From prison to 'Mr. Marijuana': This man fled Kentucky to become a Dutch pot pioneer
Patrolling the rivers and shores of South Vietnam for the U.S. Coast Guard, James Burton began smoking marijuana during his 13-month tour for a simple reason.
“I was scared ----less,” he said.
But by the 50th time he lit up, he noticed something extraordinary: The auras caused by his glaucoma, the eye disease with which he was diagnosed when he joined the service, began to disappear.
Two of his uncles were already blind from the illness, and when Burton returned stateside and eventually settled on a 93-acre farm in Bowling Green, Kentucky, the Wisconsin native was determined not to lose his sight as well.
"Going blind is a very scary proposition,” he said later.
So Burton began to grow pot in an old tobacco barn. He thought he was safe. The farm was far off the road and locked behind two fences. And Burton did not sell pot or even give it away, he said.
But then a neighbor charged with rustling cattle exposed his actions in exchange for a lighter sentence. So began United States v. James Richard Burton.
He was charged with three counts of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute as well as possession of firearms during a drug trafficking crime.
Burton insisted he used the guns solely for hunting deer and pheasant. But now he was facing 60 years in prison.
Kentucky State Police Detective Eddie Railey said at the time it wasn’t a particularly big operation − 138 plants. But grown indoors under high-pressure sodium lights, it was the most sophisticated Railey had encountered in 15 years as a narcotics detective, he said.
Burton’s lawyers launched a secret defense they didn’t disclose to the government until mid-trial. Reserving their opening statement until after the prosecution rested, attorneys Steve Hixson and Donald Heavrin argued Burton had grown his crop out of “medical necessity.”
It would be the first such defense in Kentucky, and one of only a few nationwide. And it caught prosecutors Terry Cushing and Cleve Gambill by surprise.
“When an old man with a cane tap-tapped his way to the witness stand, we had no idea who he was,” remembered Gambill, an assistant U.S. attorney and later a federal magistrate judge.
The witness was one of Burton’s uncles, who was totally blind. Burton’s Bowling Green family doctor also took the stand.
The government ridiculed Burton’s claim he needed 138 plants to treat just one patient – himself.
In a recent interview, Gambill, now a mediator, said he thought it was “horse hockey.”
Railey, who is long retired from KSP, said Burton had enough marijuana to treat “half the glaucoma patients in the United States" - which Burton says is an absurd exaggeration.
But the prosecutors didn’t offer a single witness who said Burton had sold pot to them, and no money was found on his farm.
On March 16, 1988, after deliberating to 1:50 a.m., a Bowling Green jury announced it had acquitted Burton on the felony charge of distributing marijuana and the firearms charge. It found him guilty only of simple possession, a misdemeanor.
Burton and his lawyers thought they had won; most judges grant probation for misdemeanor convictions
But their judge – U.S. District Court Judge Ronald E Meredith – was no ordinary judge. He was a former U.S. attorney and an archconservative. He not only ordered Burton to serve every day of a 12-month sentence but also allowed the government to confiscate his house, farm and automobiles on the grounds it had been used in a drug crime, albeit a misdemeanor.
For a year, Burton said, he was moved from prison to prison – six in all – as the government tried to keep him from talking to reporters, who clamored to interview him about his novel defense and harsh punishment.
Burton becomes a 'marijuana refugee'
When he was finally freed, Burton, an electrician by trade, and his wife Linda had no money and nowhere to live. And he still needed marijuana to save his sight, he said.
They had never been to the Netherlands and spoke not a word of Dutch, but they decided to move there. In the Netherlands, you could buy marijuana in a coffee shop and smoke it at your table.
“It was really a no-brainer,” he said. Though he and Linda had to leave their families behind, “I thought we had no choice,” Burton said.
They borrowed money from his father, a salesman for Morton Salt, and flew to Amsterdam.
Settling first in Rotterdam, Burton worked as a computer programmer while growing pot part time, according to a profile of him in Drugs Inc., an international trade publication.
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Dutch news outlets portrayed him as a “marijuana refugee” and wrote about his efforts to standardize dosing, processing and packaging.
In 1990, he began selling pot to pharmacies and hospitals, which meant he had to ensure patients were gettting the same strain and strength each time, with the same level of cannabinnoids, the active ingredients in marijuana.
He was one of the first people in the Netherlands to grow marijuana for medicinal purposes. Dutch TV called him “Mr. Marijuana,” and he wrote and published a book, “The Properties of Medical Marijuana.”
In 1993, Burton started SIMM, the Institute of Medical Marijuana, which sold only to patients with a prescription.
Standardizing pot
He eventually set up a clinic and, wearing a white lab coat, his list of customers grew to 10,000 people who suffered from diseases ranging from multiple sclerosis and arthritis to cancer and AIDS. He said he taught nurses how to administer pot to cancer patients, and he said they loved him because it reduced the patients’ nausea and the work nurses had to do cleaning it up.
At first he grew pot in a house but eventually had to move to a greenhouse in a secret location in the province of South Holland guarded by three German shepherds, according to another account in Volteface, a nonprofit news organization and drug reform advocacy group.
At his peak, Burton said he had 22 employees.
In 2003, the Dutch Bureau of Medical Cannabis gave him a five-year contract to grow and sell marijuana directly to the government, which distributed it to drugstores and other medical middlemen.
But to cover its costs, the government had to dramatically raise prices, and it priced itself out of the market, according to Burton and news reports. To purify the pot, it also began to irradiate the product, which Burton said reduced its efficacy.
He went on TV and criticized the government program and sued it in court.
He said the government responded by yanking his license. In an email to the Paste BN Network, however, and a report, the agency said it didn’t renew his contract because of concerns about quality and “the way and tone” in which Burton had “sought publicity.”
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Five joints a day
Burton’s growing gig was up, but he found a real job – traveling the world to fix software bugs for a Dutch-based company that packaged chocolate, bars, biscuits, candies and pharmaceuticals.
The Burtons resettled in the northern Dutch province of Friesland, where he continues to grow marijuana but only for personal use, to keep his glaucoma in check.
He said he smokes three to five grams a day – the equivalent of three to five joints – which he said would land most people on their sofa. But he said it has little effect on him because he has been smoking it so long.
He said his eyesight is as good as when he left Kentucky – “I don’t wear thick glasses.”
He recently received a pardon from President Joseph Biden for his marijuana conviction, and friends have told him that the Kentucky General Assembly in March legalized medical marijuana effective January 2025, when it will join 37 other states that have done the same.
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Burton said he was pleased to hear that news but it is too late for him to take advantage. He is 75 and most of his friends and relatives in the United States are dead, as are his wife’s.
So they will stay in the Netherlands and die there, he said.
He said his forced exodus has led to an extraordinary life – that he has traveled to Africa, Asia, Europe and the British Isles. “I have had a lot of experiences other people don’t have,” he said.
But he said another part of him wishes he had never had to leave the farm he and his wife shared in Bowling Green that had a tobacco allotment, spring-fed water and a river running through it.
“It was paradise,” he said.
Glaucoma Q and A
What is glaucoma?
Glaucoma is a chronic, progressive eye disease usually caused by an abnormality in the eye’s drainage system. Pressure builds up, which in turn damages the optic nerve, the collection of nerve fibers that connects the retina to the brain.
How many people have glaucoma?
After cataracts, glaucoma is the leading cause of blindness. Three million people in the United States and 80 million people worldwide have it.
Is marijuana an effective treatment for glaucoma?
The National Institutes of Health says research findings from as early as the 1970s show marijuana reduces eye pressure, a key contributor to glaucoma. The first such reports generated considerable interest because at the time, conventional treatments had serious side effects. But new treatments out-perform marijuana-based medicines. The Glaucoma Research Foundation says that while smoking marijuana can lower eye pressure, using it “does not make sense given its side effects, short duration of action, and lack of evidence that its use alters the course of glaucoma.”
How else is glaucoma treated?
Doctors use medicines, usually prescription eye drops, laser treatment and surgery, according to the National Eye Institute, which says there is no cure for glaucoma, but early treatment can often stop the damage and protect your vision.
Was James Burton the first defendant to mount a medicinal defense to pot-growing charges?
No, Robert C. Randall won a landmark D.C. Superior court case in 1976 by arguing that the marijuana growing on his Capitol Hill sun porch kept him from going blind. He became the first legal user of pot in the U.S.