Capone of Cannabis is a true-crime memoir from inside Michigan’s first dispensary battlefield—where raids replaced regulation, “task forces” replaced oversight, and the same people who lost at the ballot box found new ways to punish the winners. What follows is a relentless chain of surveillance, informants, and political vendettas that turns a medical movement into…

I wasn’t locked up for selling weed. Not the way people imagine it, anyway — not the cinematic version with armored vehicles and agents. I got locked up through a quieter method the government perfected once cannabis became too popular to crush outright: taxes. Specifically, IRS Code § 280E — a relic from the 1980s,…

Our stores were raided, often without warrants, every 26 days on average—for four years. We didn’t always get the footage, but sometimes we did. Here are a few from our YouTube channel.

Detroit Metro Times just ran a feature on my new memoir, Capone of Cannabis — a story about Michigan’s early cannabis “legalization” years that didn’t feel legal at all. It was raids, seizures, intimidation, and a system that treated patients and operators like targets, not citizens who followed the will of voters. As I told…

What “getting to the Supreme Court” really means, how rare it is to be heard, and why so many petitions disappear without a word. READ US SUPREME COURT PETITION HERE The Only American Sent to Federal Prison for Section 280E of the US Tax Code. Eight years apart, I found myself standing at the doorstep…

What you’re about to read is more than a memoir. It’s a chronicle of the scars I carry: from betrayal, from backroom deals, from decades of a broken system. You’ll meet the people who helped me. The ones who hurt me. The cops who shook my hand, then raided my home. The prosecutors who used…

Petition for Writ of Certiorari QUESTIONS PRESENTED Whether 26 U.S.C. § 280E —which denies ordinary and necessary business deductions to enterprises trafficking in Schedule I controlled substances —may constitutionally be applied to a state- authorized marijuana business when, in the two decades since Gonzales v. Raich , Congress and the States have abandoned a uniform…

The following is not part of the book. You’ll learn when—and by whom—I was given the title Capone of Cannabis in the pages of the book. Both Al Capone and I—Ryan Richmond—found ourselves drawn into outlaw industries that society wasn’t ready to accept, even as public opinion shifted. While Capone built his empire on bootleg…

The medical marijuana charade. BY Matt Labash The Weekly Standard – October 11, 2010, Vol. 16, No. 04 Southfield, Michigan It’s hard to recall the precise moment when I realized I’d been hoodwinked by my US Airways pilot. Instead of taking me to Detroit, as my ticket promised, it seemed he had deposited me on the set…

PUBLISHED: June 29, 2010 at 3:37 AM EDT | UPDATED: November 1, 2025 at 10:51 PM EDT FERNDALE — Patients from as far away as Traverse City and Ann Arbor have come to the Clinical Relief medical marijuana clinic and dispensary in Ferndale since it opened several weeks ago. “Most medical marijuana patients don’t have a source they…