


“There’s no way they’re going to give a guy with a felony for selling weed a license. In 2017, his landlord told him about the city of Los Angeles’ soon-to-launch social equity program.
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So I started a 14-light grow in a little space in Van Nuys, and for the first year, I burnt up a bunch of plants while I learned how to grow by watching hundreds of hours of YouTube videos, reading Jorge Cervantes religiously every night and talking to friends who were growers. “After all the things I’d learned up north in Canada about growing, I wanted to try my hand at cultivation. “But honestly, cannabis was just calling me back,” he said. ” When I went back to court to report for sentencing, the judge looked at me and gave me time served.” “I had no issues, no arrests, no problems with the law, nothing. I kept a job, paid my taxes and pissed in a cup twice a week,” he said about his post-arrest career trajectory. “I worked at Abercrombie & Fitch for two years and at Nike for another two. “After I signed, my attorney worked out a deal with the judge and the DEA that said I didn’t have to report for sentencing until the case was over,” Ball said, adding that since the case involved multiple people, the result was that he didn’t face the judge again until 2014 - four years later. He said he spent about a month in jail, eventually taking a plea deal that he says left him facing 30 months in prison. Lifestyle The 10 best SoCal pot shops worth seeing in person right nowįrom art galleries and speakeasies to deli themes and circus vibes, dispensaries have gone next-level.Īccording to court documents, Ball was originally charged with conspiracy to distribute 1,000 kilograms of marijuana (an offense which carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years). “I touched a guy who was working for a very prominent drug cartel, and we started doing some weed business together,” he said. “That’s when my status started to rise.”Įventually, Ball said, a friend introduced him to someone who’d been on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s radar. “I became very popular doing that because I was able to undercut the market here because I was getting it so cheap,” he said. He explained that during the offseason, some of the football players (including him) would supplement their incomes by bringing weed into the U.S. But when broke down the numbers and told me how much it cost him compared to what he was selling it for and what I could sell it for, it was a no-brainer.” “I guess I was trying for the wrong reasons. Then I tried again when I was 18 and that didn’t work either,” he said. “My first attempt was at 16, and that didn’t work. He had started selling pot when he was a teenager. A guy on my team had a little grow started, and I just kind of fell in love with it watching the buds grow, watch the harvesting and the trimming - the whole process.“īall wasn’t new to the weed trade when he had his eureka moment.

“I went to play with the Lions in Vancouver in 2004, and that’s where I saw weed being grown for the first time,” he said. But that was back in the early aughts - ancient history, really - and Ball only brings it up to explain how he came to fall in love with the plant side of the cannabis business. The athletic way the 43-year-old moves through the room is no accident football skills earned the Rialto native a scholarship to the UC Berkeley training camp with the San Francisco 49ers (“I got released,” he said with a half-shrug), one season with NFL Europe’s Berlin Thunder and two with the Canadian Football League. The federal agency is the Drug Enforcement Administration. 14, 2021 An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to the Drug Enforcement Agency.
