I’m a Denver Native and I love my city and I also love the fuck out of weed! Running a quick background check on me would reveal a multitude of marijuana charges dating back as far as the 90’s. I guess you can say, Maryjane and I have a love-hate relationship, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. And just like everyone else has a past, so do I, and mine is all about the weed.

 

I started crossing weed over the border when I was 13 years old. When I was 12 my mother got sick and I had to go live in Palomas, Mexico with my Aunt and my uncle, it was a small border town about an hour west of Juarez. My uncle was a prominent figure in the city, he owned a cattle exportation business along with a few stores and bars. He busted my ass and treated me like one of his workers and I tended to all the duties of the ranch and the businesses. My dad wasn’t around, so my uncle was like my father figure and he instilled strong work ethic in me at an early age. I’m thankful for the things he taught me and extremely grateful for having him in my life.

 

Despite living in Mexico, I went to school in the United States, commuting on a school bus that would jump the border every freakin’ day. For each crossing, my classmates and I would have to get off the bus and go through customs security, which was quite the experience considering how tightly our borders are secured today. School was cool, but I eventually started hanging around more with my friends and was constantly ditching class. Back in those days I had a few friends who smoked weed, but I wasn’t really into it at the time because I knew my uncle would whoop my ass.

 

My uncle had a bodega in the back of the ranch house that was used for storage and stuff. I was never really allowed to go in there, but I had my suspicions seeing as trucks were always pulling in and out. One day, curiosity got the best of me and I snuck in only to discover multiple bales of weed hidden under a large tarp. I didn’t think much of it at the time and just keep it to myself, never telling a soul.

 

After years of crossing the border on the school bus, I had noticed that there were certain days of the month that they didn’t make us walk through customs security and would instead just let the bus pass through. Realizing this, one day I decided to sneak a couple of buds across the border by hiding them in my shoe, later that day I gave it to my friends and they absolutely loved it. They kept asking me for more and before I knew it, I was smuggling pounds of weed across the border in my school bus.

 

I started smoking weed when I moved back to Denver with my mother, but I was constantly going back to Mexico. I loved visiting my family and absorbing the culture, but being there can sometimes be dangerous. I remember the first time I got caught with weed, I was fifteen years old, some friends and I were smoking outside of a Quinceañera in Chihuahua, Mexico. When all of a sudden the fuckin sheriff shows up out of nowhere and throws me and my friend in the back of his suburban and hauls us off to jail. They sat us down and asked us where we got the weed, I said we found it. He said “Okay, so you found it,” as he started filling up a bin full of water, and all the while I’m thinking to myself “Why the hell is he doing that?” Suddenly they throw us down on our knees and start dunking our heads into the bin and I just can’t believe what’s happening!  As they brought me up for air they asked me again, “Where did you get it?” I kept saying we found it in a ditch and thankfully, after a few more dunks, they believed us. They then proceeded to take off our clothes, handcuffed us back to back, and threw us in a cold ass jail cell. My uncle eventually found us in the morning and got us out, they didn’t know who they had fucked with and they soon paid for what they had did to us.

 

At the age of 25 I got caught with 90 lbs of Mexican brick sinsemilla in Pueblo, Colorado. The judge, who was not very fond of marijuana, said I was bringing poison into his county and wanted to give me five years in prison. If only he knew what we all know now, right. So I bonded out and got a nine-to-five and I enrolled myself in college for graphic design and digital arts.  When the time came for sentencing the judge showed me leniency in light of how much I had progressed into a productive member of society and decided to lighten my sentence and only gave me three years with a five year tail.

 

I got out in less than a year with good behavior and moved to El Paso, Texas to take care of my father, whose health was deteriorating at the time.  I was able to re-enroll in college and finish my associate degree in digital arts and graphic design. And even though I was on paper I was still crossing the border into Mexico to visit family and handle business, they never once found out. A couple of years later, I got caught again with a weed shipment in Denver. Since I was on parole, I was looking at 8-12 years for an aggravated felony case. I was able to beat the case for Illegal search and seizure and because they also beat my ass. When they arrested me, they had no probable cause or a search warrant and so I stood up for my rights and they fucked me up for it! They broke my nose on the asphalt and choked me out, I woke up in an ambulance handcuffed to the bed on my way to Denver General hospital! Thank God I woke up. The good thing too is that my parole officer back in Texas never found out about that case, otherwise I would’ve ended up back in prison for violation.

 

I successfully got off parole in 2006 without any violations that they knew of. The following year I got caught in Mexico, and trust me, you do not want to get caught up in Mexico! That’s too long of a story that I really don’t want to get in to, but I made a promise to God, that if he saved me from that one I would get out of the illegal marijuana drug trade and he did. He saved me from a hellish shit-hole prison in Juarez, Mexico. I kept my promise and I moved back to Denver and started a marketing company, I completely quit the weed game cold turkey, but I still smoked my Cronic! The following year the Sinaloa Cartel invaded the state of Chihuahua for control of the territory and drug routes and a lot of my family members and friends tragically perished in the bloodshed. I miss them, God bless the dead.

 

Enter 2010 and Denver had just legalized marijuana for medicinal use and there were dispensaries popping up everywhere!  I was in awe, after all I’ve been through and now you’re going to legalize it, fuck yeah! I felt my calling once again, after all, I’ve kept my promise and never went back to Mexico. It was now legal in my city and opportunity was a knockin’. And that’s where my degree in graphic design kicked in and I created a publication called “Cronic Lifestyle Magazine”. Life’s a trip, if it weren’t for me getting busted, I would have never went to college and if I would’ve never went to college I would have never started my magazine, I really don’t want to sound cliché but I guess everything does happen for a reason!