THE TASTE OF FREEDOM

from Mar. 2023 - California Leaf

by Northwest Leaf / Oregon Leaf / Alaska Leaf / Maryland Leaf / California Leaf / Northeast Leaf

Rico“Phone Homie” Valderrama

STORY BY TOM BOWERS @CANNABOMBTOM

After spending more than 14 years in federal prison for operating a California state-legal dispensary in Modesto, Luke Scarmazzo is free. The release came as a surprise to Scarmazzo on an average morning in January.

“Friday morning I got up, and I was still doing 22 years,” he said on a recent call with Leaf Magazines and Scarmazzo’s friend and former prison-mate, trailblazing advocate Weldon Angelos. “I was getting ready to work out and make some coffee, and I checked my email and the subject line from my attorney said, ‘You’re a free man.’ Bam, I was staring at my computer, thinking, ‘Holy shit, this is over now.’”

While it seemed abrupt, the move came on the heels of years of work by Scarmazzo from within the prison in collaboration with Angelos – a staunch Cannabis advocate and founder of Project Mission [Green], which advocates for the release of all Cannabis prisoners victimized by the War on Drugs.

“Luke was the inspiration for even starting the Mission Green Alliance and the Mission Green Initiative to focus on these individuals,” Angelos said, “because we have a twotiered system of justice where, if you’re rich and you’re privileged, you can profit from this plant. But if you’re not, you go to prison, and you stay in prison.”

Now that both friends are on the right side of the bars, they plan on teaming up like Voltron to take on the system – with Scarmazzo planning to lend his efforts to help Project Mission [Green], as well as partner with Angelos on other endeavors.

“There’s still people getting federal sentences for nonviolent Cannabis offenses,” Scarmazzo said. “There’s still daughters and sons that are being raised without a parent in the house behind a non-violent Cannabis offense. And those things are just super wrong. They’re unjust. They’re something that has to change, because we can’t continue to do a status quo where we allow corporations and governments to make millions of dollars, but at the same time continue to lock up citizens.”

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For now, Scarmazzo is making plans and readjusting … while enjoying every bite of pizza and every Japanese hibachi meal, and being back with his daughter and the rest of his family.

“Missing all that time with her, that was like the hardest part of my incarceration,” Scarmazzo said. “So, being able to get back with her, and reconnect with her, and hug her, and tell her – ‘Hey, look, I’m home now. I’m not going anywhere like that again’ – was by far the best moment since I’ve been back.”

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