High Price is a thrilling journey into chasing the American Dream during a brief window when it was open to anyone willing to take the risk: the Wild West days of California’s early medical marijuana markets. Luke Scarmazzo, a working-class kid from Modesto, California, started the first state-legal cannabis dispensary in the conservative Central Valley. From humble beginnings and hard work, it seemed Luke and his team of high school friends were on the verge of establishing generational wealth and getting in on the ground level of what would become a multi-billion dollar legal industry.
This page-turning tale chronicles the rise and tragic fall of Luke’s pioneering cannabis empire. Written from solitary confinement in a federal prison ten years later as a pardon languished on President Trump’s desk, High Price is a mature and poignant reflection on poverty, opportunity, and the devastation left in the wake of America’s War on Drugs.
Print: Amazon.com: High Price: The Luke Scarmazzo Story: 9798989016327: Scarmazzo, Luke: Books
E-Book: Amazon.com: High Price: The Luke Scarmazzo Story eBook : Scarmazzo, Luke: Kindle Store
We have been advocating for Lukes’s release for years now. Below you can read an article and an Interview we have published previously.
Enough is Enough – It’s Way Past Time to Free Luke Scarmazzo
Though a lot of us here in California look back on the Prop 215 era fondly, there is a common misconception that any of us who participated in the supply side of it was somehow protected by law as long as we adhered to the blurry set of guidelines that loosely bound that market.
In August of 2013, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States under former President Barack Obama James Cole drafted a missive to all state Attorneys General telling them, in essence, that if their state had passed any sort of medical marijuana laws, the federal government would not be expending resources in pursuing cannabis crimes in those states. This was what is now commonly referred to as The Cole Memo, and it has been reinstated every year since, though it has about as much teeth as a Tuscaloosa tweeker.
The Cole Memo set some people at ease, but California’s medical marijuana market was established in 1996 with the passage of Proposition 215 and bolstered in 2004 with Senate Bill 420, so there were several years where California’s legacy operators were truly in no-man’s-land, legally.
As we all know (some of us more than others), plenty of people got raided and plenty of people got locked up for their role in the world’s largest medical marijuana market because the cannabis plant was then, and still is now, a Schedule I substance at the federal level. So, whether you were in Cali’s MMJ market then, Cali’s rec market now, or any of the dozens of states with regulated medical and/or recreational marijuana markets these days, if the Feds start sniffing around your weed operation, the script can get flipped real quick.
That’s just what happened to a man named Luke Scarmazzo, a medical marijuana dispensary owner in Modesto, California in 2007-08.
Read the rest of the article here.
An Interview With Cannabis Prisoner Luke Scarmazzo After Serving Almost 15 years
If you have ever served any time in jail or prison, you will understand the importance of hearing your last name followed by the words “pack it up”.
We certainly do, and now after 14 long years, so does Luke Scarmazzo.
While on a call with Luke since his release two weeks ago, we spoke about how it must have been agonizing for him to go that long hearing friend after friend get released, while never knowing when his name might get called.
We have been advocates for Luke for many years now and we are ecstatic to see him finally free from his unjust prison sentence…for a plant.
Being locked up previously ourselves for cannabis, we understand completely the roller coaster of emotions that it puts you through. Which is why our questions for Luke were different than what he has probably answered previously.
Read our entire interview with Luke here.
About Luke Scarmazzo
Luke Scarmazzo is an entrepreneur and advocate for drug policy reform who served nearly 15 years in federal prison for opening a state-legal cannabis dispensary in California in the early 2000s. He is the author of High Price: The Luke Scarmazzo Story, hosts the podcast “Joint Forces with Luke Scarmazzo,” and speaks at public events and to the media nationwide, sharing his story and advocating for change.
