabis business

under a number of conditions.

It had to be legal,

we would pay all taxes,

we would only supply medicinal cannabis to sick people

and there'd be no black market deals.

Pretty soon we had our first crop

and we reached out to local doctors for clients.

I was just serving dying patients

and very, very sick patients,

cos they're the only ones the doctors would send me.

And the Central Valley is so poor.

So we supplied them with cannabis

whether they could pay or not.

Just bad karma to let people go suffering to their death.

But at this time, legalised cannabis

was quite new in California.

Our first deliveries were hysterical because no one could believe

that somebody was actually delivering cannabis in this town.

And so we would knock on the door.

The person would answer the door,

stick their head out and look around

to see, like, if there were any cops

hiding in the bushes or something

before they would let us in.

The year I moved in with my brother,

this is the photo of the five kids.

We had boys ages 14 to 22

and my daughter, who's 13.

They each responded differently

to their mom's new career path.

I just never invited my friends over.

I was like, "They're not ready for this."

And none of my friends were allowed in my backyard

cos I didn't want them to see all the plants.

Where you going, babe?

My mom didn't like the idea

of us doing things black market

because it attracted thieves.

You guys are such troublemakers,

such troublemakers.

If you're going the legal route,

which is much more expensive, obviously,

you have to pay taxes, you have to hire guards.

Yes, come on, monkey.

I'm gonna throw you on the other bed, monkey.

But it's the safe route.

And then you don't have to worry about those things.

But I didn't know what to expect.

I knew that it was highly likely

that my kids, like my brother's kids,

would smoke weed while they're in high school

and I didn't try to fight that.

I figured I'd just put 'em to work.

Alex was so big and strong,

I had him doing all sorts of jobs.

He was like the man of the house.

If you keep them too busy,

they can't smoke that much.

-They just found this out there

while they were rototilling.

It's a dinner bell.

So when the weed farm kicked off,

I had a lot of fun with that.

At the time, I wasn't allowed to smoke.

So I was, erm,

actually stealing my mom's roaches at the time.

I showed up to dinner one night really stoned

and she didn't want to call me on it

because she didn't know how to handle that situation.

My uncle called me out on it

and said, "Why are your eyes glazed over?"

My response was,

"Er, it's the cat." Cos I'm allergic to cats.

That was the only thing I could come up with

and they knew it was bullshit but they let it slide.

Things were going really well.

I'm sure all... many farmers have the same pride.

But I had rules.

I ran this operation as a legit business.

Whoa, whoa, that's really strong.

Everything had to be accounted for.

No... All the weed had to go from inventory to being booked

and there could be no missing links.

She's a good business woman.

She's an extremely smart person.

You know, she knows business.

But nobody was becoming millionaires.

Nobody was taking any vacation.

With most homes,

you have to have a two income.

You know, it was hard for me to afford

the mortgage and everything on this with just one income.

We'd been operating for about three years when

I walked in on a black market deal being done by my brother.

And I exploded.

My Irish temper exploded.

I exploded because I blew up.

That night he pretty much

physically threw me out the front door.

I literally watched my uncle grab my mom by the neck

and force her out of the house

and I don't understand that.

There was no violence between us.

There was no, you know...

We don't raise our hands to each other,

we're not that kind of people.

We're mouthy.

My brother took a bat to my knees

and my family graded my howls.

I have my principles and I have my rules

and she has her principles and her rules and they were colliding.

And... And I say tough, my house.

I didn't think of it as much of a disagreement.

I looked at it as these are my rules.

My house, my rules.

Live with it, you know, or don't.

Christine, she didn't get the support from the family,

you know, when we had our disagreement.

And they all took my side.

Now my family's telling me,

"Leave your children, you'll be fine. It didn't work out."

"It was the weed business.

You should've known the weed business would not work out."

I told her...

She would be the witch, she usually is.

- That's right. -What a nice mother.

Suddenly, I was homeless.

Walking downtown Merced with no home

and looking up at the buildings

that are being air conditioned and heated and the lights are on

and, seriously, I have no place to stay.

It was a sudden realisation

of what homeless people really deal with.

It was a little rough going.

It was rough going, more for her than it was for me,

cos I was still in the house.

She was just living, basically, almost on the street, kind of thing.

My mom was going through depression

and that's why I've learned in the face of trouble,

a lot of times the people closest to you

are the ones that'll hurt you the most.

The betrayal of a family.

I realised that my whole thinking,

how I thought about my family, was built on a fallacy.

Those values I was raised with,

they don't exist.

They never really loved me.

They loved the reflection of themselves in my eyes.

Nobody had it in them

to go see after that fight if she was OK,

except for me.

And at first it was all about

trying to make sure my mom was safe and stable

because she always makes sure that I'm safe and stable.

I can't do shit without her.

And during this time, we were trying to find out

where our next meal was gonna come from or where we were gonna sleep.

I was hungry,

I was not thinking about going to class, obviously,

because I need to get fed, I'm thirsty.

We had a legitimate, very serious discussion about suicide,

the two of us.

Betrayal is too huge.

I absolutely thought about suicide every day,

that really I need to go be with the angels where it's safe

because this place is just too freaking scary.

We had discussions about maybe we should do it with pills,

cos, you know, pills... Vicodin, it won't be painful.

And then we're like, "We have no money.

We can't even afford pills."

And eventually I thought about it

and I managed to

sort of talk her out of the idea.

Because at first, I was like, "Fuck, yeah!"

The only thing that kept me from doing that

is that the sense that they would've won.

Then my children were truly without their mother.

After four months of homelessness,

my mother agreed to help me, finally.

So she had to co-sign for me, I had no job.

I was 56 years old

and being treated like a 17 year old trying to get a house.

So I had to take my mother's help

to get a house.

For $1,000 a month,

I could rent a little house by the railroad tracks.

2015, at about two o'clock in the morning,

I get a knock on my door

and a young gentleman asked me for help.

A home invasion robbery in Merced County,

has left a man dead and two others wounded.

Deputies said the intruders wanted marijuana

but ended up in a gun battle with the homeowners.

Somebody that was out of my sight ripped the door open

and forced their way into my house.

My son heard all the ruckus

and he came out of his bedroom back there

with a .22 rifle that he has never shot,

opened up fire on 'em.

Killed the guy that I was fighting with, put five rounds into him,

but caught my finger in the... gun shooting.

Investigators believe the suspects picked this place

because it's been known for medical marijuana dispensary

which is prohibited in Merced County.

Jeez, how much...?

You know, I look at it as, sometimes you have to take it

as signs from the universe

that you're doing something that you shouldn't be doing.

How many times have you heard,

"I should be able to do what I want to do with my body?"

I hear that all the time.

Well, then go live in a cave,

because when you become addicted,

everybody in your family's affected.

Your neighbour next door

got to deal with your addiction

and your whole community.

When you become addicted to marijuana,

you don't only ruin your life

but you ruin the lives of many other people

at the same time.

In Merced County,

you're not allowed to have a cannabis business.

You are allowed to have 12 plants

for personal use.

But they don't have a way of permitting you

or licensing you for doing a business.

I took my 12 personal plants

and started making oils and lotion

and began selling them around the world,

although I didn't have a licence

for doing business in my home.

So I was dancing around the cottage industry laws

and the personal cannabis grow right laws,

knowing that I was pushing boundaries.

And it's the county sheriff who sets those boundaries.

I have to get stoned if I'm gonna listen to him.

From Merced County's Community.

We are your voice,

Merced County News Television.

Now, here's Diana Perez

with Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke.

We've got gangsters

that have married each other,

that raised gangster kids

and a lot of times when we have the homicides,

there's an outside influence,

whether it be in gangs or substance abuse.

And a lot of the substance abuse is illegal narcotics.

We are gonna be actively and aggressively going after 'em.

What we have to do

is get into the lives of some of these people.

Cannabis, as far as I'm concerned,

can be very dangerous.

We have an epidemic nationwide.

And it's people just wanting to get high

and I don't understand it.

They're non-productive,

they're leeching off of society

and the few people that

aren't doing the drugs

are the ones working and holding down a job,

and paying the taxes,

to subsidise those drug users' lives.

How would you like to have your surgeon

just before you go on open heart surgery

sitting outside the hospital

grabbing a joint,

smoking it and saying, "Yeah, I'm alright!"?

But that's what people... "Oh, it's alright."

Well, really if it's that alright, would you want that to happen?

How would you like the two pilots up in the 747

as they're flying smoking the stuff?

Well, if it's alright, then it's alright.

How 'bout the cops showing up at your house?

How would you like them stoned out of their gourd

while they're trying to enforce these laws

and do the right thing and make the right decision?

Anybody that's wanting to do something

should be doing it legal and the government

is here to protect citizens.

But the bottom line is, the amount of gang marijuana

that's growing, it's unreal.

There's a county to our north

that has actually declared a state of emergency

with regard to the epidemic.

And if our numbers keep going up,

that'll be one of my next moves too.

Some officers take it upon themselves

to come in on their days off to help eradicate this

because they also know that it's a problem.

So this place that we're going now,

there's a gentleman that's wanted on felony warrants.

The last time that he was contacted

here by his probation officer,

they located several large illegally grown marijuana plants.

He's not very cooperative with law enforcement.

I'm afraid what the local growers are gonna do

is thinking they're being raided by other bad guys.

Make no mistake, the gangs will shoot at the cops.

-OK, these are 12 plants here though? - Yeah.

Alright, you know that this is one parcel of land, right?

- I know that. -OK.

-We've been doing it for about four years. -OK, so what's gonna happen

is between both grows, we can only have 12.

So you might have to go six and six.

This is one parcel of land

and this is where we run into our problem.

We have two different peoples growing on one property.

So it's only 12 plants per parcel.

So we have 12 plants being grown there to maximise the limit

and now I think we have an illegal grow over here as well.

-So this one over here is? - I don't know whose that is.

We don't know whose grow over here?

-I'm not sure. -Do you know about how many plants--

I don't know what's over there. I don't go back there.

Three years ago,

this county was number one for population

for the amount of homicides.

It was a lot of gang-related homicides.

There is a problem and it's horrible.

Sheriff's department!

Obviously, they're hiding it

behind a bunch of boxes.

So typically this is our,

one of the small outdoor grows, 24 plants.

But with the 12 there's 36.

And we've hit grows before

where people have put their life savings

into growing marijuana

and we've come out and done what we're supposed to do,

enforce the law,

left them with 12 plants and they've been literally in tears

because they sunk their life savings

into an endeavour that's really,

there's a lot of grey area to it.

The problem is, right,

it's not just being used for medicinal purposes.

So when you are responsible for an entire county

and you have something in your county

that spurs home invasion, robberies, homicides,

violence, gang activity,

you almost have to be of the mindset

that it's zero tolerance, I want it out.

But we're doing everything we can to help combat it

and I will take their product

and I will take it to the dump

and I will cite them into court.

By the end of the week,

we're dumping probably five to 8,000 pounds.

So that's what goes to the landfill every Friday.

Sometimes, we'll hit a house that's so big

we can't even fit it all in one trailer,

we have to come back.

Medicinal marijuana has been legal in California for a while.

To me, it's a rouse

to get it to the final point

where recreational marijuana use is gonna be there.

And it came out to 1,180 pounds.

That's how much we dumped.

Multiply that by 1,000, $1.1 million.

We take action on anyone that breaks the law.

If you're producing criminal cannabis products,

that's punishable by fine,

erm, or local imprisonment.

As we get nearer to fall,

the cops are out and looking and ripping the plants

and even though we don't sell on the black market

and even though we have no THC,

they could come rip our plants.

Yeah, it was an illegal shop.

You can't sell, period.

Right now, I don't have a licence

to grow more than 12 plants.

So what makes it illegal

is that we do not authorise

any type of marijuana

dispensaries in Merced County, period.

Even though we're not a dispensary,

we're always at risk of their showing up

and ripping out thousands of dollars of plants.

Because we're on the route back to the sheriff's dump,

they like to stop in front of our house

with truckloads of weed

just to show us what they just ripped

and to ask me if I want to make a contribution.

My crop will be under threat.

You're gonna convince me

that those 12 plants are for single use.

You'd have to smoke that stuff non-stop every day

and you still couldn't.

When they start getting into these multiple plants,

the only reason they're doing it is because they're selling it, OK?

So the bottom line is,

I've been tasked with a job

and I take it very seriously.

But we're just gonna grow it and take our chances.

So are you guys OK

if we just plant 'em randomly around the property

where maybe the sheriffs won't notice 'em?

Yeah, I don't mind.

We could plant one over there, over here.

I mean, they won't be our great plants but they'll be extra bonus plants.

And the worst the sheriff's gonna do is rip 'em out, right?

So we just got to make sure that if he counts 'em,

that we're, like, take that one and take that one.

I mean, technically, we could get a $1,000 fine.

But if they don't notice all our plants,

-one plant's worth what, three grand? - Yeah.

So I think it's a business risk we should take.

There's a seed of being somewhere in here.

Look at the sunlight right there behind the gazebo.

Is there somewhere back there

that we could poke 'em?

And then we'll hide some more. We'll hide the babies.

Like, find spots where the sun hits.

I'm willing to risk it if you guys are willing to risk it.

OK, so we'll get these in the ground.

-And I'm gonna get the abbey ready. -Alright.

At one point, conventional wisdom

was that the Earth is flat.

At one point, conventional wisdom

was that women had smaller brains than men.

So conventional wisdom is that cannabis is bad.

The whole issue is testing the nation.

Our business is testing the boundaries of the law.

And our right to grow this medicine

and do what we're doing, support ourselves.

Don't try and blow a smoke-screen up

and tell me you've got this wonderful product

and you have to do all these other things to sell it.

Don't think for a minute

a habit's gonna slow me down in prosecution

cos that won't, so...

Without the official licences, we won't be able to grow.

We need a licence,

we need to be fully legal

in order to grow the business.

So your biggest obstacle is maybe

right now the way law enforcement looks at it

and maybe you're always looking over your shoulder

-for that bust maybe coming down on you. -Yes, yes, yes, we're scared.

We've never been legitimised.

And so how can I say to an olive farmer,

"Yes, it's perfectly safe to play with us

and we'll make more jobs together,"

when we don't have our conditional use permit

and it's been 18 months?

Mm-hm.

You're a defence attorney

so you've spent a lot of time

keeping people out of jail for cannabis in your career.

Do you think they would charge someone like me

with selling?

Do you think they would?

Well... A-hem!

If you were classified...

They classify what you're selling

as in that... as a controlled substance.

If they was to submit that classification,

then, yeah, they wouldn't have a problem charging you at all.

Merced County really doesn't want it.

Marijuana never had really that legitimacy,

certainly not in the 20th century.

And it got caught up in the counter-culture

and associated with opposition to the Vietnam War.

And so you couldn't get to a point

where you could really debate,

"Well, does this have medical application?"

Effectively, there are two well-known components

in the cannabis plant,

THC and CBD.

The science behind it gets everyone confused.

Hello, my name is Dr. David Allen.

I'm a retired cardiac surgeon and member

of the International Cannabinoid Research Society, ICRS.

That means I'm a cannabinoid research scientist.

The difference between THC and CBD

is what they bind to.

THC binds onto the receptors, CB1 receptor,

that actually gets you high.

CBD works by different mechanisms than THC.

CBD binds on to CB2 receptors.

It also binds on to opioid receptors,

serotonin receptors

and dopamine receptors.

In the future, cannabis will be used to stop cancers,

it will be used to stop strokes and heart attacks,

to stop diabetes,

to stop seizures

and a multitude of other diseases.

This is the model-T

era of this science.

I harvested my first CBD crop in April

and I could see that already this was gonna sell out.

So I had to get a CBD crop.

Things have changed so much in the last three, four years,

but three years ago,

no one in California was growing CBD.

I couldn't buy it from Oregon, CBD.

There wasn't such a thing. No one was doing CBD.

So to get CBD,

I got three men together who were growers,

one a Mexican guy bought this land.

This creepy, ghost ridden,

abandoned fire house

from ages gone by.

You can see that the tweakers camped out

and shot up their needles

like little heroin den parks

within this property.

I bought the gun

and I was responsible

for having the crop guarded.

My son Alex wanted a car.

So if he took his two nights a week guarding the crop,

at the end, he would get a car.

Which... You did get a car, didn't you?

-I did. -So that part worked.

But I knew Alex couldn't do it alone

so that's when I asked Zane.

I was just thinking like, I'm just gonna hang out,

watch some plants and if people come by,

they see somebody's gonna be there and they're gonna leave, right?

We had 60 plants at this point

that were worth about $60,000.

Another month would've taken that crop

from being worth 60K to 240K.

That last month is when you get all of the grow and the volume.

We were gonna get a quarter million dollar crop.

We were taking turns staying in the RV.

One night at about five o'clock,

-the dog started making noise.

I hear the alarms go off and the dogs barking

and I get up and I go out and I see a guy with a mask

and I yell at him, "Hey!"

And he just looks up at me and then says, "You're not supposed to be here."

I was like, "No! Hey, get the fuck out of here." Right?

And he just looks back up at me again

and then goes down to pulling the weed, right?

Zane just picked up the gun

and boom, shot at right at where the guy was.

-And he just moves over a couple of feet

-and goes back down to pulling weed.

So Zane shot in front of him.

But this guy...

Stopped and ran this way.

So Zane shot in back of him.

I think I shot off like three or four rounds

before he's like, "Oh shit, OK,

how do I get out of here? How do I get out of here?"

Zane pointed through the cactus.

He gave him one route and could hear him yelling.

Then he hops off the fence and takes off and leaves.

So I got a hold of all the partners involved in this deal and said,

"Come on, we got to take the crop out, someone's gonna get killed."

-And they didn't want to. -I don't know what we were thinking.

We should've left immediately but we don't.

I would've left running out of there

as soon as the first bullet rang.

We just put up more cameras, more alarms,

and some boards with nails in 'em.

It's my turn to come out here that night

at eleven o'clock and guard the place.

I was afraid to go alone

so I asked Zane to go back with me.

It was like five o'clock in the morning,

I hear the alarm go off.

As soon as I heard the dogs rustling, I said, it's show-time, Zane.

Put my shoes on, grabbed the gun.

Two bullets went under my bed.

Bullets just start--

Boom, boom, boom,

Tried to put bullets in the propane tank.

They were trying to just blow us up in a few shots.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Glass shattering in all the vehicles,

glass shattering in the RV.

One bullet went right past my mom's head.

They really intended to kill us.

I got somebody unloading.

Riddling our RV with bullets.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

A bullet come through the RV

and skimmed right past his nose.

I'm out of bullets because this fucking gun has only got

five fucking bullets in it. It's the worst fucking gun ever.

I can't believe she bought this piece of shit gun.

It's pitch black.

I got to load these fucking bullets by hand.

The gunmen shooting us

were a cover for somebody else stealing the plants.

I hear a bunch of noise rumbling.

He shot towards the plants.

I hate to shoot like this cos I don't know where I'm shooting.

The two scream, "Call it off, we're gonna get killed!"

The bullets stop shooting.

"This is an emergency, guns, it's bad!"

Pretending she's on the phone with 911.

"We need everybody here!" Give him the address, but...

-I was talking into dead space. -She's talking to freaking nobody.

What Zane said is you can stop

your Academy Award winning performance

because they were gone and I didn't know it.

I called everybody I knew who had a gun

and offering $100 to come help me get my crop out.

We weren't about to leave empty-handed

because we spent all summer growing those.

Take the crop down

for the course of the next six hours.

They were absolutely gorgeous,

they tasted delicious,

they smelled beautiful, very potent.

I hear the Nightgrower hollering to the men,

that it's all done, get in your vehicles, we're going.

He didn't wanna be there any longer than he had to be.

I had to say, "Hey, if you want to collect your pay today

those of you who work for me,

you don't go anywhere

until we collect every last leaf, every last stick."

I want them to be shocked like a rapture

where everything goes up in the air, I wanted it to be like that.

We didn't leave them a single leaf.

My daughter was the worst

because she cried when she found out

and she really tried to convince me

that my rails have gone off the track,

that when I'm in shoot-outs in the cannabis business,

it is time to retire.

If you don't do your homework at the get-go,

shit like that, it's always gonna happen.

The Nightgrower was so angry at me

and it took a few days before I got to understand

that he was all about our safety

and I was all about my ridiculous rapture

and showing those thieves who's boss.

What I would like is a better gun.

Or some better security, really some better security.

Who needs the shoot-out?

Even if you do shoot somebody and get shot in the process,

who needs all that?

If guns got to honestly be involved,

the way I see it is, basically, don't even do it.

I've seen a lot of dumb shit

happen to people over the years, basically.

You can't just go to any place to be thinking,

"Ah, it's a good spot,"

until you do your homework completely on it, you know?

You got to see who the neighbours are,

see what the history of the place is, first of all.

If you don't do your homework right,

you'll get murdered, yeah.

We really needed the money

but we decided to not ever do that again.

Words cannot express the amount of stress we went through.

Too many sleepless nights.

Obviously we never called the cops

but they began taking much more notice of us after that.

And now I assume we are all under surveillance.

Now I assume that every one of my phone calls

is being monitored.

-Hi. I'm Kate. -Hi.

-Are you here because the gun? -Yes.

Please, come with me.

I assume that our emails are being read

and that we're even being followed.

That's my cell

and then if you want an alternate, it's the same first six digits

and the end is 6003.

And that's our office main number here

if you're wanting to call me on a cell phone or something.

Of course, they never find anything incriminating

but every time they do come,

I have to wonder if this'll be the time

that it all comes crashing down.

Marijuana, cannabis, pot,

it causes high paranoia.

You think people are chasing you,

you think people are watching you.

That's one of the effects of the drugs.

Why in the world

would anyone want to live under suspicion

that the cops are watching you in the trees?

I don't take any pills.

I believe in holistic medicine.

I work with the plant

and my daytime job is a sacred calling to healing.

But the only doctors that would refer cannabis patients

in this county, because it was so conservative,

were dying patients, seizure patients,

bed-ridden patients.

They had to be, like, on the edge before a doctor would recommend cannabis.

Not only did we end up delivering cannabis to sick people

but their Medi-Cal wouldn't pay for it

and once you have a dying person on your radar,

you don't make them suffer. So we were delivering cannabis for free.

And then if we didn't hear from them,

we would wonder, "Did they die?"

We'd call 'em, "No, but I don't have any money."

Well, that's ridiculous.

We're sending somebody over right now with cannabis.

Those were the years that turned me into a sister.

Those years turned me into a nun.

But wearing the habit?

That started a few years earlier.

After we all got robbed in the financial crisis,

along came the Occupy Movement,

standing up and saying we will not

accept the status quo.

When the Occupy Movement broke out,

I was like, "Huh, I've found my family!

There's other Americans that are pissed off."

I thought that was the coolest thing.

We decided.

We decided.

That we would continue the blockade.

That we would continue the blockade.

I turned to my children and said,

"We need to join the Occupy Movement."

And all the kids said, "We'll go to occupy with you Saturday

if you go as a nun."

So it sort of started on a dare.

People would say, "Marching doesn't do any good."

They need to really read their history.

Susan B. Anthony, the women's rights, the black rights,

Rosa Parks, nothing ever happened

until people got angry and got out and started fighting back

and that's what I see what's happening, we're defending ourselves.

So I went around for a while as Sister Occupy

and because I had been so deeply betrayed

by the man of 17 years and my family,

the betrayal was so huge...

that it essentially gave me the courage

to do something I really wanted to do,

which was do something completely radical and nuts

like form a real sisterhood.

That sort of made me go, "You know what?

You think I'm so bad cos I'm in the weed business

that I deserve homelessness?

You know what? I'm done with you people. I need to build my own family."

People would obviously ask me, "Are you a Catholic nun?"

"No, I'm not a Catholic nun." "Well, what kind of nun are you?"

"I'm a self-declared, self-empowered,

anarchist, activist nun."

"Well, that's so cool, can I join you?"

"No, you don't get it. I'm not trying to recruit. This is just my statement."

But they would say, "Here's my number, I would join you."

So that was pretty much the response I got everywhere I went.

Before long, I was surrounded

by these incredible like-minded women

who believe in rebelling against the system

and who believe in the healing powers

of the cannabis plant.

I feel like we've all been brought here

for a purpose, for a cause.

Most people, I think, at least in my circle,

knew that there was some kind of medicine to the plant.

It wasn't just like, "Let's smoke this plant and get high," you know.

I think most people that were coming through

have a hard life.

One thing I appreciate about Sister Kate is she wants to help those people.

She wants to find their gift and help them.

Your family heals you.

And the cohesiveness of the family

and the choice of having your family empowers you.

We just want to spread our joy and what we've found

with everybody else, you know?

Sorry, I'm like...

Cannabis plant has done so much for me.

I became a nun about six months ago.

She's a great role model

and I like how spiritual she is

and I like what she has going here.

So I like her mission.

Growing up, I actually developed an eating disorder

which led me to my use of cannabis.

So if I don't smoke cannabis, I cannot eat.

I think it's when I found out

a bunch of bad things were happening in my family

that I wasn't told.

So I feel like I was kind of taught to have this disorder

because we've all been just thrown around by our families.

So the cannabis plant has all brought us together.

All of the sisters are going to Mendocino

to see the weed grow operation.

We are serious women

on a serious mission.

My goal is that we actually spread like the Catholic nuns

spread across the planet

but we have the weed nuns spreading across the planet.

Wednesday night coffee ban.

That's Miss Laurie to deal with the haters,

Freya and Cassidy to deal with the product

and the basket and the sales.

Weed is like honey, local is best.

You should have locally grown weed

by the hands of local women.

From the people that hate us,

we want them to come out and talk about it.

Plant-based medicine, plant-based diet, Mother Earth.

This is what we are about.

This is our religion.

Our healing powers are our weapon.

There's a global cannabis awareness margin

and I would really love it

if you guys would figure out

what protest you want to go to that day

and then maybe Jamie you go with them.

I remember when she called me and said,

"OK, I know what I'm gonna call it,

I'm gonna call it Sisters of the Valley."

And she was so excited,

cos she went down to City Hall or wherever you go

to actually make it official.

I think it'll be fun.

It's like a second chance.

You've got a second chance at life.

This is exciting.

Most people are smoking

because they want to get high.

They're not smoking marijuana

because they're sick.

We have statistics that tell us two percent,

only two percent of individuals

that have the medical marijuana card really need them.

If you continue going down

this road of destruction,

it will cost you your very soul.

What we do is grow cannabis

that contains high levels of CBD

and very low levels of THC.

So, ladies, do you want to take these?

I'm gonna cut 'em.

After three to six months, we harvest the crops.

This one is gonna give THC

but we won't be able to cut it down.

Dry them out for a couple of weeks.

We bless the sacred kitchen space.

Bless these hands that touch the oil,

bless these hands for they must toil.

Then we heat up the coconut oil.

Add the CBD cannabis.

Cook it for three to four hours.

Filter it.

Add essential oils.

Then bottle it, label it.

And when we get the orders online,

we send it out in the post.

The cops don't seem to have an issue with cannabis that's only CBD.

This makes a very healing tea, the sticks.

The problem is no one would be able to tell the difference

between a CBD plant and a THC plant.

This, for example,

is five percent THC and 11% CBD.

So we can't sell this

because it's too high,

but if you smoke it, you'll like it.

The question I pose to you

is that she's trying to sell a product as medicine.

What pharmaceutical background,

what medical background does she have

that can actually say that this heals anything?

I don't believe for a minute that it heals anything.

They're drug dealers

and they're trying to say that it's medicine.

You know they're lying.

If this is really that magical stuff,

I haven't seen any evidence

in our pharmaceuticals in this country.

Why aren't they harvesting this?

If it's really there,

why aren't they doing it?

They want to get high.

So why do they use any drug? They want to get high.

There's multiple medical studies

about the efficacy of cannabidiol.

No one really knows the full extent of what it does

because it acts on so many things, it's maddening

and it's kind of the reason

why people don't understand

why does this one thing

work for all these diseases?

They got to be faking it.

But the truth is,

there's almost no disease that you can name

that isn't helped by cannabis.

I've had Bell's palsy.

Your face gets droopy,

you lose sensation of your eye,

you lose sensation of your face.

I did the CBD oil and the CBD salve.

In two weeks, I was almost back to normal.

For me, it's a lifesaver.

Most of the cancer patients I see smoking marijuana,

they end up dying eventually.

We are technically illegal here

because to run a business on your property,

you have to have a conditional use permit from the county.

We have never been issued a conditional use permit

by the county.

I was determined to not let THC cannabis laws

stop me from distributing

non-THC products.

What do you want to do?

Let's just say,

you get some local corporation dispensaries go up,

everything starts rolling.

What's your goal with this? Where do you want to take it?

To me, we'll have made it

if we could create like 10,000 or 20,000 good jobs

-here in the Central Valley. -Wouldn't that be nice?

We could use those, big time.

Do you know we're the most depressed community in the state?

I think the Central Valley

should be the leading

CBD exporter in the world.

So there's probably no limit

to how Sisters of the Valley

could have a serious, serious industry

here in the Central Valley.

We have applied for a conditional use permit

from the county.

If Merced County could,

they would outlaw all cannabis,

all cannabis grow operations,

all cannabis deliveries,

because the old guard

is still making all the rules.

Like most of America,

the state of California is very religious.

There are over 50 churches in Merced County alone.

And it's so funny here that everybody grows.

Cos the girl behind the desk...

I'm getting an extra room

and then she says, "Do you mind if I ask

what kind of nuns you are?" So I tell her.

And then she goes, "Oh, my God, would you bless my pot crop?"

This is the receptionist behind the desk.

The public have gotten angry at us

when they thought we were Catholic nuns.

I kind of don't get why anybody would be offended.

We're more Native American, in Beguine, we have our Beguine m others

and they're more Earth mothers and plant mothers.

Not that we don't believe in a creator God

but we don't follow necessarily the Christian principles.

-We're just worried about... -Then how can you call yourself nuns?

We don't, we call ourselves sisters.

Weed nuns was a handle that was given to us.

-We're sisters. -See you. God bless.

In our beliefs,

we've put our number one belief

is organising our lives

by the moon cycles and the quarters of the year.

Our number two belief

is in being compassionate with other people on the planet.

OK, but that's not our debate.

So we totally respect your beliefs. We would never--

Because the definition of a sister, of a nun,

is they live together,

they work together,

they pray together and they take vows.

We live together, we work together--

We pray together and we take vows. That is not our discussion.

We will not have the discussion about Jesus Christ.

But I mean...

We're not practising.

We're not walking the walk of Jesus.

So we don't want to have that debate.

That's your debate, that's your domain.

We're very humble farm women who make medicine

and give it to the people.

Nice to meet you, pastor.

It is important to have a spiritual element.

People's souls need it.

Even though I was raised Catholic,

I didn't really care what happened at church on Sunday.

That was the least of it.

I've been practising my own spiritual practises

since I was like seven years old.

Our order follows the Beguines,

who were the first organised nurses

in the castles of Europe in the Middle Ages.

Interestingly enough, there's a strong connection

between the beliefs of the Beguines

and those of the Native Americans of this land.

Keep us humble and keep us strong.

We need structure, tradition

and we need service in our life.

Amen.

We overdid individual freedom.

We have to step back to a balance

and obligation to the tribe.

For Sister Kate,

I thank you for all that you do.

The Native Americans have been working

with the cannabis plant for centuries.

David the Elder comes to our ceremonies.

We have a special connection between the sisters and the natives.

Share each other's talk and share each other's words.

There is no differences.

We're all the same, we're all one people.

They're medicine people

and I come to visit the medicine people.

When I've got an "owich" and I can't go to my medicine people,

then I'll go to the conventional place called a hospital.

But this is my new hospital.

So this is a form of my drug store.

Merced County is really poor

which is why having a legit cannabis business here

is necessary and good

because of the jobs we create.

But there's also a lot of crime here

and, of course, there's a lot of addicts here

using heroin and meth and God knows what else.

I suppose it's not surprising

that it was only a matter of time

before these problems reached our own family's doorstep.

After my mom finally got settled

and we finally didn't really have to worry,

that's when my guard came down

and that's when I broke down

and started looking for an escape

and eventually turned to drugs.

Let me see it again.

Ooh.

I was messing around with this white powder.

It was some white crystally stuff.

OK, here, Mommy's gonna do some.

And put 'em here and now I dry 'em off.

It didn't matter at the time. It was something that made me feel good.

Alex, you got to dry 'em off with your towel and throw 'em on the pan.

When my mom did find out that it was crystal meth,

she freaked.

Alex looked like a 14 year old.

He went from being a big, buff, workout guy

to being a scrawny little meth-addicted nut-bag.

Alex, what you doing?

She asked me if I wanted to go off to rehab

and at first,

it freaked me out

because I knew at the time it felt like I knew

I would never be happy again.

Have you been a good boy, Alex?

Yes.

When?

When were you good?

Say all the time, Dad.

A recovery clinic cost about

$15,000 for 30 days.

Hadn't talked to his father in years.

His father had health insurance and I did not.

Show Mom.

- What'd you get? -Show Mom. Hold it up so she can see.

And I remember I had to sit on the phone

with his father every night.

We'd been in battle all these decades

but I got him to agree to pay for Alex's recovery.

Don't be a smart alec.

So like any good addict would do,

I went and bought a big bag of dope

the night before I had to go to rehab.

-Look, Dad! Look what I got. - What you got?

And attempted to overdose.

And that night, my heart was starting to shut down

and beat slower and slower

and I was starting to fall asleep

on a very high concentration of meth.

Which... You're just dying.

I could feel it happening, so I had to force myself

to stay up throughout the whole night and the only way I could do that

was staying posted up against the wall.

Or else, cos if I was sitting right here,

I would literally nod off.

Oh, are you getting sleepy?

It was scary.

Say, "Give me my darn bottle. I just want it."

Go to bed.

Eventually, ended up in rehab and a halfway home.

Six days after I came back from rehab, I did relapse.

I had a kid who was just in horrible shape.

Freya, she said, all of the programmes

with recovering meth addicts fail.

She said, you're an experimental kind of woman,

experiment.

You're locked in jail, what'd you do?

And that's when she decided to just take my cell phone,

take the keys to the van,

take everything and put me on house arrest for an extended period of time.

The only thing I get is

food, gym and weed.

Unlimited weed.

What happened?

For six months, she did that

until she was confident enough that I could go other places.

When people hear "drug addict", they think junkie, user,

somebody who just doesn't want to be clean,

but they don't understand a lot of us

really, really want it and just need help.

You love your kid?

Give your kid a safe environment

and let him come out of his depression on his own.

Upwards of 20 or $30,000

for a month in rehab,

but I think it's worth it because I'm now clean

and not spending that 30,000 on dope.

We're trying to walk a more compassioned, enlightened line.

I think we're seeing really good results with Alex's recovery.

My mom definitely saved my life. She was really the only one there for me

and willing to help me out.

I am so grateful

that I got to take the compassionate route.

Just days after recreational marijuana sales

began in California,

the attorney general's decision

could dampen the spark

that ignited the pot industry's massive growth.

Today, Jeff Sessions

rescinded an Obama administration policy

which largely shielded legalised marijuana

from federal intervention

allowing prosecutors to enforce federal law

that prohibits pot sales.

I have empowered our prosecutors

to charge and pursue the most serious offence

as I believe the law requires.

These are drug dealers

and you drug dealers are going to prison.

I think it's pretty clear right now

that our federal government is a joke.

It matters to the point that we care,

cos we don't want them busting in

and taking away anything.

So we care in that we have to respect it.

If the federal government decided to shut us down,

if they decided they were gonna shut down all hemp growers,

then, yes, that would be catastrophic.

It could be the end of the Sisters of the Valley.

According to the federal government,

heroin and methamphetamine

have certain medical applications.

So marijuana is perceived,

at least by the government, to be more harmful,

but the number of people who died

from marijuana overdose this year,

and it's zero, and it always has been zero.

You're saying that heroin and methamphetamine

is OK and marijuana isn't.

Well, what is that based on?

A real analytical assessment of the harm?

Because it can't be.

I think, ironically,

we will do a better job of policing marijuana in this state

once it's legal than the failed effort over decades

to address it through the criminal courts.

...to serve the public search warrant.

So many people think that they've got the answer.

If we just legalise it and... plain and simple,

we won't have the problems.

Yes, you will.

We're gonna have these problems.

It's just because of the nature of the beast,

because it's so lucrative,

because the amount of money invested in growing this stuff

is really not that much.

And when you can go from seedling

to cultivation in 90 days,

that's a lot of product.

I'm kind of worried about all of us here.

This is the season where people start creeping up on the property.

So right now we're pretty exposed.

At the end of the day,

you can either get robbed by thieves

or you're gonna get messed with by the police.

If they were to come for you

and they find out what your permit says, you're in trouble.

I'm scared of the sheriff

and I'm scared of the police.

They come and they take your shit.

You just lost your whole year that you did.

All that you worked on, gone.

Looks like nobody's here.

Probably they're in the middle of,

er, maybe a switch-out,

or somebody coming to check on it,

maybe they check on it every other day, every couple of days.

And that's the finished product.

Pretty good quality.

You can see the THC on there in the crystal form,

the purple look that they like to it.

This house could probably turn out

about one and a half million

a year, illegally,

with two-stage grows every 60 days.

Do you think that that could ever happen to Sister Kate,

that she'll get raided?

Yeah, I absolutely I think it could happen to her.

I don't know what would make

Sister Kate exempt from it.

It'll be an interesting case if they do raid her.

Maybe that's what it will take

to bring this whole thing in the light

and start the action

on what it's gonna take

to legislate the difference

and make the distinction in the law.

Sheriff Warnke, he keeps saying that we're bringing in

high THC into the county and we're lying about it.

So I just wanted to show you what we go through.

Underneath here are test results from SC Labs.

If somebody was getting high off of our products,

we would've been shut down at the federal level a long time ago.

And so these are what somebody needs to know exist.

-I'm gonna make copies of these. -Sure.

I'm gonna show these to Vern Warnke, our sheriff.

Thank you. I knew somebody would speak reason here.

He's one of the sceptics that you're gonna have to deal with.

I was determined to get the most amount of CBD

to the most amount of people.

So we sort of hired Will and his company to go in

and deal with them to get our permit.

Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.

In this case, we hired lobbyists

because we don't want to lose our business.

We have too much to lose now.

We've been dealing with the local officials

and meeting with them on her behalf.

We'd like to have them accept a pilot programme

that would only be for

non-psychoactive CBD cultivation.

We have learned how to cross-breed marijuana plants

to produce either high THC plants

or high CBD with very little THC,

stuff that wouldn't really get anyone high.

It is non-psychoactive medicine

for people who have debilitating diseases.

So that's what we're doing,

we're talking to the five supervisors trying to change the law.

Hiring suits to deal with the suits,

that's a little unorthodox but that's what we did.

It's now time for a public opportunity to speak.

Testimony is limited to three minutes per person.

As you know, I appeared a few weeks ago to represent the Sisters of the Valley

who produce non-psychoactive products from marijuana.

And we think a pilot programme would be a wonderful chance

for your staff to supervise a community development agreement

that would grant a conditional use.

We're an open book,

please regulate us, please tax us

-and I thank you for your time.

Next.

You're gonna talk and Freya's gonna talk.

Listen, I had an old Native American man tell me

about four years ago when I started this,

you've already realised your power with words

but you have not yet realised your power of silence.

So I am planning to go there and be silent and you're gonna be my one gun,

you're gonna be my legal, logical gun

and Freya's gonna be my heart, compassionate, medicine gun

and I'm just gonna sit there and try not to say anything for two hours.

-Please do. -Which, by the way, is not easy for me.

The retail business would probably be valued

at around five million dollars right now.

So there's five million dollars to lose.

And that's where we are right now.

We have something to lose, so we care about the rules.

I don't believe that she'll be issued a permit

because that would open up a door for other producers

to import marijuana to the community.

And as far as I'm concerned,

I don't believe that she will be issued a permit.

If we got denied, that would be really bad for us.

We'd have to quit.

It's a mess, it is a total mess.

We're going to try to fight under state law

to get her the permit that she's due.

I think if we can get her that permit,

her future's bright.

It was good. I thought it was good.

I thought it was really good.

I thought they were extremely civilised and, like...

-Yes, I could deal. -You must be doing your job, dude,

because that was a real different meeting

than I was expecting. Is it what you were expecting?

Wow, like, all the grown-ups were assembled.

They wanted to let us know

that they're gonna allow THC delivery services in Merced.

What was surprising to me

is that they've all come around to the idea

that we're in the hemp business, right?

And they've all come around to the idea that we should be made legal here.

But it was really good that I did very little talking.

I mean, I did talk. I told you I was gonna talk.

Hold on to your habits, girls,

when I see Jamie hitting the gas.

She's bought her home and raised her kids here.

She wants to stay here

and give jobs to a struggling community,

the second poorest county in the state.

You know, the future of cannabis for our state

is pretty bright, I think.

If we want to have a meaningful impact

on distribution,

we have to get our products into all the stores

and all the pharmacies around the planet.

There's interest in the Sisters of the Valley globally.

The number of people that want to talk to us

just never seems to stop.

Oh, I am freaking out right now.

I've been looking forward to this for so long!

They call themselves Sisters of the Valley.

Sisters of the Valley.

They are in the business

of helping people in pain.

Our sisterhood requires us to take the time

to teach the world about CBD and cannabis.

Bring outside money and outside jobs

from the rest of the world

to the poor people of the Central Valley.

Had I not been completely broken down,

ass against the wall, not a cent,

old life completely stripped of me,

I may not have had the courage.

When people have everything taken away,

you should be scared,

cos they will do some radical shit.

It's an ancient tradition

that if you have a change in your life that's dramatic,

you take a new name.

Many of the sisters like the idea that they choose

that new name for this new life.

Christine is a woman that the family shit on.

Kate, don't shit on Kate.

♪ Hey fellas, I think you better listen ♪

♪ To what I've got to say ♪

♪ We ain't fooling, can't be losing ♪

♪ It's a different world today ♪

♪ So if you got a good girl ♪

♪ I say you'd better treat her right ♪

♪ Kiss her lips and hold her tight ♪

♪ It's a woman's world ♪

♪ You better believe it ♪

♪ Cos it's a woman's world ♪

♪ Every guy, you'd better gather round ♪

♪ Cos here's to an end you know ♪

♪ No fear or fate now, Josephine ♪

♪ I said boys on top of the world ♪

♪ And ever since that day ♪

♪ You thought the world went your way ♪

♪ So come on, fellas, hear what I say ♪

♪ It's a woman's world ♪

♪ You better believe it ♪

♪ It's a woman's world ♪

♪ We can't be foolish ♪

♪ Hey girls, let's stick together ♪

♪ Boys can't be ruling ♪

♪ Oh yeah, I call him once, he close the door ♪

♪ But this time, this time let him know ♪

♪ That it's a woman's world ♪

♪ Better believe it ♪

♪ It's a woman's world ♪

♪ Hey fellas, I'll tell you something ♪

♪ Love is here to stay ♪

♪ Because we wrote the pages to the Book of Love, 1768 ♪

♪ So if you've got a good girl ♪

♪ I say you'd better treat her right ♪

♪ Kiss her lips and hold her tight ♪

♪ It's a woman's world ♪

♪ You better believe it ♪

♪ It's a woman's world ♪

♪ It's a woman's world ♪

♪ You better believe it ♪

♪ It's a woman's world ♪

♪ What you see ♪

♪ It's a woman's world ♪

♪ People regret it ♪

♪ It's a woman's world ♪

♪ Change is coming ♪

♪ Woman's world ♪

♪ Whoo, yeah ♪

♪ It's a woman's world ♪

♪ Whoo, yeah ♪

♪ It's a woman's world ♪

♪ Whoo, yeah ♪

♪ Cos it's a woman's world, whoo ♪