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Marijuana creating lifetime opportunities for many.
Posted on July 18, 2015 by 18karatreggae@gmail.com in News // 0 Comments

Marijuana Lady

By Evan Bush

WELCOME TO THE weird world of legalized marijuana, with a cast of characters as novel and interesting as the product they’re crazy enough to sell.

Entrepreneurs include a World War II veteran born in 1921 and a University of Washington student born in 1993, plus felons, dreamers and a cupcake queen. Then there’s this bizarre trio: a 79-year-old nationally ranked bird-watcher, a 36-year-old surfer, and former Seahawks star Marcus Trufant, who together own a pot shop in Lacey, one of the state’s more than 150 (and growing) recreational marijuana stores.

It’s always messy to build something from scratch. About half of small businesses fail within five years, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, and few face as many complications as the marijuana industry.

Taxes are steep. Laws and rules for the strictly regulated business have been in flux since the state’s voters legalized pot in November 2012. Some cities and counties have banned businesses. Many can’t get access to banking. Although unlikely, if the federal government changes its mind on pot, it could shutter businesses and press felony charges.

But those bold enough to launch into this uncertain world see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where others balk at risk.

Les LeMieux, a felon convicted of selling drugs, seeks vindication. Pot nearly took everything away. Now, it could set up his family for good.

Evan Cox and his wife, Charity, both high-school and college dropouts, see pot as a means of upward mobility.

Jody Hall, the founder of Cupcake Royale, wants to reshape pot culture.

They’re all just getting started, but what a long, strange trip it’s already been.

LES PAUL LEMIEUX crosses the Yakima River several times a week to deliver marijuana. There’s really no way to avoid it.

For LeMieux, the river reminds him of a different time, when the D.A.R.E. program was in full swing, the president wouldn’t admit to inhaling and dealing pot could land you in jail. Or worse.

But he feels a connection with the river. It’s where his “baptism into the world of men” took place.

The way LeMieux tells it, in 1997 he slept with a woman named Wendy, making a fellow drug dealer jealous. Later, he heard a rumor the whole thing was recorded on a nanny camera.

Court records, though, don’t tell a Shakespearean story of a jealous lover.

Instead, the documents describe LeMieux arriving at the drug dealer’s house with a duffel bag filled with 30 pounds of marijuana. Another man, a former high school classmate, greeted him by thrusting a pistol to his sternum. The men ordered LeMieux to the floor, tied him up with speaker wire, blindfolded him with a T-shirt and stuffed him into his duffel bag and then into the back of a vehicle.

When they turned the ignition, LeMieux says he knew he was inside his Jeep because Soundgarden’s album “Down on the Upside” fired up on his cassette player.

The dealers drove for hours while LeMieux begged for his life. They threw him into the Yakima River — still bound but out of the duffel bag — and left him to die.

According to court records, LeMieux floated down the river until he snagged a branch with his chin. He managed to break the wires around his feet and crawl back to shore and up to the road. A passing driver contacted police.

When officers arrived, LeMieux, his hands still tied behind his back, was hysterically yelling, “They tried to kill me!” A sheriff’s officer reported that LeMieux was “hypothermic, vomiting . . . and had ligature marks on both wrists and ankles.”

Wires — “my old nemesis” — make him uncomfortable. Memories can trigger post-traumatic stress disorder now, he says.

These days, to ease his mind, he smokes marijuana. He sells it, too — in the legal market now, but we’ll get to that later.