INTERVIEWER
Tell me about how you first started using
marijuana and why?
WILL FOSTER
I guess when I first started using marijuana I was
like most children, you know, I was in high school
... I smoked it occasionally at parties. I excelled in
high school. I was a star football player. I was
fullback, scored lots of touchdowns, played all
sports, passed, graduated high school. But, other
than that, I didn't use marijuana very much, until, I
guess, 1990 when I first started having problems
with arthritis and back pains.
INTERVIEWER
What happens when you use it?
WILL FOSTER
Well, basically, I used it as medicine. It wasn't
something ... every day. It wasn't something that I
had to have. I just smoked marijuana for the relief
of pain.
INTERVIEWER
So, when you started using it for your arthritis,
how were you getting it? Buying it?
WILL FOSTER
I was buying it on the black market. That was the
reason that I decided to start growing it. I didn't
know what was in it, what someone could've put
in it, the quality, how it was smuggled in. They
bring it in in diesel, and, you know, it could have
all types of impurities in it, so I started growing it
myself so I'd have the purest, natural and know
what was in it ...
INTERVIEWER
Tell me about the grow. How did you learn about
it?
WILL FOSTER
Well, you can pretty much learn about growing
marijuana, I mean, it's pretty much like any type
of plant an ivy. I used a cloning process. Once I
got my plants that I wanted or the strain that I
wanted, I just cloned from them. There's
probably a hundred different books on how to
grow marijuana on the market.
INTERVIEWER
Did you talk to other growers?
WILL FOSTER
I know a few people who grow marijuana, yeah.
INTERVIEWER
Paint a picture of the kind of community you live
in.
WILL FOSTER
I lived in, I guess, a very nice community. I lived
right behind a shopping mall ... five-bedroom
house, a swimming pool, two living areas, three
fireplaces. Nice house.
INTERVIEWER
Where did you hide the marijuana?
WILL FOSTER
I had it in a bomb shelter. The house was built in
the 1950s during the nuclear holocaust scares and
this house had a bomb shelter built into it and had
a corrugated steel door on it, and I grew the
marijuana in the bomb shelter.
INTERVIEWER
How much were you growing?
WILL FOSTER
I had about 50 marijuana plants. Now, that's
counting clones and everything ... and I was
charged with all of those for the same marijuana.
And I never had one person that had a witness
that ever said I'd distributed marijuana. There
were several that said I never sold marijuana, that
I did grow it for my own personal use. But they
still charged me for possession with intent.
INTERVIEWER
You're saying you never sold it. Then, you used it
all yourself?
WILL FOSTER
The marijuana that I used I grew myself, yes.
INTERVIEWER
All of it?
WILL FOSTER
Yes.
INTERVIEWER
It is quite a number of plants just to use yourself.
WILL FOSTER
No, actually, no it's not. You only get about an
ounce and a half marijuana per plant, and then it's
not like you do when you grow outdoors ... grow
a plant for seven, eight months and get a yield of a
pound and half of marijuana out of it. You're only
getting, at the most, an ounce and half to two
ounces of marijuana of an indoor plant because
you only grow them for 90 to 120 days.
INTERVIEWER
It must have been tempting, though, in the amount
of money you can get for marijuana these days,
not to sell some of it.
WILL FOSTER
Didn't need to sell marijuana. I made over
$100,000 a year, legitimately, in my computer
business. Had no need to sell marijuana.
INTERVIEWER
How many years did you do this?
WILL FOSTER
I had just started.
INTERVIEWER
So it was a matter of months?
WILL FOSTER
Months, yeah. I guess I'd started in September
and they busted me in December. So four
months.
INTERVIEWER
Did you ever think about getting caught?
WILL FOSTER
No. Not really. I didn't think about getting caught.
And I didn't do anything to really draw attention
to me, at least I didn't think I did.
And, how they busted in my house was a "John
Doe" search warrant. They didn't even know my
name. Said that there was methamphetamines
bought out of the house ... I never messed with
methamphetamines. When they searched the
house they didn't find any methamphetamines,
they didn't find a razor blade, they didn't find a
syringe, didn't find a spoon, didn't find a mirror,
didn't find baggies to the keep methamphetamines
in. Didn't find scales to weigh methamphetamines
up on. Didn't know my name, I never got to
confront this confidential informant there in the
entire time of the trial. Basically, an individual,
now in America, can go submit evidence against
you and you don't get to face your accusers
anymore.
INTERVIEWER
Do you have some idea who it was?
WILL FOSTER
Actually we did find out who the confidential
informant was after trial, and he said that he never
told them anything about methamphetamines.
INTERVIEWER
So, what do you think?
WILL FOSTER
Well, the police officers lied.
INTERVIEWER
In order to what?
WILL FOSTER
To gain entry to my house. They didn't know
anything about marijuana. I mean they didn't
come to my house for marijuana, they came for
methamphetamines. Which they found no
evidence that it ever existed or ever did exist.
INTERVIEWER
Have you thought about why they had some
ulterior motive?
WILL FOSTER
Well, you know, that's how their promotion scale
is. It's just like a thing I seen on TV in Dallas ... if
these police officers in certain districts didn't start
giving certain amount of tickets, they weren't
going to be allowed to ... enhancements to their
jobs. That's how they do their promotion. How
many busts, how many convictions you get.
INTERVIEWER
There are people listening to this that are going to
say, how could you not have thought this was
going to happen, especially in Oklahoma?
WILL FOSTER
Well, I didn't sell drugs, people didn't know that I
grew marijuana. I could ... count them all on one
hand who knew I grew marijuana. I lived a pretty
decent life. I worked every day. I paid my taxes.
I didn't go out and hurt nobody. I didn't rob
nobody, I didn't go carousing bars, I stayed home
with my family, I was minding my own business,
at least, that's what I thought.
INTERVIEWER
You had to have a couple prior convictions of
marijuana.
WILL FOSTER
I was at a guy's house that got busted one time,
they raided for cocaine and they didn't find any
cocaine, but they found two roaches over a
cabinet and they charged everybody in the house
for that possession of marijuana, even though it
was in nobody's possession. I didn't realize that in
the common place in somebody's house that's not
even yours, that you're just visiting, that you could
get busted for possession of marijuana there. Of
course the charges were all dropped.
I didn't sell marijuana, so I'd never really worried
about the distribution part of it, and I didn't know
that cultivation carried two [years] to life.
INTERVIEWER
The prosecution made a big point of the fact that
you were growing in the presence of young
children.
WILL FOSTER
Oh yeah, but if they don't know about it, is it
really in the presence of them?
INTERVIEWER
How do you feel about kids using marijuana?
WILL FOSTER
I don't think that kids should smoke marijuana. I
don't think there should be somebody on our
school yards peddling marijuana. No. If it has
medical purposes and it can help them, then
maybe they should smoke marijuana, I mean,
we're free to give them ritalin, which is a
methamphetamine type drug. We've all heard
that, prozac, other types of drugs ... there's kind
of a big confusion here ... want to make them
drug addicts by prescribing them very highly
addictive pharmaceuticals, but then they're
worried about them smoking marijuana.
INTERVIEWER
You ever talk about this with your kids?
WILL FOSTER
Actually, I've told my kids I'd rather not them use
drugs ... and I told them the possible ramification
of it, but if they were going to use it, I'd rather
them do it in the privacy of our own home. I don't
want them out on the street doing it. I mean, kids
are gonna do what they're gonna do.
INTERVIEWER
Did they offer you a deal of some sort?
WILL FOSTER
Before we went to trial, the best deal that they
would give me was 25 years, a $150,000 in fines.
At the time that we were getting to go to trial, the
day of the trial when we were getting ready to put
a jury up, they offered me 10 years and $50,000
in fines. If I took the 10 years, then they could
come and prosecute my wife as it stood at that
time, she would get a misdemeanor, no jail time, if
she would testify against me. So if I didn't go to
jury trial, they would just come back and try to
enforce more years on her in jail.
INTERVIEWER
So you were taking a gamble, for...
WILL FOSTER
Well, it was me go to jail and a jury trial. Or me
going to jail taking a plea bargain and her going to
jail at the same time.
INTERVIEWER
And what did you think the outcome of the jury
trial would be?
WILL FOSTER
Well, I figured with the way that the judge ran the
courtroom, the things that he wouldn't even
motion on like, the confidential informant, the
unsigned affidavit for the search warrant, I mean,
I didn't have chance. I knew I was going to go to
jail.
INTERVIEWER
How do you think you ended up with a 93-year
sentence for marijuana?
WILL FOSTER
Well, I'm the first person ever in Tulsa county to
take the drug case to trial. Nobody challenges
them ... I did a little research that my own
computer program went down and researched
files and from February until March of 1996 there
were 120 drug arrests for marijuana alone and
not one person took it to jury trial, everybody
plea bargained out.
INTERVIEWER
So, do you see yourself as a political prisoner in
some sense?
WILL FOSTER
Anybody who's in prison for drugs is a political
prisoner of war. People across America are
speaking, look what happened in California,
Arizona, Oregon, Ohio, Massachusetts. They're
telling them that the drug war's futile. You'll never
win this thing. For 10,000 years men have sought
out the euphoric feeling. Alcohol, tobacco,
opiates, I could just go on. Dogs do it, birds do it,
bears do it. They find mind altering drugs, that's
why the koala bears eats eucalyptus leaves
because it gives them the euphoric feeling.
INTERVIEWER
Do you think that all drugs should be legalized, or
do you think marijuana is different?
WILL FOSTER
Well, you know, it goes back to your freedom of
choice ... there's only actually about 3,000
addicts, what they actually say, true addicts.
There's 35 million Americans that use drugs.
Now, you know, our government wouldn't want
you to believe that, they've said there's only 17
million. I don't know if you know much about the
new law that the congress has just passed for the
accountability of the drug czar's office.
You know, by the year 2001, they're supposed
to reduce half of the people using drugs, which
means that at the current rate, that means we're
going be 7.5 million more people in jail by the
year 2001. It's going to empower them to do
anything they want to do, it's going to give the
police more power to tramp on your
constitutional rights, and it all boils down to your
freedom of choice. If you're a 21-year-old adult,
you've got your job, you work, you support your
family, your family is not going hungry, if you want
to smoke a joint or ... if it's your choice to do
cocaine, then you should be able to be allowed to
do that.
INTERVIEWER
At one point did you sort of come to all these
political conclusions?
WILL FOSTER
I've done the research, looked in the books, read
about the history, and until 1937 you could buy
marijuana in any drugstore in America for $1 an
ounce.
INTERVIEWER
So you've done the research since your arrest?
WILL FOSTER
No, before I was arrested. And I didn't like the
pharmaceutical drugs. I mean you got the FDA
prescribing phenolphan [PH], [which] killed 150
people already, I mean, where is its testing at.
You know, obviously they didn't do the right
testing. Now you look at all these people that
have damaged heart valves. Now these are
doctors that are prescribing medicine that's
supposed to help people, not supposed to kill
'em. You look at a lot of the other medicines that
are out there on the market. They all have a side
effects--ulcers, liver damage, kidney failures,
heart damage, But somebody wants to smoke
marijuana for a medicine that causes none of
these, has no side effects, is not
addictive--shouldn't it be a personal choice, a
freedom of choice?
INTERVIEWER
Why didn't you use the medical marijuana
defense?
WILL FOSTER
Don't have a medical marijuana defense in
Oklahoma.
INTERVIEWER
Have you met other people in prison, who have
been in similar situations?
WILL FOSTER
Sure, 45% of the people in Oklahoma prisons are
on drug offenses. Mine is not, you know, one of
the most harshest. There's people that are doing
life without parole for an ounce of marijuana ten
years for a joint, 15 years for unlawful delivery of
seven grams of marijuana.
The war on drugs is crazy. We spend, in
Oklahoma, so much money to fight the war on
drugs. The U.S. government, this year, is going to
spend $17.5 billion to fight the war on drugs,
they're not even stopping 10% of the drugs that
are coming into America. I mean, where are our
dollars going?
That's not counting the incarceration that we can't
pay a school teacher. We can't educate our
children, but we can fork out $30,000 a year to
keep a prisoner in prison when we can't spend
$5,000 dollars year to teach our kids. What's
wrong with the picture?
In the the federal penitentiaries there are 71% of
the people serving and the federal penitentiaries
right now are for drug offenses alone. We are
building two prisons a month federally in the
United States for drug offenders. That's basically
it--50% of the people of the 71% in federal
prisons are in for marijuana offenses. Last year
alone there was over six million marijuana arrests
in America. There's a marijuana arrest every 58
seconds in America. Every 58 seconds there is a
marijuana arrest.
INTERVIEWER
What's you're medical condition now?
WILL FOSTER
I get no medical treatment, my hand's all swollen
up, my joints, my feet, my ankle's swelled up
about this big, I have edema from the swelling of
the busted blood vessels in it. I get no medical
treatment, ibuprofen, they charge you for that, $2
a whack. Go to the doctor here you have to pay
$2 to see the doctor. They put you in prison, at
least they should do is provide you medical
attention without having to pay for it.
INTERVIEWER
Why, although you admit its easy to get here,
don't you use it then?
WILL FOSTER
Why? They UA people a lot, give 'em urinalysis. I
just don't wanna take the chance of getting called
in for a UA ... your murderers or rapists, its OK,
they don't hit them cause they're not in here for
that.
INTERVIEWER
And that will affect your appeal?
WILL FOSTER
I don't know so much about my appeal, but, you
know, it could affect my status, my good time,
things like that.
INTERVIEWER
You don't have any regrets about what this whole
thing has done to your family?
WILL FOSTER
Oh yes, my family are the victims. In America,
way back when the 14th amendment, for the
crime to be committed they're have to be against
an individual. Against his property, murder. In
your drug cases, there's no victim. Its a victimless
crime, the only victim is my family. Me. Who else
was a victim in this? There wasn't one, there
wasn't one other. I didn't ruin nobody's life, I
didn't hurt them. What did I do to somebody?
Not a thing. It's a victimless crime, but I'm doing
more time than if there was a whole line of
victims.
INTERVIEWER
You're saying people who are here for violent
offenses get in shorter lengths of time.
WILL FOSTER
There's Barbara Bell--killed her husband cause
he cheated on her, she did two years in prison
and did two years of suspended sentence on
probation and was fined $750. For murder. Same
judge that tried me.
INTERVIEWER
What does this say to you about America?
WILL FOSTER
What does this say to me? [LAUGHS]. At one
time, I served my country in the service, I was
proud to be an American. If I had it today, I'd
give up my U.S. citizenship and go to several
different places. I wouldn't want to be American.
We're forced to follow the rules of just a few
people, and it's no longer a government for the
people by the people. Because our people
speaking, we passed laws in California and
Arizona about marijuana and what does the
federal government, the first thing they say, "We
don't care what you guys passed, we don't care.
Our laws is what counts." What is wrong with
this? This is something that our people put on the
ballot, they voted it in, they way that it's supposed
to be done, by the people, and then our
government is telling us, "No, it don't matter what
you guys want" So are we really free people
anymore?
INTERVIEWER
California is one thing, and middle America is
another thing. What did you sense from people in
Oklahoma?
WILL FOSTER
You would really be surprised, most people
would go for that ... just look at all the money you
would put back into our education, I mean, our
government, Governor Keating just pulled out
$14.2 million from our education fund to put
prisoners in Texas. I mean, $14 million would
educate a lot of kids, wouldn't it?
INTERVIEWER
A lot people would say that it isn't just the
politicians. There is a genuine sentiment in the
country in support of the current laws.
WILL FOSTER
Sure, when you have your alcohol industry, your
tobacco industry, your pharmaceutical industry,
your textiles industry, this would be all direct
competition if marijuana was legalized, direct
competition. Your oil companies--marijuana has
more methane in it than corn. You can make a
fuel for gas, or gasoline out of marijuana wouldn't
have to use fossil fuels, it'd stop the ozone
warming.
You could grow marijuana for paper and never
have to cut down another tree. You could
prescribe marijuana as medicine and take off all
your anti-depressants, your prozacs, your valium,
your ritalin. Marijuana fabric is stronger than
cotton, breathes better than cotton. You don't
have to use the pesticides to keep the bugs off it.
INTERVIEWER
So, in short, you think this is really about
something else that's ...
WILL FOSTER
It's about money. Where's your CIA going to be
able to get their money to throw over their
governments? They can't go to Congress and say
"Hey, man, I need a billion dollars so that I can go
down here and finance this government to be
overthrown." It can't happen. So what do they
do, they bring in their drugs, they sell them on
American streets, they take the money, and they
finance other governments. Its been proven.
INTERVIEWER
Do you think there is a real hope that this country
will de-criminalize marijuana?
WILL FOSTER
I would hope so. I think so. At least, make it
available for people for medicine.
There's no sense in people sick and dying, and
our government just not allowing them to have
medicine. They do have the compassionate youth
program in America where there is eight people
every month [who] get 300 joints each of
governmentally grown marijuana. Now why do
these eight people get marijuana from our
government and [not] everybody else?
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