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IN MEMORIAM
Remembering the REVEREND
Paying tribute to the beloved medical marijuana pioneer and P.O.W., OG Eddy Lepp.
TWO WEEKS AGO, we learned of the passing of yet another legend in the Cannabis community—outlaw medical marijuana grower/activist Eddy Lepp. Lepp passed away peacefully in his sleep around 2:00 a.m. on the morning of August 16 after a difficult battle with cancer. He was 69 years old.
Charles “Eddy” Lepp was one of the most famous and revered pot POWs in America. As an activist, Lepp traveled the world with his best friend Jack Herer and worked closely with
Dennis Peron to help get Proposition 215 passed in 1996, and was then the first person to be acquitted under that law in 1998 after being charged for operating a medical Cannabis collective. In the early 2000s, he established Eddy’s Medicinal Garden—the largest medical Cannabis grow in history, containing over 30,000 plants servicing around 4,500 patients. The farm also doubled as the site of the Rastafarian ministry he founded, earning him the honorific of Reverend. Though the farm was protected under California law, it was still federally illegal, and was raided by the DEA in 2004 (the largest individual medical marijuana crop seizure in U.S. history), then again six months later. Lepp was convicted in 2007 and served over eight years in prison before being released in December 2016.
Lepp has received several honors over the years, including having a song and a Cannabis strain named after him. High Times named him Freedom Fighter of the Year in 2004 and awarded him their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017. And at their 420 Icons event on April 20 of last year, the Cannabis Business Awards (in conjunction with the World of
Cannabis Museum) named him one of the top 100 Cannabis advocates of all time.
OG Eddy Lepp, as he was known, was one of our nation’s most beloved and beleaguered medical marijuana growers and activists—a modern-day marijuana martyr whose bravery, conviction and sacrifices helped pave the way for the freedoms we enjoy today.
He will be missed and never forgotten.
For more on Eddy Lepp’s life, read our February 2021 installment of Cannthropology.
CHARLES “EDDY” LEPP 1952-2021
Carry On, WAYWARD BILL
ON AUGUST 7, the Colorado Cannabis community lost one of its favorite sons when activist William
Alvin Chengelis—better known as “Wayward Bill”—died of cancer at the age of 70.
Wayward Bill was a Cannabis crusader his entire adult life. In 1969, at the age of 18, he joined the White Panther Party in support of the campaign to “Free John Sinclair.” He was studying constitutional law and journalism at Youngstown State University before being drafted into the Vietnam War. After being honorably discharged in 1974, Chengelis joined the Youth International Party (Yippies) and began attending their annual July 4th Smoke-In protests at the White House almost religiously. He also became a devoted Deadhead and moved to Hayward, California, where he gained the nickname “Hayward Bill” (he changed it to “Wayward” Bill after Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995).
Bill was also a member of many other activist groups, including the ACLU, S.A.F.E.R., Sensible Colorado, NORML, and the U.S. Marijuana Party, which he was elected chairman of in 2011—a title which he held proudly until he was forced to retire from the position in May of this year due to illness. Bill was on a bus en route to the 51st annual Yippie Smoke-In in D.C. this past July when that illness finally caught up with him and he was forced to turn back. Sadly, in the weeks that followed, his health declined rapidly.
Upon his passing, the VA hospital honored Bill with a full military sendoff. He’s also been honored by the Cannabis Business Awards: first in 2016 with a Lifetime Achievement Award, then again last April when he was named one of their esteemed “420 Icons.”
Fare thee well, wayward son.
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